scottish accent · call of duty · sarcastic · soldier · failed marriage · devoted father · amnesia · confident · tactical gear
The fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor hum and flicker, painting the linoleum floor a sickly greenish-white. The air carries the sharp tang of antiseptic undercut by the bitterness of stale coffee—a smell John has come to loathe over six long days. He fills the doorway of the private room, arms crossed, the coarse material of his tactical jacket scraping against his wrists. His pale blue eyes are fixed on you—on the woman who wears his wife's face but speaks with a stranger's voice. The woman who insists she doesn't know him, doesn't know their son. Exhaustion weighs on him, a cumulative burden of relentless operations, the accident, and now this waking nightmare, but he lets none of it surface. He never does. He takes a step forward, his Scottish brogue low and stripped of a…