Stars

The hospital room hummed, a soft mechanical lullaby built from various machines and the AC. Somewhere down the corridor came and went the squeak of a trolley wheel. 

After hours meant the overhead lights had obeyed the hospital’s energy-saving curfew. They clicked off automatically, plunging the place into the kind of institutional dark that wasn’t darkness so much as a dim reminder that you weren’t home. A slither of light under the door meant the corridor was still illuminated. Beside Magnus’s bed, a wall-mounted reading light seemed to have slipped through the cracks of whatever system governed sleep. Its narrow beam of yellow pushed a small coin of warmth into the room. 

Magnus lay propped on a precarious architecture of hospital pillows, pale but alert, his eyes tracking their game with the solemn concentration. His hair stuck up in sleep-bruised clumps, each tuft a stubborn survivor of his earlier nap. The cannula IV had been removed that afternoon. A lonely square of gauze clung to the back of his hand, a tiny flag planted where the pain used to be. 

The bedside table held a half-devoured packet of crackers, crumbs scattered across their laps like islands on some neglected map.

Daphne perched on the edge of the pull-out bed. Calling it a bed was charitable. It was a folded metal contraption wearing a thin layer of foam the way a beggar wears a coat. She leaned across the space between them, elbows on his bed guard, her cards fanned loosely like she wasn’t sure whether to play the game or let her next blink turn into sleep.

Magnus slapped a Queen down with small, tired triumph. “That beats your nine.”

“It does,” Daphne said, nudging her nine aside with the resignation of someone who was growing used to being outplayed by her shorter opponent. “How many games have you won now?”

“Three.”

“That can’t be right.”

“It’s right,” he said, solemn as law. “I’m good at cards.”

“You’re good at everything, especially when crackers are involved.”

He grinned and reached for another, but his hand trembled halfway to his mouth and the cracker skidded from his fingers. Daphne saw the tremor. She always did. She didn’t mention it. She picked up the fallen cracker and set it beside him, a quiet offering.

“You need to eat something,” she murmured.

“I am.”

“More than crumbs, Moonbeam.”

He sighed and took one dutiful bite, chewing like someone honouring a treaty.

For a heartbeat or two, the room felt almost normal. A fragile version of the before, before last night’s collapse, before the ambulance and the sirens that had carved themselves into her bones, before the terror that had clung to her like a second skin. Watching Magnus shuffle the cards, her heart tapped an uneven rhythm, as if still trying to match the rising and falling of an alarm that wasn’t sounding anymore.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, her voice small in the half-lit quiet.

Magnus paused mid-shuffle. “Is it about the cannula again? Because I don’t want it back.”

“No, sweetheart. It’s about… earlier. Before you got sick.”

He watched the cards slide between his fingers without really seeing them.

Daphne reached out, stilling his hands with her own. “Magnus.”

He swallowed. “Okay.”

“You and I ate almost the same things yesterday,” she said gently. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Same plates, same portions. And I’m fine. But you got very sick, very fast.” She squeezed his fingers just enough to anchor him. “I need to understand why.”

Magnus shifted. His fox teddy slumped sideways, half falling off his lap as if it, too, knew trouble was coming.

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” he whispered.

“You won’t.”

He didn’t look like he believed her.

“Magnus,” she said again, softer this time, “just tell me what you ate or drank. All of it.”

A pause. Chewing the inside of his cheek, a small nervous movement.

“I… swapped something,” he breathed.

Daphne tilted her head. “Swapped?”

“Your pudding,” he confessed, the words tumbling out in a single exhale. “You had the bigger one. And I wanted the bigger one.”

She let out a small, fragile laugh that cracked in the middle. “Is that it?”

He nodded too fast, the way a person nods when they want the world to stop examining them.

Daphne brushed a curl from his forehead. “Magnus, it’s still the same food. I would’ve been sick too.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No. Which means it wasn’t the pudding. Or the lasagne. Or anything we both ate.”

He folded into himself a little, shoulders rounding as if he could hide the guilt knot forming behind his ribs.

“Hey,” she whispered, leaning in, gently pulling him closer across the bed guard. “You did nothing wrong. You hear me? Food doesn’t suddenly decide to poison children for swapping desserts.”

He nodded, but his face stayed troubled. A small storm gathering behind his eyes.

She set the cards aside. They no longer belonged in the moment. “Let’s not think about it right now. Your stomach’s calm, your blood tests are almost done, and Dr Bridge said you’ll be able to go home tomorrow.” She traced a soft line down his forearm, grounding him. “Let’s rest your head. Talk about something nicer.”

Magnus didn’t even pause. Daphne’s question had barely slipped into the space between them before he answered.

“Stars.”

The word hung there, bright and quick, and Daphne let out a tired half-smile that flickered and died before she remembered to catch it. She rubbed a thumb beneath one eye, smearing away a crescent of exhaustion.

“Stars,” she echoed, voice soft, like she was repeating a password she’d forgotten she knew.

Magnus shrugged toward the blanket, working at the creases with restless fingers. “The Little Prince is always talking about them. Everyone is. The Businessman counts them, the King wants to be in charge of them… I don’t get why they’re so important.”

Daphne breathed out slowly, a sigh that unfurled rather than fell. The lamplight did nothing to catch her features, but the tone in her voice spoke volumes. Her words came dipped in giggles. “Yeah. Well. That bit… me and your dad nearly threw books at each other over it.”

Magnus perked up, eyes bright, as if she’d just lit another lamp. “What’s so funny?”

“Has your Dad ever told you how we met?”

Magnus shook his head, the grin on his face huge, reckless, hopeful.

“I was teaching. Just another morning. I walk into class and there’s this celebrity astronaut sitting in the front row. No warning. No memo. Just… there. Looking at me like it was no big deal.” She snorted quietly. “Thomas would drop him off every morning with a lunch bag like he was six and needed supervising.”

She shook her head again, the corner of her mouth tugging upward despite her obvious refusal to let it. “That’s when I first discovered he was obsessed with that book. Still looking for answers. Ever since he was a kid… Just like you.”

Magnus glowed at that, the kind of glow that made the shadowed room feel briefly larger. “And one day I’m going to be an astronaut like Dad! I’m going to visit all the planets! I’m going to learn all the secrets of the universe!”

“Yeah,” she murmured, brushing his hair back with a touch that held more protection than comfort. “I know you will.”

She shifted on the pull-out bed, the spings creaking beneath her. “Anyway… Stars. That part nearly ended our first date… well, your Dad calls it our first date. He hunted me down at lunch. Sat beside me like he owned the seat. He had this stupid brown paper bag Thomas packed for him. He opens it and says, dead serious, ‘I’ve got cheese and lettuce. Fancy a trade?’”

She let out a short laugh, sharp and surprised, the sound nudging the shadows in the corners. “Mr Hotshot Astronaut asking to swap sandwiches like we’re in first-grade.”

Magnus stared. “You… was Dad’s teacher?”

“Kind of. He decided my class was going to last indefinitely.” She waved a hand in the air, dismissing an old irritation that still clung. “He dragged me to coffee after every lecture to talk about the book more. And then one day, I realised we were still having coffee… and it wasn’t about the book any more.” Her mouth tightened, embarrassed by the softness she’d let escape. “Anyway. Not the point.”

She leaned back and rubbed her temples with the tips of two fingers, as though the memory had weight and she could set it down. The sound of footsteps in the corridor came and went. The glow under the door flickered and returned.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “You were asking about stars.”

“It’s okay,” Magnus said. “Did you ever agree about them?”

“Nope. Not once. I’ve got my theory. He thinks everything nonsense unless its about quantum physics, obviously.” She nudged his knee lightly. “You interested in what I think stars are?”

Magnus nodded silently in agreement, like he was accepting the terms and conditions from the magic circle.

“You remember the beginning of the book, right? The drawing of the boa constrictor with the elephant inside. Grown-ups just saw a hat.”

“Yeah.”

“That drawing’s the Rosetta Stone of the whole thing. It says there are two ways to read the world. One lazy. One real. You either stare at the outside and call it a hat, or you bother looking and see what’s actually inside.”

“And what’s inside, Mom?” Asked Magnus. “About the stars?”

Daphne inhaled, long and steady. The sort of breath that prepares you for cold water. Ready for dropping the bomb which always resulted in ridicule from Max. “I think stars are people.”

Magnus blinked. “People?”

“Not everyone. Just… some.” Her tone carried the thin armour of someone who had defended a belief too many times to herself first.

“How do you tell who’s a star?”

“No idea,” she said. “Some say you can see it in their eyes. Maybe that’s true. I’ve never figured it out. But flowers? Those I can spot.”

“A flower?” He looked properly baffled.

“Yeah.” She tapped his chest once, gentle but sure. “Flowers question things. Life. Themselves. They think past right now. They wake up. Some people don’t. Ever.”

Magnus lit up. “The Little Prince can talk to flowers!”

“Exactly. Because he is one. Inside the book he’s even drawn in green, for crying out loud.”

“What about the other stars? The ones who aren’t flowers?”

“They’re mushrooms.”

He blinked. “Mushrooms?”

“Oh yeah.” She smirked, leaning back enough that the shadows softened the expression. “People who live off pure instinct. Emotion. No foresight. No pause button. Just reacting. Like animals. And most of them? Miserable.”

Magnus squinted at her. “Are we flowers or mushrooms?”

Daphne laughed, a sound worn and warm and cracked at the edges. “Only a flower would ask if they’re a flower. Mushrooms are too busy counting stars to care.”

Magnus puffed up, proud, then leaned in again. “And… when someone loves a flower?”

Her expression shifted, her guard slipping for a heartbeat, the lamp catching the shine in her eyes before she blinked it away. “When someone loves a flower… they get connected. Those stars follow each other to every planet. Every life.”

He tilted his head. “Planet?”

“Lives,” she said simply. “A lot of religions think when we die, we’re born again somewhere new. New body. New life. New planet. So when the Little Prince talks about all the planets he’s visited… he’s talking about all the lives he’s lived.”

Magnus’s jaw dropped. “Then… that means he was the businessman?”

“Yes.”

“But he said the businessman was a mushroom!”

“Oh, he was,” said Daphne. “Most of those characters were mushrooms. Stuck in the hells they built themselves.”

Magnus stared. “But one day he woke up? And realised something was more important than counting stars?”

“That’s right, Moonbeam.”

“What was it?” he asked, leaning in.

“Because he realised…” she didn’t finish. Footsteps approached and stopped outside the room. The glow under the door suddenly grew taller, until it engulfed both Magnus and Daphne in the sharp white glow of the corridor lights.

A nurse slipped inside the open door with the soft efficiency of someone trained to carry calm into every room. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” she murmured, checking the chart at the end of the bed.

“The doctor would like to speak with you Mrs Orpheus. He has just received the results from the lab.”

Daphne leaned forward and kissed Magnus’s forehead, breathing in the faint scent of him mixed with crackers. “I’ll be right back, Moonbeam.”

Daphne followed the nurse to the door, her legs stiff from hours of stillness but moving automatically, her hand brushing the metal frame as she stepped into the corridor.

Behind her, Magnus watched until she disappeared past the doorway.

The door slowly swung closed, taking the corridor light with it. Then he lay back in the dark, slowly, the fox tucked under his chin.