The hospital day obeyed a rhythm older than the hush. Bright lights. Clipboards at the door. Polite knocks that never waited for an answer. A voice asking if he'd eaten, if he needed painkillers, if he could try to describe what he remembered.
Rafi let the hours drift past like he was watching rain on a bus window. If he focused on his breath, he could still taste pine needles and the iron-slick air of the clearing.
Somewhere down the hallway, the braid girl's door stayed closed most of the time. Once, a nurse left it open just wide enough for him to see her perched on the edge of her bed — hair still a tangled curtain, hospital gown hitched around her knees, one bare foot tapping the floor like she was drumming out a secret.
A doctor leaned close, trying to get her to answer something. She didn't. She turned her head slowly and looked at Rafi instead, even through two cracked doors and the nurse's hiss to mind his own room.
When dusk slid down the windows, the hush slipped in with it — soft and clever. He felt it wrap around his ribs again as he lay under thin blankets, the ceiling tiles quivering just a little at the edges of his vision.
In his dream he was back in the forest. Only the trees were made of hospital curtains, stitched together with IV tubes, dripping hush-water that pooled under his bed. The braid girl stood beside him, still barefoot, still bruised, laughing into the hush's black mouth like she knew how to bend it to her will.
He woke to the hush pulsing behind his eyes — and the squeak of rubber soles just outside his room. Night rounds. A flashlight's thin beam slid across his blanket, paused on his half-open eyes, then moved on.
Through the crack in the door he saw her again: the braid girl slipping down the hallway in her paper gown, toes silent on the linoleum. No nurse saw her yet. No camera buzzed awake.
She turned once to check his room. Her eyes locked with his — an invitation, a dare, a reminder that the hush never really stayed behind.
Rafi swung his legs off the bed. The hush purred, eager as a dog about to taste its leash again. He padded barefoot to the door and slipped out before the next round caught him in the white glare.
Behind them, machines hummed, alarms blinked, but the hush swallowed all of it as they moved together, the only real thing in a place that smelled too clean to ever be safe.