The air in Room 304 smells of industrial lemon and the metallic tang of oxygen. Edmund Hadley lies perfectly still under a thin cellular blanket, his face a grey-etched map of the man Theo hasn't seen in years. Sunlight, pale and weak as watered tea, catches the dust motes dancing above the bed. On the nightstand, a brass metronome sits with its casing cracked and its pendulum frozen at a sharp, silent angle.
Theo reaches out, his long organist’s fingers hovering over his father’s hand. He expects a lecture, a sharp correction on his tempo, or the familiar weight of disappointment. Instead, Edmund’s eyes find his, wide and frantic with the effort of a message that cannot break the surface. The older man’s throat hitches, a dry rattle that yields no words, only a hollow, terrifying silence where the music used to be.
Theo swallows against the sudden ache in his own chest, his charcoal merino sleeve brushing the cold metal guardrail. He is a stranger in his own hometown, a man who fled for Munich and left the harmony behind. The silence in the room is thick, pressurized by fifteen years of things unsaid. Then, the stillness of the ward shatters. Heavy, hurried footsteps squeak against the linoleum of the corridor, stopping just outside the cracked door.
