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The Ghost of the Journey

 The Ghost of the Journey

The steam from the shower still clings to the mirror, a warm shroud that feels like a betrayal of the cold I used to carry. Standing here, dripping and quiet, my mind suddenly performs that old, frantic dance—the "Hospital Dash." I remember the biting wind on the walk home, the way I would scrub the clinical smell from my hair in a race against the clock.


A quick change of clothes. A scorched throat from a tea gulped too fast. A blurred glance at the bank balance—counting the cost of devotion in pence and minutes. Then, the breathless rush back to your bedside, as if my presence alone was the only thing keeping the machines humming.


I caught myself today, wondering why the ghost of that journey still haunts my morning ritual.


You aren't in those sterile corridors anymore. You aren't behind those heavy ward doors where the air tastes of antiseptic and hushed voices. You are so very far away now—in a "there" that no bus route can reach, a place where the geography of my grief has no map.


I can’t sit by your side and coax you to eat a slice of cake. I can’t share a hot chocolate with Joanne while we wait for news in the plastic chairs of the visitor's lounge. She went first, a scout into the unknown, and now you’ve followed.


The logic of my brain tells me you are both finally free from the weight of the leaden limbs and the hammer of the pulse. You are finished with the pain. But as I stand here, brushing the tangles from my hair, the "Reconstructor" in me still calculates the distance. I wonder how many more miles we would have clocked, how many more frantic showers I would have taken, if you were still "in there."


The ward is empty, the bed is stripped, and I am left holding a ticket to a destination that no longer exists—wondering, with every stroke of the brush, exactly where your "new there" is.

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