The One Real Friend

“Sometimes one friend is enough to hold back the dark—especially when the grown-ups are the ones keeping the lights off.”

The bathroom door clicked shut behind me, and the world changed.

It was like stepping through a portal—one moment surrounded by the sharp, clean burn of disinfectant that I loved so much, the next immersed in something warmer, softer, more alive. The smells layered over each other: the faint musk of illness that never quite went away no matter how often they scrubbed; something sickly-sweet that seemed to cling to everything in the hospital like invisible paint; and underneath it all, the artificial peach of Gloria's shampoo, the one her mum brought from home because hospital shampoo made her hair feel like straw.

The room seemed to pulse around me, the walls breathing in and out with the rhythm of my still-racing heart. My pulse hadn't settled from the bathroom incident—the adrenaline of near-discovery mixed with the absurdity of what had happened, creating a cocktail of feelings I didn't know how to sort through. Relief and shame and something almost like pride, all tangled together in my chest.

This wasn't the room I'd fallen asleep in last night.

Well, it was—same four walls, same window looking out over the courtyard, same pattern of cracks in the ceiling that I'd memorised during long, sleepless nights. But yesterday, when Mum had dragged me back from the corridor and Dr Schofield, I'd been alone in here. Just me and the empty beds, the silence pressing in like something with weight.

Now Gloria was here.

Her bed was across from mine, positioned by the window so she could watch the world outside. I hadn't heard them move her—must have happened in the early hours, while I was lost in dreams I couldn't remember. They did that sometimes, the night staff, shuffled kids around like pieces on a game board according to rules none of us understood. Gloria had been two doors down for the past week, sharing with a girl named Penny who had something wrong with her kidneys. But now she was here, in my room, and the relief I felt at seeing her was so strong it made my knees wobble.

I didn't ask why they'd moved her. You didn't ask those questions in hospitals. The answers were never good.

The room was one of the medium-sized ones—four beds arranged in pairs, with a large window between them that let in the afternoon sun. Gloria had claimed the bed with the best view, the one that let her watch the comings and goings in the courtyard below. I'd seen her spend hours at that window, watching ambulances arrive with their lights flashing, watching families hug goodbye in the car park, watching the occasional balloon escape from some kid's grip and float up past our floor like a wayward dream making its escape.

The other two beds were empty. Their sheets were pulled tight and smooth, their pillows plump and untouched, arranged with the kind of precision that said no one had slept there in a while. We never talked about why those beds stayed empty, why some kids got moved to different rooms and some just... disappeared. Gloria and I existed in that strange middle ground—sick enough to stay, well enough to race wheelchairs. Sick enough to need watching, well enough to be forgotten when busier patients demanded attention.

My bed was closest to the bathroom—that small, shared space that connected our room to the one next door. The bathroom had two doors: one that opened into our room, one that opened into Mrs Patterson's room, where her daughter Amy lay coughing through the nights, fighting something called cystic fibrosis that made her lungs fill up with stuff they shouldn't. Sometimes I heard them through the bathroom walls, Mrs Patterson singing softly, Amy's coughs punctuating the melody like a broken metronome.

My legs felt like water as I moved toward my bed. Each step was an effort, the adrenaline draining away and leaving me hollow. The short distance from the bathroom door to my mattress might as well have been a marathon. I wanted to collapse, to pull the covers over my head, to pretend the last twenty minutes had never happened.

But then I saw Gloria properly, and everything else faded away.

She was sitting up in her bed, tall and straight despite whatever weakness she must have felt. That was Gloria—she never let anyone see her slump, never let the sickness win the small battles even when it was winning the war. Her Walkman sat in her lap, the silver rectangle catching the light, and her headphones were clamped over her ears. Her head was bobbing gently to music I couldn't hear, her lips moving slightly with words she'd probably memorised.

The afternoon sun streamed through the window behind her, catching the golden-brown of her hair, lighting her up from behind like she was made of light herself. She looked like an angel, I thought—though I knew angels were supposed to have wings and white robes and live in heaven, not bruised arms and hospital gowns and whatever JSLE was doing to her insides.

She looked alive. That was the thing about Gloria that I could never quite explain. Some kids in the hospital seemed to shrink, to fade, to become less themselves the longer they stayed. But Gloria burned brighter. Like she knew she didn't have time to waste, so she packed more living into every moment than other people packed into whole days.

I'd stopped walking without realising it. Just standing there, halfway between the bathroom and my bed, staring at her like an idiot.

She glanced up. Our eyes met. And her face split into that smile—the one that seemed to light up the entire room, that made the drab walls and the beeping machines and the smell of sickness feel like they belonged to a different world entirely. A world we weren't part of, not right now, not in this moment.

"Hey, Luke," she called over, her voice carrying warmth that wrapped around me like a blanket fresh from the dryer. She patted the space on the blanket in front of her, her hand making a soft thump thump against the fabric. "Come sit up here."

The invitation was casual. Easy. But I knew it was more than that. It was rescue. Sanctuary. A promise that whatever had happened in that bathroom could stay there if I wanted it to, could remain my secret unless I chose to share it.

I hesitated.

Part of me wanted to hide. To crawl into my own bed, pull the covers up to my chin, and disappear into the thin hospital mattress. What if I smelled? What if there was still evidence somewhere—a stain I'd missed, a smear on my hands despite all that scrubbing? The shame was still there, coiled in my stomach like a snake, ready to strike if I let my guard down.

But Gloria was waiting. And Gloria had this way of making everything feel less terrible, less frightening, less like the end of the world. She was like a light in a dark room—you couldn't help but move toward her.

I crossed the distance between us. My legs were still wobbly, still weak, but they carried me to her bed. I climbed up carefully, settling onto the blanket in front of her, tucking my legs underneath me and trying not to disturb the fortress she'd built around herself.

There were magazines everywhere—the kind with pop stars on the covers, the kind the nurses' station kept in stacks for bored patients. Sweet wrappers formed little mountains between the folds of the blanket, evidence of contraband that someone who loved her kept smuggling in. A stuffed rabbit sat propped against her pillow, so old and worn that its ears had faded from whatever colour they'd started as to a dull, greyish white. She'd had that rabbit since before the hospital, she'd told me once. Since before she got sick.

The blanket underneath me was soft, covered in tiny blue flowers on a white background. Some of the flowers had worn away from washing, leaving pale patches where the pattern had once been. I found myself tracing them with my finger, the familiar texture grounding me in the present.

"What are you listening to?" I asked. Partly because I was curious. Mostly because I needed something normal to focus on, something that wasn't the memory of brown streaks on white tiles.

Gloria's eyes lit up like someone had switched on a lamp behind them. "It's Jimmy Barnes," she exclaimed, her voice bright with excitement that seemed too big for such a simple question. She reached up and pulled her left earphone free, the cord dangling between us, and held it out to me. "Here, listen."

The plastic was warm from her ear. I took it carefully—she was particular about her Walkman, protective of it in a way she wasn't protective of much else. It was one of the few things from the outside world that was truly hers, not borrowed from the hospital, not brought by nurses, not subject to rules about visiting hours and infection control.

I pressed the earphone against my own ear.

A man's voice came through, rough and gravelly, like someone who'd spent too long shouting or smoking or both. The words tumbled over each other, fast and fierce, backed by guitars and drums that sounded angry and joyful at the same time. I didn't understand any of it—not the words, not the music, not why Gloria loved it so much. My world of music was Mum's lullabies, soft and sad, sung in the dark when she thought I was asleep.

"Oh," I said, not knowing what else to say. The name meant nothing to me. "What does he sing?"

Gloria opened her mouth to answer—

And then the bathroom door swung open.

My whole body went rigid.

Every muscle locked up at once, freezing me in place like a rabbit that had spotted a fox. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt. The thoughts came in a flood, tumbling over each other: Did I miss something? Is there evidence I didn't see? Did the cleaners already go through? Did someone from the other room—

"Who has been trailing mud all through this bathroom?"

The voice was loud. Harsh. It cut through the room like scissors through paper, shredding the warm, safe feeling that had started to build. I knew that voice, though I couldn't remember the name that went with it. Nurse... something. Nurse G-something. The face appeared in my memory—bulldog features, permanent frown, the kind of expression that made you feel guilty even when you hadn't done anything wrong.

She was a large woman with an unpleasant disposition, the opposite of Nurse Lola in every possible way. This nurse had never read me a story, never played games with me, never snuck me extra pudding or turned a blind eye when Gloria and I stayed up past lights-out. She was the type who said things like "children should be seen and not heard" and meant every word. And she definitely, definitely did not approve of wheelchair racing.

"Hmmm," she said, the sound rising ominously, like a kettle building toward a boil. "Hmmm."

I risked a glance at Gloria. Her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound came out. Her brow was furrowed in confusion—genuine confusion, the kind you couldn't fake. She didn't know what the woman was talking about. Of course she didn't. She hadn't been in the bathroom. She hadn't seen.

Only I knew what kind of "mud" we were really talking about.

The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on. A living thing that seemed to suck the air out of my lungs, leaving me gasping silently, my heart hammering so loud I was certain everyone could hear it. The earphone was still pressed against my ear, Jimmy Barnes's rough voice growling about something I couldn't focus on, couldn't understand, couldn't care about.

Then another voice came. Calm. Cool. The sound of rescue.

"What appears to be the matter in here?"

Nurse Lola stood in the doorway from the corridor, her presence immediately soothing some of the panic that had been building in my chest. Her voice was like a cool breeze on a hot day, dispersing the oppressive atmosphere that had settled over us. She looked between me and Gloria and the other nurse, taking in the scene with those quiet, watchful eyes that never seemed to miss anything.

"Someone has been walking around this bathroom with muddy shoes and has done a lousy job at cleaning up their mess!" The other nurse's voice dripped with indignation, her face flushed with righteous anger. She stood in the bathroom doorway like a guard dog that had found an intruder, though the intruder in question was just some streaks on a wall.

Muddy shoes. That's what she thought it was. Mud from outside, tracked in by careless feet.

The relief was so intense I nearly laughed out loud. My whole body wanted to go limp, wanted to melt into Gloria's blanket and disappear.

Nurse Lola's response was measured, reasonable, the voice of someone who dealt with unreasonable people every day and had learned exactly how to handle them. "Well, these two haven't been outside since yesterday," she said. "It must have been one of the visitors. Have you checked with the room next door?" She paused, her tone taking on a slightly pointed edge. "Mrs Patterson had quite a few visitors this morning, and you know how the car park gets when it rains."

I kept my head down. Found an intense fascination with the worn flowers on Gloria's blanket, tracing their faded edges with my finger. I attempted to show as much interest in Jimmy Barnes as humanly possible, nodding along to the gravelly voice still growling in my ear even though I couldn't focus on a single word. My face felt hot. My hands felt cold. Everything felt wrong and right at the same time.

The two nurses were talking, their voices moving away from us, footsteps heading toward the corridor. I caught fragments: "—and really, Gladys—" (Gladys! That was her name!) "—these children have enough to deal with without being accused of making messes. They're not well enough to be running about making mud trails."

The door clicked shut behind them.

Silence.

And then I looked up to find Gloria staring at me.

Her eyes were curious. Knowing. That particular look she got when she'd figured something out but wanted confirmation, wanted to hear you say it out loud.

I could tell she knew I knew something more about this mysterious mess. She'd seen me flinch when the bathroom door opened. She'd noticed the way I'd frozen, the way my face had gone pale, the way I'd suddenly become obsessed with her blanket pattern. Gloria noticed everything. It was one of the things that made her Gloria.

To satisfy her curiosity—and maybe, I realised, because I wanted to share the burden of my secret, wanted someone else to know so I wouldn't have to carry it alone—I leaned in close. Her shampoo surrounded me, artificial peach mixed with the faint sourness of hospital soap. My breath tickled her ear as I whispered the truth.

"That isn't mud."

The effect was instantaneous.

Her eyes went wide. Then understanding dawned, followed immediately by mirth that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her. She raised her hand to her mouth with an "Oh," and then came that giggle—that giggle of hers that I'd come to treasure more than anything else in this place. It wasn't mean. Gloria was never mean. It was the laugh of someone who understood that sometimes life was so absurd you had to find the humour in it or go completely mad.

"Luke!" she whisper-shouted, the words squeaking out between giggles. "You didn't!"

My face was burning. Hot and red and probably visible from space. Embarrassment warred with relief, shame tangled with the unexpected joy of sharing something ridiculous with someone who wouldn't judge me for it.

"It just... happened," I mumbled, but I was starting to smile too. I couldn't help it. Her laughter was contagious, spreading through me like warmth, pushing out the cold coil of shame that had been sitting in my stomach. "I tried to clean it up."

"With what, toilet paper?" She was fully laughing now, trying to keep quiet and failing miserably, her shoulders shaking with the effort of not howling. "Oh Luke, you're lucky Nurse Gladys has bad eyesight! Can you imagine if she'd looked closely?"

I could imagine. I could imagine all too well. Nurse Gladys peering at the wall, her face scrunching up in confusion, then horror, then fury. The questions. The accusations. Mum being called. The way she'd turn it into another symptom, another sign that something was wrong with me, another reason to keep me here forever.

But none of that had happened. And now Gloria was laughing, and I was laughing too, and the whole thing seemed hilarious instead of horrifying.

"Your face when she came in," Gloria gasped between giggles. "You looked like you'd seen a ghost!"

"I thought I was going to die," I admitted.

"Death by embarrassment. 'Here lies Luke Smith, killed by his own bottom.'"

That set us both off again. We laughed until our stomachs hurt, until tears leaked from the corners of our eyes, until we were both gasping for breath and clutching at each other to stay upright. The sound filled the room, chasing away the shadows, pushing back against the ever-present weight of sickness and fear and all the things we couldn't control.

Here we were—two sick kids in a hospital room, laughing about poo on the bathroom wall like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Maybe, in that moment, it was.

When the giggles finally subsided, leaving us both breathless and slightly teary, Gloria reached over to her bedside table. Her hand disappeared behind a stack of magazines and emerged with a packet of biscuits—the good kind, chocolate ones, the fancy brand that definitely hadn't come from the hospital cafeteria.

"Here," she said, offering me one. The chocolate was already soft, starting to melt at the edges from the warmth of the room. "For your traumatic experience."

I took it gratefully. The biscuit felt precious in my hand, a small treasure from the outside world. "Thanks," I said, and meant it—not just for the biscuit, but for everything. For not making me feel worse about what had happened. For turning my shame into something we could laugh about together. For being Gloria.

"My cousin once threw up on the priest during her first communion," she said suddenly, her voice casual, like she was commenting on the weather. "Right on his shoes. In front of the whole church."

I nearly choked on my biscuit. "Really?"

"Really. White shoes, too. The fancy kind he only wore for special occasions. Completely ruined." She grinned at me, that mischievous sparkle back in her eyes. "And you know what? Nobody died. The world didn't end. They cleaned it up, her mum apologised about a hundred times, and now it's just a funny story they tell at Christmas. Every year. She hates it."

I tried to imagine it—a girl in a white communion dress, the solemn silence of church, and then suddenly blaaargh all over the priest's shoes. The image was so vivid, so ridiculous, that I found myself grinning despite everything.

"That's what this is, Luke," Gloria said, her voice softer now, more serious. She was looking at me with those eyes that saw too much, understood too much for someone who was only twelve. "Just a story you'll laugh about someday. When you're old and boring and telling your grandkids about all the crazy things that happened when you were young."

The idea of being old seemed impossibly far away. The idea of having grandkids even further. But Gloria said it like it was certain, like she could see a future for me stretching out into the distance, and something in my chest loosened at the thought.

"Maybe," I said.

"Definitely," she corrected. "Trust me. I know these things."

We sat in comfortable silence for a while after that, sharing the earphones and the chocolate biscuits, letting Jimmy Barnes's rough voice create a soundtrack to our afternoon. The sun had moved lower in the sky, painting the room in golden tones that made everything look softer, more dreamlike. The harsh edges of hospital life seemed to blur, fading into the background like scenery in a play that wasn't about us.

Gloria's fingers tapped against her knee in time with the music. Her head bobbed slightly, lips moving with words she'd memorised. I watched her, marvelling—not for the first time—at how alive she seemed. How present. How determined to fill every moment with something worth remembering.

It was hard to believe she was only twelve. Not that I knew much about these things—what were twelve-year-olds supposed to be like? The ones at school had seemed loud and confusing, obsessed with things I didn't understand, operating according to rules I couldn't figure out. But Gloria was different. There was a maturity to her, a depth of understanding that seemed at odds with her age. It was as if she had lived a thousand lives, each one leaving its mark on her soul.

Or maybe that's just what happened when you spent too much time in hospitals. You grew up faster. Learned things other kids didn't have to know. Understood things about life and death and the fragile space between them that most people didn't face until they were old.

I didn't know exactly how long Gloria had been here. She'd mentioned once, casually, that she'd been diagnosed when she was seven—something called juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus, which she'd taught me to pronounce by breaking it into pieces: joo-vuh-nile, sis-tem-ik, loo-pus, air-ee-thee-muh-toe-sus. It was a mouthful. It meant her body was attacking itself from the inside, her immune system confused about what was enemy and what was friend. It meant five years of hospitals, five years of treatments, five years of this.

She'd been here for as long as I could remember. Every time I came back—every time the mysterious illness that no one could quite diagnose landed me in this place again—she was here. We were always put in the same room eventually, as if some benevolent force in the hospital bureaucracy understood the comfort we found in each other's presence.

A yawn crept up on me without warning, stretching my jaw wide, making my eyes water. The events of the day—the bathroom incident, the confrontation with Nurse Gladys, the emotional rollercoaster of shame and relief and laughter—had taken their toll. The adrenaline was wearing off completely now, leaving me feeling hollow and exhausted.

Gloria noticed. She always noticed.

"Come on," she said softly, shifting on the bed and lifting her arm. "Lie down."

I didn't hesitate.

I crawled under the top blanket and tucked myself against her side, fitting into the space beneath her arm like I'd been made for it. Her body was warm against mine, her heartbeat steady against my ear—thum-thump, thum-thump, thum-thump—counting out the moments in a rhythm that felt like safety.

This was our routine. When things got too much, when the fear grew too big, when the hospital walls seemed to press in too close—this was what we did. No words needed. Just the comfort of not being alone.

The golden light from the window fell across us, warming my face, making me squint. Gloria's fingers traced lazy patterns on my arm, her touch light and absent, like she was thinking about something far away.

"Luke?" Her voice was different now. Soft but serious, carrying weight I could feel pressing down on my chest.

"Yeah?"

"You know I'm getting worse, right?"

The words hit me like ice water. I went very still, my breath catching, my heart stuttering in my chest.

I'd noticed things. Of course I had. I always noticed things—it was one of the things that made me me, that set me apart from other kids, that Mum called being an "old soul" like it was something special instead of something lonely. I'd noticed how Gloria slept more these days. How she ate less. How the bruises on her arms from IV lines seemed darker, lasted longer, spread further than they used to. How she got tired faster during our wheelchair races, needed to rest more often, sometimes had to skip them entirely.

I'd noticed the way the nurses looked at her sometimes. That particular expression—concerned but trying to hide it, sad but trying to stay professional. The same expression I'd seen on faces before, directed at other kids, kids who eventually got moved to different rooms, kids who eventually... disappeared.

But I hadn't wanted to know it. Noticing and knowing were different things. Noticing you could push aside, could file away in the back of your mind, could pretend wasn't real. Knowing was permanent. Knowing changed things.

"You'll get better," I said. The automatic response. The thing you were supposed to say.

"Maybe," Gloria said, but she didn't sound convinced. Her fingers had stopped moving on my arm. "But if I don't... I want you to know something."

I didn't want to hear this. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and hum loudly until she stopped talking, the way I did when Mum and the doctors discussed things I didn't want to understand. But Gloria's arm was around me, holding me in place, and her voice was steady and serious, and I knew—I knew—that whatever she was about to say was important.

"You're going to be okay, Luke." Her voice was firm, certain, like she was stating a fact instead of making a prediction. "Whatever's happening with you, whatever the grown-ups aren't telling you, you're stronger than you think. You're going to figure it out."

"Figure what out?"

She was quiet for a moment. I could feel her choosing her words, weighing them carefully before letting them go.

"Why you're really here," she said finally. "Why your mum is so..." She trailed off, then started again. "Just promise me you'll keep asking questions, okay? Even when they don't want to answer them. Even when it's scary. Even when it would be easier to just... not know."

"I promise," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure what I was promising.

Her arm tightened around me, pulling me closer. "Good," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice, could feel some of the tension leaving her body. "That's good."

I lay there in the golden afternoon light, surrounded by warmth and the smell of artificial peach and the distant sound of Jimmy Barnes, and let my mind drift backward.

The memory came unbidden, vivid and sharp, playing out behind my closed eyes like a film I'd watched a hundred times.

It was late at night, several years ago—though "several years" was hard to measure when you were six and time moved differently in hospitals. The corridor outside my room had been quiet, the lights dimmed to their nighttime setting, the only sounds the occasional squeak of nurses' shoes and the constant, mechanical breathing of machines.

I'd been smaller then. Sicker, maybe, or at least more visibly sick. There was a tube running down my nose, thin plastic disappearing into my throat, taped to my face with strips of white medical tape. A feeding tube, Mum called it. For when I "couldn't keep food down." Though I didn't remember not being able to eat—I just remembered the tube, the constant discomfort, the way it made me feel like a broken machine that needed external parts to work.

That night, I'd finally had enough.

The tube itched. The tape pulled at my skin. Every time I swallowed, I could feel the plastic shifting inside me, and the sensation made me want to scream. I'd reached up with small, trembling fingers and grabbed the tube where it emerged from my nostril.

I tugged.

It moved.

Encouraged, I tugged again. Harder this time. The tube slid, plastic scraping against the inside of my nose, and suddenly it was in my hands—a long, thin snake that I'd pulled from my own body.

Alarms went off. Not the fire alarm—the medical kind, the kind that meant something was wrong with a patient. My body, suddenly free from the tube, went into a kind of shock. I couldn't breathe properly. Couldn't think. The world turned sharp and bright and terrifying.

A nurse appeared—then another—then more. They were trying to hold me down, trying to put the tube back, but I wouldn't let them. I fought like a wild animal, thrashing and kicking and screaming without words, my body operating on pure instinct, pure terror.

There were hands everywhere. On my arms, my legs, my head. Pinning me to the bed, holding me still while someone else tried to feed the tube back into my nose. I could hear voices—urgent, professional, scared—but the words didn't make sense, couldn't penetrate the wall of panic that had built up around my mind.

And then, in the midst of the chaos, I turned my head.

I was looking for escape. For something familiar. For any anchor in the storm of fear and pain and confusion.

And there she was.

Standing in the doorway. Small and thin, her hospital gown too big for her body, her golden-brown hair tangled from sleep. Her hands gripped the door frame so tightly her knuckles had turned white. Her eyes were wide, fixed on me with an intensity that cut through everything else.

Gloria. Though I didn't know her name yet. Didn't know anything about her except that she was there, a still point in the spinning chaos, a pair of eyes that met mine and held on.

Something happened in that moment. Something I couldn't explain, then or now. Our gazes locked, and I felt—

Calm.

Like someone had reached inside me and switched off the panic. Like a storm suddenly stopping, the wind dying down, the waves going still. The terror drained out of me, leaving behind something quiet and peaceful, something that made no sense given what was happening to my body.

I stopped fighting.

The nurse seized the opportunity, guiding the tube back into place with practiced hands. Dr Schofield was there—the blonde-haired doctor whose name I didn't know yet—and he was looking at Gloria, then at me, then at Gloria again. His expression was strange, thoughtful, like he was watching something he'd seen before and knew the significance of.

"It's alright, Luke," he'd said softly. "Your friend is here. You're safe."

Your friend. As if he already knew what we would become to each other. As if he could see the future stretching out from that moment, all the wheelchair races and shared secrets and afternoons like this one.

Gloria had stayed in that doorway until the crisis passed, until the alarms stopped, until the extra nurses filed out and the room grew quiet again. Only then did she let go of the door frame, her small feet padding silently across the floor until she stood beside my bed.

She didn't say anything. Just reached down and took my hand—the one without the IV, the one that was free—and held it.

We stayed like that until I almost fell asleep.

"Luke?"

Gloria's voice pulled me back to the present. I blinked, the memory fading, the golden afternoon light reasserting itself around us.

"Yeah?"

"You are the bestest friend I've ever had."

Her voice was thick with something I couldn't quite name. I tilted my head to look up at her, and I saw a hint of tear in her eye, catching the light like a tiny jewel. She was smiling, but it was a complicated smile—joyful and sad at the same time, like she was trying to hold two feelings at once and both of them were too big for her face.

"You're my best friend too," I mumbled, my voice slurred with approaching sleep. "My only real friend."

She laughed softly, a sound that vibrated through her chest and into mine. "That's enough," she whispered, her arm tightening around me. "Sometimes one real friend is all you need."

Her hand came up to stroke my hair, the motion gentle and rhythmic, the way Mum used to do before everything got strange and complicated. But this felt different from Mum. Safer, somehow. Without all the weight and fear and hunger that I'd started to sense in my mother's touch.

"Go to sleep, Luke," Gloria murmured. "I've got you."

And so I did.

I let my eyes close. Let the warmth of her body seep into mine, chasing away the cold that seemed to live in my bones. Let the sound of her heartbeat fill my ears—thum-thump, thum-thump, thum-thump—steady and strong and alive.