Chapter 67 Voice Notes
It started small.
That’s how all the terrifying things start. Quiet. Almost polite.
Clara noticed it the third night after the collapse. Peter had been restless all evening, not in pain exactly, just… wired. Like his body couldn’t decide whether to fight or surrender, so it chose neither and left him suspended somewhere in between.
“I’ll be right back,” he’d said, sliding off the bed carefully, like he was negotiating with gravity.
“Bathroom?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
He took his phone.
She didn’t think about it at first.
Hospitals have a thousand small sounds. Air conditioning humming. Rubber soles squeaked faintly in the corridor. The steady rhythm of machines that pretend to be neutral but always sound like they’re counting down to something.
She was half-asleep when she heard it.
His voice.
Not through the door exactly. Through the wall. Muffled, but clear enough.
“Okay,” he was saying. “So. This is… I guess number one.”
Clara sat up slowly.
There was a pause. Then a small exhale. Not a laugh. Not a joke. Just breathe.
“I don’t know how long I’ll sound like this.”
Her stomach tightened.
“I mean, I know how that sounds. Dramatic. But I can feel it. Things are changing. My voice feels thinner lately. Or maybe that’s in my head.”
Another pause.
“I just want to remember. Before it gets… different.”
Clara’s hand tightened around the blanket.
He wasn’t joking.
No punchline. No sarcastic aside about dying young and handsome. Just him. Bare. Unedited.
“For the record,” he continued softly, “I am scared.”
The words hit her harder than anything else had in weeks.
Peter was not supposed to say that out loud. Peter was the one who rolled his eyes at fear. Who made it small. Manageable. Funny.
“I don’t want to disappear slowly,” he said. “That’s the part nobody warns you about. Not the pain. The fading.”
Clara swung her legs off the bed before she could stop herself. Stood. Took one step toward the bathroom door.
Then stopped.
Because this wasn’t meant for her.
She knew that with a clarity that stung.
“I don’t know if she knows,” he went on. “How much I think about it. About leaving her in the middle of a sentence. About becoming a story instead of a person.”
His voice cracked on that word.
Clara pressed her hand to her mouth.
“She deserves someone solid,” he whispered. “Not… this.”
Silence. Then the faint sound of him clearing his throat, like he was embarrassed even alone.
“Anyway,” he said, tone shifting slightly. “This is just insurance. In case my voice decides to pack up before the rest of me does.”
A tiny, tired laugh.
She stepped back from the door. Heart pounding. As if she’d walked into something sacred and fragile and not meant for witnesses.
The water ran for a second. Faucet turning on. Turning off. A cover.
When he came out, he looked almost normal.
“You okay?” she asked, too quickly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He studied her for a moment. That look again. The one that said he could sense when something shifted.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he added casually. “Figured I’d waste some time.”
“On your phone?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. Pretended that was all it was.
Later that week, it happened again. And again.
Short trips to the bathroom. Or the hallway. Or once, when he thought she was asleep, just turning his back to her and speaking quietly into the dark.
She never meant to listen.
But hospitals amplify everything. Especially secrets.
One night she caught another fragment.
“If you’re hearing this,” he said softly, “it means I didn’t get to finish something.”
A pause.
“I hope I was brave. Or at least… convincing.”
Clara felt something hot and immediate behind her eyes.
He wasn’t performing now. Not for her. Not for anyone. The jokes were gone. The bravado stripped away like hospital gowns and dignity.
“I keep thinking about legacy,” he murmured. “Which is such a pretentious word, right? Like I’m a building or a scholarship fund. But I don’t mean that. I just mean… will she remember the way I actually sounded. Not the hospital version.”
Clara swallowed hard.
She wanted to burst in. To tell him she didn’t need recordings. That she could carry his voice in her bones if she had to.
But she stayed still.
Because this was the one place he wasn’t protecting her.
And she realized, slowly, that the voice notes weren’t about memory alone.
They were about control.
If he couldn’t control his body. Or the timeline. Or the doctors’ careful language. He could at least control this. The documentation. The version of himself that would survive.
The thought hurt.
The next morning he was almost cheerful.
Too cheerful.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
“Like a baby,” he said.
She almost laughed at the cruelty of that phrase.
He reached for her hand. His grip is firmer today. Or maybe she was just imagining that too. She’d started imagining everything.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
They both knew that was a lie.
Days later, while he was in the shower, she saw it.
His phone on the bedside table. Screen lighting up with a notification. The voice memo app still open.
A list.
So many of them.
Numbered. Dated. Some just seconds long. Others several minutes.
Her breath caught.
He had been doing this for weeks.
Maybe longer.
There were titles. Not poetic. Just blunt.
“Fear.” “Clara.” “If I don’t make it.” “Anger.” “Things I never said.”
Her fingers hovered above the screen.
She didn’t touch it.
It felt invasive. Like reading someone’s diary while they were still alive to catch you.
The shower shut off.
She stepped back quickly. Sat down. Picked up a book she hadn’t been reading.
When he came out, hair damp, towel slung low around his hips, he looked at her for a second too long.
“You okay?” he asked again.
“Fine,” she replied.
They smiled at each other. Soft. Careful.
Polite liars.
That night, as he drifted off, she lay awake staring at the ceiling.
There are things you say to the world. And things you whisper to a device because it can’t flinch or cry or try to fix you.
She understood now that Peter’s armor hadn’t cracked in front of her.
It had cracked in private.
And that hurt more than she expected.
Because it meant there were parts of his fear he was still carrying alone.
She turned her head slightly and watched him sleep. The rise and fall of his chest. The faint line between his brows even at rest.
Somewhere in his phone were versions of him she had never met.
And someday, maybe soon, she would.
The thought made her chest ache in a way that felt both tender and unbearable.
Beside her, Peter shifted slightly. Reached for her in his sleep.
She let him.