By midnight, Mr. Raymond was stable. He was sleeping deeply, the steady, rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor filling the dimly lit room. Clara had gone home to rest, but I refused to leave his side. I sat in the armchair next to his bed, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest.
Around 2:15 AM, the heavy wooden door to the ICU room clicked open.
I expected a nurse checking his vitals or changing his IV fluids. But the footsteps that entered were heavy, uneven, and dragging.
I looked up, squinting into the shadows near the doorway.
A man stood there. He was tall, heavily built, wearing a filthy, grease-stained leather jacket that reeked of cheap alcohol and stale rain. His hair was a matted mane of graying black, and his face was covered in a thick, unkempt beard. But it wasn’t his clothes that made the blood run cold in my veins.
It was his face.
It was a face I had seen every single day of my life whenever I looked into the mirror. The same sharp, square jawline. The same deep-set, dark eyes. The same slight crook in the bridge of the nose.
