Chap­ter 1 begins with exhaus­tion weigh­ing heav­i­ly on him, his pain too over­whelm­ing to resist. He sur­ren­ders him­self to the care of some­one who under­stands him too deeply to ask unnec­es­sary ques­tions. Andy works in silence, his move­ments pre­cise and steady as he exam­ines the fresh wounds—cuts and bruis­es that tell of an inter­nal bat­tle. There are no inquiries about the cause or cir­cum­stances; Andy knows bet­ter than to seek expla­na­tions when the pain is still raw. In moments like these, when the wounds go beyond the phys­i­cal, silence pro­vides the only com­fort.

The air is thick with the famil­iar anti­sep­tic smell, a clin­i­cal clean­li­ness that some­how feels like a life­line in this moment. He clos­es his eyes, focus­ing on the soft tear­ing of ban­dage tape, the occa­sion­al clink of met­al instru­ments, and the rhythm of Andy’s hands, which move with a care that bor­ders on ten­der­ness. It’s strange, this com­bi­na­tion of sharp­ness and solace, but it wraps around him like a cocoon, eas­ing the edges of his despair just enough for him to breathe with­out it hurt­ing.

Andy’s hands pause for a moment, press­ing gen­tly against a par­tic­u­lar­ly deep bruise, as if to anchor him back to the present. There’s no judg­ment in his touch, no expectation—just the qui­et patience of some­one who has stood in this place before, who under­stands the del­i­cate bal­ance between heal­ing and endur­ing. It’s a moment that shouldn’t feel sig­nif­i­cant, but it is, and he clings to it, let­ting the qui­et com­fort of Andy’s pres­ence teth­er him to the here and now.

When the ban­dages are secure and the rou­tine instruc­tions are deliv­ered, he nods auto­mat­i­cal­ly, his head heavy with the weight of famil­iar­i­ty. The cycle has become so ingrained that he doesn’t need to hear the words to know them: rest, pain relief, avoid fur­ther injury. And yet, even as he lis­tens and agrees, he knows deep down that the cycle is unlike­ly to break any­time soon. This qui­et, unspo­ken under­stand­ing between him and Andy is both his sal­va­tion and his sen­tence, a con­stant reminder of the fragili­ty of his own exis­tence.

As he pre­pares to leave, he hes­i­tates at the door­way, glanc­ing back at Andy, who busies him­self tidy­ing the ster­ile work­space. There’s a weight in his chest that feels like shame—shame for need­ing this help, for being so depen­dent, for bring­ing his bro­ken self to Andy’s door yet again. But min­gled with the shame is some­thing else, some­thing soft­er, qui­eter, and hard­er to define: grat­i­tude, affec­tion, per­haps even love, though he’s long since tried to ban­ish that word from his vocab­u­lary.

The city is alive when he steps out­side, the air brisk and sharp against his skin, the sounds of honk­ing cars and dis­tant con­ver­sa­tions weav­ing togeth­er into a sym­pho­ny of rou­tine chaos. Each step feels heavy at first, but as he moves fur­ther away from the office, he begins to feel lighter, the cool air wak­ing his sens­es and remind­ing him that he is, for now, still here. The promise of tem­po­rary relief, how­ev­er fleet­ing, allows him to imag­ine a ver­sion of recovery—not one where he is whole or healed, but one where he can keep mov­ing for­ward, even if it’s only by inch­es.

He breathes deeply, the cool air fill­ing his lungs and ground­ing him in the moment. The pain hasn’t dis­ap­peared, but it’s qui­eter now, sub­dued beneath the rhyth­mic sound of his foot­steps. The city’s pulse mir­rors his own, per­sis­tent and unyield­ing, and for the first time in what feels like for­ev­er, he dares to think that maybe this is enough—that exist­ing, in all its raw and imper­fect glo­ry, is enough for now.

As he approach­es home, the morn­ing light soft­en­ing the cityscape, he resolves to face the day ahead, what­ev­er it might bring. He knows the cycle will repeat, knows that the pain will return, but also knows that he has peo­ple like Andy, who will be there to steady him when he fal­ters. For today, that knowl­edge is enough to keep him walk­ing, one step at a time, toward what­ev­er comes next.