Home doesn't feel like home anymore.
The apartment is the same—same beige walls, same minimal furniture, same careful anonymity I cultivated for years. But I'm different.
My body moves through these rooms like a stranger, relearning spaces that should be familiar, bumping into corners I used to navigate without thought.
Physical therapy happens three times a week. A woman named Sandra guides me through exercises designed to rebuild what twenty-seven days of stillness destroyed.
Resistance bands, balance work, walks that start at ten minutes and gradually extend to fifteen, then twenty, then thirty. My muscles cramp and shake after minimal exertion.
Some days I can barely make it from the bedroom to the kitchen without needing to sit down.
"You're doing great." Sandra says this every session, her voice professionally encouraging. "Recovery takes time. Be patient with yourself."
I nod, smile, go through the motions of being a person who believes patience will fix anything.
My father moves in for the first two weeks. He sleeps on my couch, cooks meals I can barely stomach, hovers in doorways with an anxious energy I've never seen from him before.
The near-death experience has cracked something open in Mark Hayes—some wall he built after my mother died, some protective distance he maintained without realizing it.
"How are you feeling today?" He asks this every morning, coffee in hand, watching me shuffle to the kitchen table. "Really feeling, I mean. Not just what you think I want to hear."
"Tired." It's the safest answer. The truest one, too. "Everything takes so much energy."
"That's normal, according to the doctors. Your body went through trauma. It needs time to…"
"I know, Dad." I don't mean to cut him off, but the words come out sharper than intended. "I know it takes time. Everyone keeps telling me it takes time. I'm just tired of being tired."
He sets down his coffee, pulls out the chair across from me. "Is that all that's bothering you? Just the physical stuff?"
The question hangs in the air. I stare at the grain of the table, feeling his eyes on my face, knowing he's waiting for something I don't know how to give him.
"There's a lot going on in my head." The admission comes out halting, uncomfortable. "Things I haven't figured out how to talk about yet, things that happened in the game, before the game, things about who I am that I've never…"
I stop, swallow. "I'm not ready, Dad. I know you're trying to help. But I'm not ready."
"Okay." His hand covers mine on the table, warm and steady. "Okay, Gordon. I'm not going to push. But I want you to know—whatever it is, whatever you're carrying, I'm here. When you're ready. No judgment, no expectations. Just... here."
My throat tightens. I nod without looking up, and we sit in silence until the coffee goes cold.
Lily visits twice a week. She never stays long—just enough to check that I'm alive, to bring groceries Dad forgot, to occupy space in my apartment without actually occupying it.
Her face is complicated when she looks at me. Guilt warring with something harder. Concern wrapped around resentment that hasn't quite dissolved.
She's the one who found me. I learned this in fragments—from Dad, from nurses, from the gaps in conversations that told their own story.
Lily came to gloat after our confrontation and found her brother unconscious in a gaming chair, unresponsive to shaking, to shouting, to the cold water she threw on my face in desperation.
She called 911. She stayed while paramedics cut the headset away, while they loaded my body onto a stretcher, while the ambulance screamed toward a hospital that would become my home for nearly a month.
She saved my life. And she hasn't apologized for almost destroying it.
"You look better today." She says this from the doorway of my kitchen, arms crossed, keeping distance. "More color in your face."
"I walked around the block this morning. Sandra says I'm making progress."
"That's good. That's really good." She shifts her weight, eyes darting to my phone on the counter. "Have you... heard anything? From anyone?"
We both know who she means.
"No." The word comes out flat. "Nothing."
Lily nods slowly. Something flickers across her face—relief, fear, both?
"Gordon, I need to ask you something." She steps further into the kitchen, lowering her voice even though no one else is here. "Does Simon know? About... everything? About who you were in the game?"
"Yes." I don't elaborate. Don't explain the hospital confrontation, the cold fury in his eyes, the way he asked me to leave. "He knows."
"And?" She's watching me carefully now, reading my face the way she's always been able to. "What did he say? What happens now?"
"I don't know what happens now." The admission scrapes out of me, raw and exhausted. "He told me to leave, told me he needs time. And then... nothing. Three weeks of nothing, Lily. I've checked my phone a thousand times, and there's nothing."
She's quiet for a moment. Her expression cycles through something I can't quite track—the relief I expected, yes, but underneath it, something that looks almost like guilt. Almost like fear.
"Are you going to reach out to him?" she asks finally. "Try to explain, or apologize, or…"
"He asked me not to." I laugh, but it sounds hollow. "He asked me not to look at his face for a while. I'm trying to respect that, even though it's killing me. Even though every day I don't hear from him feels like another confirmation that I destroyed everything."
Lily opens her mouth, closes it. For a moment I think she's going to say something—an apology, maybe, or a confession—but then her expression hardens and she just nods.
"I should go. Dad wanted me to pick up his prescription." She's already moving toward the door, already putting distance between us. "I'll check in tomorrow, okay? Make sure you're eating."
"Lily." She stops, hand on the doorknob. "Thank you for finding me, for calling the ambulance. I know things have been... complicated between us. But you saved my life. I want you to know I understand that."
Something cracks in her face. Just for a second—a flash of the sister I grew up with, the girl who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms. Then it's gone, buried under whatever she's been carrying since that night.
"You're my brother." Her voice is thick. "Of course I saved you."
She leaves without saying anything else.
The weeks blur —physical therapy, slow walks, meals I force myself to eat because Sandra says nutrition matters for recovery. My muscles rebuild themselves in increments so small I barely notice them happening, my body relearns how to function.
My mind stays stuck.
I check my phone constantly. Wake up in the middle of the night and reach for it before my eyes are fully open, scrolling through notifications that are never the one I'm waiting for.
Every text makes my heart lurch—and every text is from Dad, from Lily, from coworkers I barely remember sending my hospitalization to.
Never from Simon.
Two weeks pass. I walk to the end of my street and back without stopping. Three weeks. I make it to the park and sit on a bench, watching people live their lives, wondering if I'll ever remember how to live mine.
The silence from Simon is its own kind of death—a slow suffocation, hope draining away one unanswered day at a time.
I compose messages I never send—apologies, explanations, desperate pleas for him to just talk to me, even if it's to scream, even if it's to tell me he never wants to see me again.
At least that would be something. At least that would be an answer.
But there's nothing. Just the void where his voice used to be, and the growing certainty that I didn't just lose his love.
I lost everything.
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