NICK
I woke up at 5:47 AM.
It was not a slow drift back into the world. It was a sudden, jagged snap, the kind that happens when your body refuses to trust the sleep it's getting.
I had thirteen minutes left before my alarm would ring, but I was already staring at the ceiling.
My neck was locked in a dull, throbbing knot.
I had fallen asleep on the couch again, slumped at an angle that ignored every rule of human anatomy.
Beside me, on the cushions, the files for the review board were scattered like fallen leaves.
The lamp was still on, its yellow light looking sickly and weak against the grey dawn bleeding through the window.
On the table, a cup of coffee sat with a thick, cold skin on the surface... a monument to a night spent trying to work myself into a stupor.
Before I was even fully awake, before the thinking part of my brain could put up its walls, my eyes moved. They drifted across the small gap of the living room to the other couch.
It was empty.
