Carlton lay in the back of the ambulance, watching the sky pass through the window. Leaning forward to see out of the back door, he watched the hospital disappear as they turned the corner.

He was leaving. He was getting out of the hospital after what felt like an eternity. He barely even remembered being brought in. Small fragments of the day of his stroke had reformed in his dreams, much assisted by retellings from Juliet, but it still didn't seem real to him. It didn't seem real that he had just spent the last two months trapped in those walls, unable to see the sky or breathe fresh air.

For weeks since he was brought out of his coma, he spent so much time thinking about an alternate universe. The one where he didn't have a stroke. He thought about the alternate universe where he had finished his call at the gas station with O'Hara, ever to be traumatized by the smell of the sticky floor tiles inches away from his face. Every night, he played out the alternate reality where he could carry Lily up the stairs and tuck her into bed. And on December 5th, he thought about the alternate reality where he testified in that case he and O'Hara had worked on for months. He had been so excited to testify against the scum-bag crime lord they had taken down. The date had been circled in thick red pen on his calendar for months. But when the coveted date finally came and passed on the whiteboard across from his bed, all he could do was mournfully picture himself in the alternate reality where he was waking up and putting on his best suit, getting ready to show off to court. But instead, he had sat in bed all day, quietly watching the coverage of the case on the pixelated TV, waiting for it to end so O'Hara could come back and relay the details. And all the while, he sat stuck in his bed, longing for the simplicity of what could have been if nothing had ever changed.

It felt as though somebody had come in and plucked him out of his life. He wanted to get back to his life- the one where he was a detective and a father and a husband. The one where he could eat and walk without even thinking about it. But he couldn't, because the person who could do that wasn't him anymore, and the body that could do that wasn't his.

His body didn't feel like his anymore. And for that, he felt shame. And embarrassed. Mortified, really.

Day after day, week after week, people would come into his room at all hours of the day, touching him and poking him. Shining lights in his eyes every hour. Asking him to squeeze their fingers or push down on their hands with his feet. They rolled him around the bed without telling him. Reached down his open gown without asking him. Moved parts of his body that he could no longer control without even thinking about it. He felt completely disconnected from this being that had once been his.

In the alternate universe, he had this body back. In the world he had expected when he woke up, he was normal. But normal was gone, quickly shattered by doctors telling him how his world had crashed around him in a single moment, all because he was trying to take care of himself. He just wanted to run as fast as O'Hara, and now he may never walk unassisted again. What kind of sick twist of fates was that?

Above all, though, he was exhausted. Next level exhausted. The kind that scared him. It made his heart race as he fell into unintentional sleep at all hours of the day. The smallest activity would warrant a nap. His overly fatigued brain would drop into sleep after just an hour of conversation. And if there was more than one person talking to him at once? His brain could only follow about fifteen minutes of conversation before it had given up completely. Contributing wasn't even on the table. By the time he thought of something to say, the conversation had already moved on by three topics. So instead he would listen while he could until his eyelids would start drooping and his limbs would get heavy and he would let the sleep take over his body, whether he wanted to or not.

He just wanted to be able to stay awake for an entire conversation. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently. His old friend hissed, sitting on the bench of the ambulance between the paramedics.

He wanted to scream. Yell. Throw a punch or fight. How did he get here? The dark figure that had followed him from his dreams to his hospital room was sitting in the ambulance, following him away from the cold dark room.

You thought you could get rid of me that easily? He tormented, putting his arm up and leaning back. I'm not going anywhere, fella. You're stuck with me now.

Carlton's eyes shifted around the ambulance, trying to route an escape, his detective's mind working in overdrive. But there was no way out. The shadow would follow him until the end of time. Yelling at him. Telling him he was a failure. Reminding him he should have died.

He would keep him up all night, talking over the monitors and whispering over his shoulder when the lights would flicker on and off. He would mumble in the corner all day, lulling him into exhausted sleep with words of anger.

Some days he wouldn't be there at all. The good days. The days that Carlton felt like he could finally engage with the world around him. Talk to his wife without this voice whispering in his ear. Play with his daughter without being told he was a waste of a father or discuss cases with his partner without being told he would never work again.

He would get hopeful that the voice was gone for good. That maybe he would be able to sleep through the night or get through a day without involuntarily passing out from exhaustion. And yet, the voice always came back, with more vengeance than before.

Carlton didn't know how much longer he could take it.

"We made it!" The paramedic said after a speed bump marked their arrival at the facility. A few minutes of adjusting brought him to an overly excited face who introduced herself and dropped him off in a room, telling him that they would be back to check on him soon and that dinner started in an hour and that therapy would start tomorrow so he should get some good rest tonight.

Without realizing it, he ended up in a stiff vinyl chair looking around an empty hospital room. Alone.

The room looked nice. Definitely still a hospital, but not as aggressively so. The monitor was off in the corner and the suction and oxygen equipment was hidden behind the bed. It felt quieter. His door had been closed and he sat in the quiet, the only sound a faint rumbling from the air conditioning to fill the air.

The lack of stimulation to counteract the distinct lack of quiet he had experienced over the last two months sat heavy on his chest and for the first time since he was brought out of sedation, he was given a moment to truly process where he was. Because he had a stroke. And he needed to recover. Because his body wasn't working the way it once was. And it made him want to do something that he hadn't wanted to do since he was thirteen years old.

He wanted to start crying.

"Boys don't cry!" His grandfather said in his deep, gravelly voice. "And they don't want ponies."

"But, Althea said-"

"Althea!" His grandfather laughed, an angry, spitting laugh. "Your father is dead for six months and your mother brings that dyke into your house and turns you into a little bitch?"

He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and shook his head. Amusement and disappointment ran through his eyes as he watched Carlton quickly wipe the tears away before they could start.

He liked Althea. She took care of him and Lou after his dad had died and had helped them around the house when people started bringing more casseroles than could fit in their fridge. How could that be bad?

That was the first time that Carlton heard the word 'dyke.' He didn't know what it meant, but it sounded bad by the way his grandpa said it. When he asked someone at school the next day, it made sense to him. That Althea was bad and that she was trying to replace his dad. He needed to be more like his grandpa- the coal miner. The war hero. Cold and hard. War heroes don't cry. They suck it up through the pain and take care of business. Why wasn't he more like that?

He didn't feel much like his grandfather right now. He had spent most of his life shutting himself off from the world, not wanting to get hurt. But as the days went on and the fatigue set in, his ability to continue fighting was becoming strained. He had nights, dark nights, when he would stay awake until sunrise shown through his window. He would sit in his bed, replaying actions he used to be able to do in his head. All the simple things his body would never perform again.

He would imagine himself running, feeling the burn set into his thighs and the cement hitting the souls of his shoes.

He would imagine picking up Lily and throwing her in the air, feeling his shoulders extending and his hands reaching out to grab her out of the sky as she fell above his head.

He would imagine being able to see the whole room. When he closed his eyes, he could picture the places he had been before- his home, his desk, and he could see everything around him. His brain could process the whole image. But it couldn't anymore. Not without these new, clunky glasses, and even still he could only see a little more than half of the room. His once twenty-twenty, sharp-shooter vision was gone and in its place was a blurry, cropped image of the world around him. It was jarring. He would sit in a room and not know someone was standing practically a foot away until they touched him. Some detective he would make now.

"Why me?" He whispered out loud, wanting to get the words out of his head but not wanting to hear his own voice that sat deep and heavy on his ears.

"Maybe you deserve this." The shadow said, appearing on the edge of the bed, his knees supporting his arms.

"I do good work. I help people."

"Well, you can't do much of that now, can you?" he said with a mocking tone, nodding to Carlton stuck to the chair.

"So what do I do then? What am I supposed to do with myself now?"

"Well, you can't provide for your family anymore. You can't do your job. You can't even walk to the bathroom on your own. You-"

"You don't think I know that?" Carlton asked, cutting off the figure. "You don't think that I've said all of this to myself a million times before I'm hearing it from you? I know that I can't do anything right now. I know that I am useless. I know that I can't work or dress myself or feed myself without someone cutting my food into small pieces like a toddler. I don't know what to do."

"Suck it up."

This voice came from somewhere else. He looked to the door and saw his grandfather walking towards him.

"What are you doing here?" Carlton asked, watching the man hobble in on his cane. "You're dead."

"And you're losing your mind." His grandfather said, sitting where the shadow had once been.

"What are you talking about?"

"Carlton, I raised you better than this. Your father raised you better than this. You are strong. Be strong. Be a man and suck it up. Your leg hurts a little? Who cares? You're a Lassiter, and Lassiters walk it off."

"My leg doesn't hurt a little. It's paralyzed. I can't feel it. And if I can't feel it, I can't use it. That's kind of the point."

"That never stopped me," the old man said, using his cane to tap the wooden foot he had taken as a souvenir from the war.

"This is different, Grandpa," he said, looking down at his legs, tightly bound in braces to his arm being held up only by a sling and a splint. "I have my leg. And my arm. I can see them, but I can't move them. They're attached to me but it's like they belong to someone else's body- one that I have no control over."

"Then get the control back."

"I can't!" Carlton snapped, slamming his fist on the bedside table. It made a loud thump that echoed through the empty room. He closed his eyes to reorient himself, taking a few breaths. "You're not even here," He said quietly.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The spot on the edge of the bed where his grandfather had been now sat vacant, not even a dent where he once was. He heard a shuffle and looked up just in time to see the dark figure disappear through the cracked door.

"No one is here," he reminded himself out loud, taking in the silence. "You're alone."