The door was not locked. His hand trembled as he pressed against the wood, the hinges creaking softly in the night. He stepped inside.
The warmth of the home wrapped around him like a cruel jest. The smell of coal fire, of bread baking in the oven—it was exactly as he had remembered. For a moment he almost believed he had stepped back in time, that nothing had changed. But then the sound reached him.
From the living room, muffled by the walls yet clear enough to shatter him, came Mary's voice. Soft. Tender. Intimate. Words of love, spoken to another. Her laughter followed, and then the man's.
Thomas's vision blurred. His body swayed as though struck. He had fought through fire, through mud, through the saw of the surgeon, clinging to the thought of her. And now—now his reason for surviving was gone.
He staggered to the table, his breath shallow. From his pocket he pulled a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil. His hand shook violently as he wrote, the words smudging as tears fell onto the page.
"Well, I didn't survive."
He set it down upon the wood. His heart felt hollow, an empty shell where once there had been hope.
Without another sound, Thomas turned. The door creaked as he slipped out into the snow. The warmth of the home, of the life he had fought to reclaim, faded behind him. The night swallowed him whole.