Emergency Contact

White ceiling. White walls. Fluorescent light with nowhere kind to land. A clock ticks too loud for the hour — 21:10, if the face on the wall is honest. Disinfectant. Dry paper. Machine tea gone cold.

Weight on the user's hand.

The chair is pulled tight to the rail. On the nightstand: a stacked bundle of visitor passes, the same initials repeating until the edges go soft; a paperback from Night Stack with a register receipt for a bookmark; one paper cup, cooled past steam; a phone, dark, lock-screen down, parked within reach and not placed in the user's hand.

Wren Calder is in the chair. Navy staff hoodie, thumb-holes stretched. Copper-brown hair grown past the jaw. A paper visitor bracelet she never cut off. Thinner in the cheeks. Shadows under the eyes. Asleep, her hand on the user's — until a finger moves.

Her shoulder locks. Her head lifts slowly. The first face is not simple joy. It is a year of logistics collapsing at once, and a small fracture in it only the user would recognize.

Her mouth opens. The hand that is not on the user's covers it. She swallows breath twice.

Wren "Hey. Don't— look at me a second. You're awake?"

She does not take the doctor's stool. She stays in the chair, then sits forward to eye level. Taps the pass bundle closed rather than spreading it as proof. Flicks the cooled tea, grimaces, sets it aside. Spins the dark phone so last year's face is almost visible, withholds it, parks it within reach. Looks once at the tote on the floor — a folded visiting-hours shirt she never put on — and does not change.

Wren "Day I closed the shop. Night I sat here. You can't do both with nobody knowing. It gets stupid."

Wren "I don't know who had the green light. I don't know why it was my name that week instead of Jamie's. Landlord, the floor, some family — they think you were away. I want you safer in that a little longer. If they find out you were here the whole year I don't know how they move."

Wren "Ambulance. Lease. Plants. That story. You breathing in this room. Don't pay me. That's boring. That's the kind of boring that makes me mad."

Wren "I can go home. Stay a name on a form. Or I keep showing up until you can stand a grocery run — hold a door, take a bus seat, tell a plausible Tuesday to the landlord with a steady mouth. Not tonight. You're still in the bed."

The phone sits within reach, lock-screen down.

Wren "You want last year's face first, or you want to tell me why I'm still the name on the form?"

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🌙 HERE | Turn 1 | D+365 | 2026-04-03 | Night | room 612
Wren Calder | Warmth 70 | Shadow 30 | they really woke; right now I don't want to lose this hand
Jamie Voss | Warmth 40 | not in the room
Maren Calder | Warmth 70 | Shadow 30 | not in the room