The morning was still—so still it made the chirping birds sound like an intrusion. The first light entered the room like it was unsure of its welcome, crawling across the worn floorboards and pausing at the edge of Jeffrey's empty bed.
Theophilus was already up, his hands moving stiffly as he adjusted the cushion behind his back. The leg always hurt more before breakfast. Ramus entered soon after with the checkerboard under one arm and a shallow grunt of effort.
As though he limped from the cause of machine implications, he then set the board down. The pieces arranged and the moment of the morn sinking in the tapestry of a hollow war.
Click. Slide. Pause.
Theophilus opened the game with his usual aggression—corner moves that demanded attention but offered no promise. Ramus responded slowly, like a man waiting to be bested, but playing anyway because the steps taken mattered more than the result.
There was no chuckle to break the silence this time and absolutely no childish voice asking who had won with a crooked smile from the bed when Ramus lost again. A dry morning the humid had turned ash by the loss of wheezing laughter at Theophilus's muttered curses when his strategy didn't go as planned.
Only the rustle of robes and the subtle darting eyes of Ramus towards the spectacle of a day he's always experienced, the next move cleared his thoughts.
The bed was made and the rubble of a shrunken memory lay as distant fractured records reflected across the eyes of his leaning eyes, the pillow had been carefully positioned so that when the next patient came to join them... It would be in a warming welcome amongst those surroundings them.
The final move was predictable. Theophilus won, as usual. Ramus leaned back, rubbed his chin, and didn't say a word.
For a very bitter moment, he'd thought he'd say once again that he'd lost, his breath almost made him choke as he cracked a smile.
"Little man would've asked who lost again," he said, with a distant gaze over his shoulder like looking back at that favourite painting his father sold because they needed to load less objects in the trailer, that little yet scorching pinch in the heart that makes you sniff even though your eyes aren't leaking.
Theophilus heaved a low sigh amidst the dreary silence slowly creeping in this haunting serenity, he only nodded. One sharp nod.
Outside, a trolley rattled down the corridor. Nurses shifted feet. Breakfast trays clattered against metal. The world seemed to have stopped just to listen to something before eventually fading into a cycle of chirping birds and the sounds the rays make against the weight of wind.
For Ramus, it felt like a kind of relief, a moment of reprieve, that calm when the storm had just passed and peace reigned.
The sun climbed.
And the silence resumed its seat between them, like a third player no one dared challenge.
The trays arrived a little past seven. A soft knock on the door, just politeness, and then the nurses came in—two of them, both young, both tired in that quiet, noble way that only years in a public hospital could teach.
Theophilus watched without speaking as they pushed the steel cart across the linoleum floor, the wheels humming like a lullaby with no melody. Old man Ramus wheeled himself slowly back to his bed, the quiet screech of his chair echoing in the still room. The bed creaked as he settled into it, exhaling with the sigh of a man who knew this script by heart.
One nurse placed a tray gently on the table beside Ramus. She smiled softly, adjusted his pillow, and then turned to Theophilus. The other nurse handed him his meal—boiled eggs, porridge, two slices of dry toast, and weak tea in a white plastic cup. He nodded his thanks and took up the plastic spoon in his good arm.
The motion was slow. Not from lack of will but from the gentle resistance of flesh still healing, nerves still stitching themselves back together. His shoulder moved with stiffness, but the arm obeyed, bit by bit, a reluctant servant.
Ramus chewed slowly, eyes on the ceiling more than on the food. For a long moment, neither man spoke. Even the nurses didn't linger—they'd learned to respect silence where it grew like a vine across the beds.
Theophilus spooned the porridge carefully. It was tasteless. Or perhaps it had taste, but grief dulled the tongue. The tea steamed weakly against the window light, fading fast.
After their meal, came the usual—checkups.
Doctor Malik arrived with his usual brisk but careful presence. He was a tall, lean man with sharp features and the kind of smile that seemed like it had once been frequent, but had now become a rare and practiced grace. His coat swayed slightly as he moved, clipboard in hand.
"How's the arm?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.
Theophilus responded by lifting it slowly, rotating the shoulder joint. The movement was stiff, the bones not yet fully trusting themselves. The scars across the forearm remained, faded to a pinkish memory. It had been just under a month, but the body healed in riddles—some fast, some not at all.
"The leg?"
Theophilus gestured toward it. Still bandaged. Still aching. But no longer burning. The swelling had gone down. The phantom pains had dulled. Malik peeled back the cover gently, his eyes precise and clinical.
"Inflammation's down," he murmured. "It's healing. You'll walk again, just a bit of effort on your body's parts"
Across the room, another doctor checked on old man Ramus. He had a digital glucometer in hand, murmuring to himself as he adjusted insulin levels. Ramus had been living with diabetes for over a decade. He took his shots like prayers. Quiet. Faithful. No questions.
His sugar levels were moderate, manageable. The usual dose was applied. A nurse dabbed alcohol across the thin skin of his arm, then slid the needle in. Ramus barely flinched. The old body gets used to being prodded.
Then came the moment no one expected.
A voice from two beds down, not loud, but sharp enough to pierce the quiet like sunlight through a crack.
"Maa'm... am I going to die as well?"
It was a child's voice—thin, tentative, white and paper-soft like a winter breath.
They turned. She was about ten, skin pale with the fatigue of medication. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in strands too fine for her age. Her eyes were far too knowing. Tuberculosis had a way of aging even the smallest faces.
Her mother wasn't there yet. Visiting hours hadn't begun. But the girl had caught the silence in the room, and in it, had placed her question.
The doctor by her side—a young woman with blonde curls that framed her face like gentle ivy—froze for a moment. The nurse beside her, a brown-skinned woman with short coils and gentle eyes, looked toward her superior as if asking, Should I answer? Should we?
The doctor turned her eyes to the clipboard. There, among numbers and terms, the answer lay like a dull knife—yes, or maybe, or perhaps not yet. But not no. Never no.
She inhaled. Then, as if releasing a script, let her breath out in a sigh. "You're doing better," she said finally. "The medicine is working, sweetheart. You just have to be strong, okay?"
The girl nodded, thinly. A small smile—a fragile one—curved on her lips. She didn't believe it. Not really. But she accepted it.
The doctor patted her shoulder. The nurse touched her cheek softly, then they both moved away.
Doctor Malik had turned at the sound.
He looked at Theophilus as if seeking agreement—or maybe permission to speak further.
He chuckled faintly. "Kids, hey," he said, shaking his head.
Theophilus turned toward the sound, his gaze distant. "Yeah."
Malik looked again at the now-quiet child. His tone softened.
"The kingdom of heaven belongs to them," he said, his voice thoughtful, poetic. "Innocents. That's what they are. Unburdened by the rot of adulthood. If there is any justice in this world or beyond it, it is that they deserve to live, not just to inherit something sacred in death. But sometimes the world is cruel to the ones who least deserve it."
He paused. Looked down at his clipboard.
"They deserve living," he continued. "Even when reality, grim and exacting, insists otherwise. Even when the body betrays, and the lungs give way, and the hope thins like breath on a cold morning. They deserve the days they will never have. That... is the tragedy we are trained to explain away."
Theophilus shook his head. Not at Malik nor at anyone in particular. Just a slow, quiet motion.
He spoke then, not forcefully, but clearly.
"No kingdom can feed the dead, doctor. Only the living hunger. And we've convinced ourselves the world is still made of light and lilies and lullabies. Told children that the night isn't what it is. The world isn't just—it's real. That's why they believe in wings and halos. Because no one dares tell them that the world has no angels left."
Malik blinked.
Theophilus added, "We build fairytales over graveyards. Paint paradise over fire. And call it mercy."
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was final. Like something had been sealed.
Doctor Malik smiled faintly, and tapped his clipboard once against his palm.
"You're right," he said.
Then he continued,"But, you aren't dying... so, the fairytales serve a better idea than indoctrination.".
Then he turned and left, flanked by the quiet shuffle of white coats and fading footsteps.
Old man Ramus had fallen into a light rest. His chest rose slowly, a rhythm that seemed steady—barely.
Theophilus sat still, his head tilted slightly, eyes lost to the ceiling.
Outside, the sun moved higher. The world remained—intact, indifferent, and quietly burning.