The wall was blank.Not white, not grey—just blank. A colourless expanse of plastered quietude that stared back at Adrian Montague Godfrey IV like a mirror reflecting nothingness. No clocks, no paintings, no gilded frames to distract the dying from their own end. It had once felt cruel. Now, it simply felt honest.
Adrian had been staring at it for over an hour. He didn't know how many exactly. Time had lost its neat edges, its polite definitions. It came in bursts now—moments of lucid breath followed by hazy slippages where minutes and hours bled into each other like watercolours left in the rain.
His body no longer ached.
That, more than anything, terrified him.
Because pain was proof of fight. Of nerves still firing, of cells still warring. And now there was only silence in his limbs. No tightness in the chest, no trembling in the fingers, no searing behind the eyes.
Just a vast stillness, like his body had turned into a tomb preparing for its occupant.
His eyes did not blink often. It took energy. Breathing came slow—an almost ceremonial inhale, an almost reluctant exhale. Machines surrounded him, blinking like distant stars, whispering algorithms to nurses who moved like phantoms. Their expressions grew softer by the day.
Pity. That awful, unbearable pity.
Even the nurses who used to flinch under his commands now touched his IV lines like one might touch a child's hand on a deathbed. He hated it. He loathed their mercy.
He was not supposed to die like this.
He was finally alive.And it had all come too late.
—
A breath caught.
His heart gave a strange lurch—not a stutter, not a full contraction—just a twitch. He recognised the feeling: ventricular flutter. Common now. Like the heart was testing whether it was still worth continuing.
He stared at the wall again, whispered something to it.
"Is this it?"
No answer. Of course not.
He never believed in God. Not really. Religion in the Godfrey household had been performative—cathedral donations, Christening photos, chaplains at funerals. But not belief. Never belief.
And yet, as he lay in that sterile bed, breath slowing to something between existence and exit, he found himself whispering—not praying, not begging—but just talking to whatever might be listening.
I get it now. Life. I see it. I wasted it. I know that. I deserve what's coming. But…
He didn't finish the sentence. It felt selfish to say more.
So he stared at the wall and waited to die.
—
Then came the storm.
It began with a sudden, sharp rush of motion. The door slammed open with a force that rattled the IV rack. A flurry of green scrubs. Urgent footsteps. Voices raised just enough to register urgency without panic.
"Code green. Transplant authorization confirmed."
"Clear the hall. Prep O.R. seven."
"He's top of the list now. The donor's en route—Type AB, neurological death confirmed fifteen minutes ago in Bristol."
"He's not conscious enough to consent—he pre-authorised everything. Move."
Adrian didn't understand at first. He thought maybe it was another dream. He'd had plenty lately—fragments of delusion, stitched together with half-memories and wishful hallucinations.
But the cold air hit him.
Then the shock of hands against his chest, lifting electrodes, repositioning lines.
Then the ceiling began to move as the bed was wheeled out of his room and down the hall.
He couldn't speak. His lips barely parted. His throat was dry as ash.
But inside him, something ancient flickered.
Not yet.
—
The operating theatre was a cathedral of light and steel.
Voices swirled. Monitors blinked like starships. Surgeons loomed in masks, their eyes sharp with precision, hands soaked in the faith of science.
"We're losing him."
"Baseline again—third time."
"Push epinephrine—0.5cc."
Adrian couldn't hear it all. Not properly. But he felt it.
His body was floating. Untethered. Sinking into light. There was a moment—an eternity or a heartbeat—where he felt himself begin to let go. Not by choice. But by gravity. As though his soul had simply become too tired of the machinery trying to keep it anchored.
The light pulled at him.
A vast, white silence opened up.
Adrian Montague Godfrey IV began to die.
And in that impossible sliver of time, between life's last reach and death's first embrace, something happened.
A hand, metaphorical or not, pulled him back.
—
The surgery was successful.
The new heart—a perfect biological match, sourced from a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer who had fallen into a crevasse during a climb—was sutured in with immaculate precision. The rhythm took time. The machine breathed for him. The new organ resisted at first, then yielded.
Beat.Pause.Beat.Beat.Stronger.Then stable.
The room didn't erupt into cheers. This wasn't fiction. But there were exchanged looks. A slow exhale from the lead surgeon. A nurse wiped her brow.
"He made it."
"He's alive."
"Let's close."
—
When he awoke, it was dark.
Night outside. The moon high. His chest was wrapped in gauze and weighted in pain, but pain meant he was still here. The kind of pain you could only feel when the body was trying again.
His eyes cracked open. Vision was blurry. The lights above burned white halos into his pupils. The room was quiet except for the beeping of machines—steadier now. More confident.
He didn't move. Couldn't. But he let the awareness seep in.
He was breathing.
He was alive.
Something wet slipped from his eye. Not a sob. Just a tear. A silent, stunned surrender to the impossible truth that he had been given another chance.
Adrian Montague Godfrey IV smiled. Not broadly. Not dramatically. Just a small, tremulous, grateful smile.
And in the barest whisper, audible only to himself and perhaps to whatever indifferent stars lingered over the hospital roof, he spoke:
"Thank you."
To whom?
He didn't know.
God. Chaos. Fate. The mountaineer whose heart now beat in his chest. The universe for allowing him to crawl back through the teeth of death, bleeding but not broken.
He had climbed.
Not fast enough, perhaps.
But far enough.
And now he had another summit to reach.