His mother, Elena, had stopped trying to sit in the chair beside his bed and instead sat on the floor, her back against the wall, her knees pulled in close, as if making herself smaller might somehow make the situation more manageable. Her husband, Marcus, moved between the room and the hallway like a man searching for something he couldn’t name, asking questions no one could answer in a way that would actually help. The nurses did everything they could, adjusting medications, dimming lights, lowering sounds, speaking softly, but Oliver’s distress kept escalating.
He thrashed against the hospital sheets, his small body arching with panic, his screams cutting through the corridor in a way that made people stop mid-step. The monitors beside him screamed their own alarms, his heart rate spiking, his oxygen dipping dangerously whenever his breathing became too erratic. It wasn’t just noise—it was chaos, layered on top of an already overwhelmed mind.
Inside that room, time stretched into something unbearable.
Outside, in the hallway, an older man stood quietly, watching.
His name was Walter Hayes, though most people at the hospital called him “Old Walt” or simply “sir” out of habit and respect. He had the posture of someone who had spent decades in discipline, shoulders squared even when his body clearly ached. A retired Marine, though he didn’t talk about it much, he had been volunteering at the hospital for years, bringing in his therapy dog to visit patients who needed comfort more than conversation.
That dog, Titan, stood beside him.
And Titan was impossible to ignore.
