Obsession

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I feel suddenly exposed, like even this hospital gown can't protect me from the chill crawling over my skin. 

"But... I don't have—" I start, then stop. Because the realization is already crashing over me.

Him. 

He was here.

Watching me. While I slept.

The flowers. The note. 

The reason I tried to end everything.

My hands tremble now. Mo sees it and takes one in hers again, tighter this time. Protective. Fierce.

"We're going to find out who he is," she says, her voice hardening. "We'll go to the hospital security. We'll check the footage. But I swear to you, I'm not letting this go."

This can't be happening. She can't find out. But what was I to do.

I nod, numb, my heart racing. Suddenly it all feels bigger than me. Darker. More real than I ever let myself believe. 

Because monsters don't always knock.

Sometimes, they slip into your life quietly. And sometimes, they sit beside your hospital bed, waiting for you to wake up.

The quiet felt heavier after Mo left.  

I watched the door swing gently shut behind my best friend, the echoes of our painful but healing conversation still lingering in the sterile room. 

The card lay on me bedside tray, the curve of the handwriting twisting in my gut. To my sleeping beauty. I'll see you again soon.

My fingers twitched toward it, then stopped. I didn't want to touch it again. I didn't even want to look at it. But I couldn't bring myself to ask anyone to throw it away either. It felt like a warning. Like a thread tied to something dark I hadn't yet understood.

The door creaked open again not five minutes later. This time, no knock. 

"Baby?" a voice rasped—softer, older. "Are you awake?" 

My body tensed before recognition sank in. I turned my head and found my mother, small and hunched in her pink hospital gown, leaning on the edge of the doorframe.

"Mom." The word came out dry. I hadn't spoken it in days. My mother shuffled in, one hand clutching the IV pole she'd dragged across the hallway.

 "They told me you were here... I couldn't believe it." I sat up a little straighter.

 "You shouldn't be out of bed." 

"And you shouldn't be in a hospital room for this reason," She snapped at me gently, then added, "but here we are." 

There was no judgment in her tone—just that weary mix of love and grief that only a mother could carry. She settled into the chair by the bed. It creaked under her weight, and her breaths came slow and shallow. 

I saw the tension in her shoulders, the strain in her hands. Her symptoms had been flaring again, and the medication wasn't working the way it used to. 

Still, she'd dragged herself here. For me. 

"You didn't tell me anything was wrong," mother said after a long pause. 

"You've been quiet, but not like this." I looked down. My hands twisted in the sheets. 

"I didn't want to worry you." 

"I'm your mother. I stay worried." I gave a breathy, humorless laugh. 

"I didn't plan for you to find out. About any of this." She looked at me for a long time, her face unreadable.