Hallways

A red scarf appeared at the far turn of the corridor, vanished, then returned as its owner retraced her steps. Hallways made everyone briefly anonymous: surgeon, parent, porter, student, mourner.

Leonie had been searching for the chapel and found instead a window overlooking the ambulance bay. Beside it stood a resident who had forgotten why he stopped walking.

Between destinations, strangers sometimes become witnesses to the weight we have not yet named.

Neither offered biography. They shared directions, then silence, then the small courtesy of acknowledging that each was carrying news too heavy for motion.

They went opposite ways. The hallway kept no record of their meeting, but both entered the next room less alone.

These characters, their dialogue, chronology, circumstances, relationships, and outcomes belong entirely to the fictional world of the collection. The story is original literary fiction, not memoir and not a disguised account of an identifiable person.