Conner stood just across the street from the old hospital, tucked away in a quieter stretch of London, a fair distance from where he lived.

  He wore a faded, greyish jumper with a fraying hood, something he'd found buried in the back of his closet. It smelled faintly of old detergent and the dust. But given the biting cold, it only made sense—long pants, thick socks, jumper. The only thing missing was his beanie, which he’d torn the room apart looking for earlier, to no avail.

  His eyes were fixed on the building.

  From this distance, the hospital looked like a relic—massive, weather-worn, and brooding. A monument looked to be from another century. To Conner, its Victorian architecture hadn’t aged with grace. The tall, arched windows sat dark and watchful, refusing to catch the light.

  Intricate stonework coiled along the facade like veins carved in granite. At each corner, a gargoyle crouched, fangs bared mid-pose, with its teeth showing. Like it was still daring those living to go in.

  Conner clutched a small bouquet of flowers in his right hand—daisies and baby’s breath wrapped in cheap cellophane—and his phone in the other.

  Crossing the street, he approached the hospital’s front gates.

  His breath fogged in the winter air as he stood before the entrance, hesitating. The old brickwork loomed close now, deep reddish-brown and uneven, worn soft by decades of rain and soot. Iron fencing bordered the property, painted a dark green that had long since surrendered to rust. In places, the paint curled away like old scabs, revealing flaking metal beneath.

  As Conner stepped through the hospital’s entrance, he immediately noticed how strangely empty it felt. For a place meant to house the sick and wounded—especially one in a city as massive and densely populated as London—it was oddly barren. The echo of his footsteps down the linoleum floor felt louder than it should have. You wouldn’t be blamed for assuming a hospital in a metropolis like this would be packed wall to wall, bursting with the constant noise of urgency. But this place... it felt more like a relic than a refuge.

  The few people he did see looked ghostlike, slumped in corners, eyes sunken, faces pale with the long decay of drug use. None of them bore the bandages or broken limbs you’d expect in a hospital. No one looked like they were being treated—more warehoused.

  Still scanning the lobby, Conner made his way toward the front desk, looking for someone who could point him in the right direction. At least until he got to the front desk.

  “Hi. I’m here to visit a patient who was admitted yesterday. Could I get her room number?” he asked politely.

  Carol’s mother had been the one to reach out, wanting to speak with meet with him, oddly enough. She’d even sent him one of those digital visitation codes the hospital accepted—an e-pass of sorts. Conner had half-expected there to be at least some security, maybe even guards, considering Carol’s… condition. But the idea that someone could visit a vampire just a day after their admission seemed almost unreal to him.

  The man behind the desk glanced up without shifting the rest of his body, as though gravity was too strong a burden to resist. He looked to be in his late sixties, seventies, maybe more. Definitely old enough to be hooked to an IV in the very facility he worked at. His eyes moved slowly, scanning Conner and noting the bouquet of flowers and the phone in his hand.

  “Name?” the clerk asked, voice flat, interest non-existent.

  “Carol J. Vollvero,” Conner replied.

  The man began typing, his fingers hesitant, like each keystroke required conscious thought. The keyboard clicks were sluggish, dragged out. Either he wasn’t used to the system, or he just didn’t care enough to move quickly.

  “She’s on the third floor. Recovery wing. Room fourteen, third floor,” he said at last, without even checking Conner’s clearance or questioning his visit.

  “Thanks…” Conner mumbled, offering a smile that was more social obligation than sincerity. He tried to make it look real, but everything about this place—the smell, the silence, the staff—left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  He turned left and found the elevator tucked into an alcove. The thing looked ancient—something straight out of the 1950s, maybe earlier. It matched the hospital’s Victorian aesthetic: old wallpaper peeling at the corners, brass fixtures dulled after seventy years.

  The elevator buttons were small and round, the kind that didn't light up when pressed. Instead, they stuck inward for a moment before popping back out with a harsh cling, like an old typewriter biting the page.

  Conner traced his finger along the panel, sliding from the "1" to the "3," then pushed it in.

  “God… this place is creepy as hell,” he muttered under his breath, shifting his weight uncomfortably. This was the kind of elevator that showed up in low-budget horror movies—the kind that got stuck between floors and filled with blood.

  CLING!

  “Ahh! what the fuck?!” he blurted, heart leaping as one of the buttons suddenly snapped back into place with an unnatural sound. The elevator hadn’t even reached the second floor yet, and he’d already been jumpscared… by a button. Realising what had startled him, he exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face and accidentally thwacking himself with his phone in the process.

  He shook his head with a weary sigh just as the elevator gave a soft ding and the doors creaked open, groaning on their tracks like old bones. A long, fluorescent-lit hallway stretched out before him, sterile and unnaturally bright, lined with signs that pointed toward different wings of the hospital: Cardiac Care Unit, Surgical Recovery, East Infirmary Hall, and finally—what he was looking for—Recovery Wing.

  Conner stepped out and began walking, his footsteps muffled against the speckled tile floor. The hallway had that strange hospital smell—somewhere between bleach, old metal, and something faintly coppery. As he passed nurses, orderlies, and the occasional young med student in scrubs.

  Some of the patient rooms he passed had their doors open, giving him fleeting glimpses of the inside. Surprisingly, most appeared recently renovated. Rather than the crowded rooms he’d imagined—rows of beds crammed side by side like wartime infirmaries—these looked more like shared suites, each holding just two or four beds at most. It gave the wing a strange in-between feel: more modern than he expected, but still trapped in the building’s old bones.

  After a few minutes of weaving through intersecting corridors and second-guessing signs, he finally reached a familiar sequence of doors.

  “Room eleven... room twelve...” he muttered, slowing his pace. “Thirteen… and—finally.” He stopped at the next door. “Room fourteen.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He knocked twice, not loudly, and waited. There was no immediate answer, but then he heard something—movement inside. A soft rustling, followed by what sounded like liquid being spilled.

  “Hello?” Conner asked, knocking again, a bit less firmly this time.

  There was a pause. Then the door opened with a soft clack of its handle, and standing on the other side was Carol’s mother.

  She looked worn thin. Her brown hair was cut into a neat French bob, but it had lost its structure, strands falling out of place. Her eyes were red-rimmed and sunken, heavy bags sagging beneath them. Fresh tear streaks lined her cheeks, not even wiped away.

  “You must be Conner,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse from crying but steady. She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter. “Come in.”

  Conner walked into the room, quietly taking in his surroundings. The air had that dry, sterile scent common to hospital rooms—too clean, too quiet. His eyes fell to the dark puddle just near the threshold. The soft splatter he’d heard earlier was indeed Carol’s mother’s coffee, knocked over in her rush to answer the door.

  “Oh, don’t worry about the coffee,” she said, waving a tired hand at the mess on the floor. “That vacuum thing… it’ll get it. I think?”

  She looked down toward one of those small circular automatic vacuums, which was slowly whirring across the tiles toward the spill. It wobbled slightly as it approached the dark liquid, as if unsure whether to clean it or declare defeat. The sight of it trying its best brought a flicker of faint amusement to her otherwise exhausted face, almost like watching magic, if only a little.

  Conner offered a polite nod and stepped further inside. He didn’t say much. There wasn’t much to say in a room like this.

  The overhead lights hadn’t been turned on. The main source of illumination came from a UV-style lamp suspended directly over the hospital bed. It's cool, artificial glow fell in a soft halo over Carol, who lay motionless beneath the sheets. Alongside it, the slow, steady pulse of the heart rate monitor brought the only other signs of life into the room. Each soft beep seemed to echo just a little too loudly.

  To his left, Conner noticed the row of movable hospital chairs had been pulled together, with a worn-looking blanket draped over them. Pillows had been tucked into awkward gaps, turning them into a makeshift bed. That explained why Carol’s mother looked so run-down—she’d clearly been sleeping there, or at least trying to.

  “Thank you for accepting my call,” she said after a pause. “And thank you once more for getting my daughter some flowers. I’m certain she’ll love them when she wakes back up.”

  Her voice carried the gentle strain of someone who had cried too much and slept too little. But it was still sincere. Genuinely so. Even with all the exhaustion and emotional weight in her face, she hadn’t lost that warmth. Conner wasn’t sure if she knew yet about what had really happened. About his part in why Carol had ended up here in such a damaged state.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” he replied quietly. “It’s just the very least I could do.” The guilt in his voice wasn’t loud, but it was there. Hanging between each word.

  Carol’s mother offered him a sad little smile, then sat on the edge of her makeshift bed, folding her hands in her lap.

  “Well… you’ve done a lot, from what I hear,” she said. “I ended up seeing you and your other friend on the BBNNS (British Broadcasting National Networking Service)”, she added, almost absentmindedly. “How’s she holding up now?”

  “Sonetto’s doing well,” Conner answered. He brightened slightly at the thought. “Last time we talked, we were celebrating the last day of term… so she should be fine.

  Carol’s mother looked visibly confused, her brow furrowing as she leaned back slightly. “I thought she was attacked by… my daughter?”

  “Yeah, she was,” Conner replied, scratching the back of his head, “but Sonetto was more pissed about Mr. Galloway running away. He didn’t even try to help her. Sonetto could’ve been bitten or worse if he didn’t get there in time.”

  A short, breathy chuckle escaped Carina’s lips. It was unexpected, but not entirely humourless.

  “I had that kind of feeling about him,” she said. “When I first met him during a parent-teacher meeting, he struck me as the type to crack under pressure.”

  She sat down again on the makeshift bed of chairs with a soft sigh, brushing her skirt down with a shaky hand. “My name’s Carina, by the way,” she added gently. “I should’ve told you over the phone. Sorry, everything’s been a bit… chaotic.”

  As she spoke, her hand moved toward her purse, rummaging through with care until she pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. It was creased and looked like coffee had been spilled on it. ‘Mother, like daughter’, he thought.

  “She left this on her desk before school that day,” Carina said, holding it out delicately. “Do you want to know what it says?”

  Conner blinked, caught off guard by the shift in tone. He reached for the note, but Carina opened it for him with a grin and began reading it to him.

  “Dear Conner,” Carina began, reading aloud with a smirk tugging at her lips, “I write to you as your steadfast and loving secret admirer, ‘C.V.’ Know that I love you with all the facets within my heart, and wish we could be together! We’ll run away and live forever in peace while…”

  She trailed off, then held up the page. “She spilled coffee on the rest,” Carina said, glancing up with a knowing look. “But I think you get the idea.”

  Conner stared at the note like it had grown teeth.

  It felt surreal—like a scene from a badly written high school drama, the kind with swelling music and laugh tracks.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a bit fairytale-esque though, isn’t it?”

  Carina let out a tired laugh, more fond than mocking.

  “She’s always been a sucker for that kind of thing,” she said. “Even when she was little, the phrase ‘happily ever after ’ meant everything to her.”

  Her smile softened, tinged with memory.

  “A few months ago, she started talking about this boy—smart, kind of cute, but oblivious.” She glanced at him sideways. “I’ll assume you know who that’s referring to?”

  Conner looked away, jaw tight. He refused to dignify that with a response.

  Carina’s smile lingered. “She’s got a few photos of you. A list of things you like. But please—don’t take it the wrong way. It’s just what some people do when they don’t know how to say what they feel.”

  Conner blinked. “So… is that how you got my number? She had it written down somewhere?”

  “No,” Carina said quickly, shaking her head. “I got it from the school. Told them I needed to ask you some questions, and—well—they just handed it over.”

  The people in this fucking city are so careless.

  Conner clenched his jaw, forcing his expression to stay neutral.

  He took a breath. “Is that why you asked me here?” he asked—not angry, not curious. Just… still. “Are you telling me all this because you want me to date your daughter?”

  Carina blinked, caught off guard by his bluntness.

  “I’m not saying that,” she replied quietly. “I just want you to know that she’d never try to hurt you…”

  Carina hesitated for a moment, trying to keep her voice steady. “And when she wakes up… I think she’ll be thankful that you stopped her.”

  Conner glanced over at Carol, still unconscious in the hospital bed, her face pale and motionless. The room was quiet, save for the soft beeping of a monitor hidden somewhere near the headboard.

  “What did the doctor say?” he asked, his voice low.

  Carina, seated nearby with her hands folded in her lap, looked up. “They said she should be fine,” she replied gently. “They hooked up this machine under the bed—it filters out contaminated blood. Apparently, that’s how the treatment works. It’s kind of amazing, honestly.”

  Conner raised an eyebrow, not fully understanding but nodding anyway. “Yeah... it almost feels like magic, the way those things work.”

  Medical stuff had always been a bit of a blur to him. He never really paid much attention to it—until now.

  Carina tilted her head slightly, studying him. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah…” he muttered, eyes drifting toward the door. “I’m fine. Just…”

  Without finishing the thought, he stood up and started toward the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Carina asked, confusion slipping into her voice.

  “Grabbing something to eat,” he said. “I’m starving.”

  As he passed the small table near the door, he gently set the flowers he’d brought down on the table to the right, slightly crumpled from the walk. He didn’t look back.

  The door closed with a soft click behind him, leaving the room just as quiet as before.