Xavier POV | “Echoes of Her”

“The dead don’t speak unless they want something.”

Hospitals at night always smelled like antiseptic and exhaustion. I’d learned to live with the first; the second still crawled under my skin. The fluorescent lights hummed above as Daphne and I hurried down the corridor, every shadow feeling too familiar.

“Xavier—he’s not answering,” she said, phone pressed to her ear, panic edging her voice. “The nurse said he was in imaging twenty minutes ...