Snow was falling down all around him.

He didn’t remember how he got here or when. He just knew that it was cold, dark except for the moon illuminating the sky. He was trembling, he realized, as his clothes were thin, unsuited to the weather. The snow was slowly melting and creeping into his shoes, and with every step he took, they squelched uncomfortably. 

How did he get here?

He continued walking without any direction, hoping that at some point he would come across something, someone, anything. The world was eerily silent as if he was the last person on Earth. And perhaps he was; perhaps if he knew how he came to be here, he’d find out that he was alone. The more he tried to think about how he ended up here, the more he hurt, and so he stopped trying. 

At some point, he stopped feeling the cold and he started counting how many steps he’d taken. One, two, three, four…. 87, or no, was it 88? Frustrated, he started counting again. One, two, three, four…. Again and again, he would start counting only to lose count. And again and again, he would start over.

The wind started to pick up, howling madly. The snow had stopped falling by then, but he had already been soaked to the bone, the snowfall having reached past his ankles. The roaring wind cut and battered his face. The sound was deafening after so long of pure silence. The cold was back in full force, making him shiver uncontrollably. When he looked down at his hands, he noticed that the tips of his fingers were a pale blue. 

Despite all this, he walked on. Step after grueling step. Even the moon had abandoned him to the night, the wind threatening to knock him over. The noise distracted him when he tried to count again, and he stopped out of frustration.

Why was he still walking anyway?

He didna know how long he’d been walking. Hours? Days? Years? He’d been walking for so long, but how come he hasn’t seen any escape? There was no shelter, no end to the darkness. There was nobody here. Looking back, he couldn’t even see his footsteps anymore.

Had he made any progress? Or had he just been walking in circles, pretending that he could get anywhere? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. He was cold and he was tired. All he wanted was to be somewhere warm again— would he even recognize what that felt like? He just wanted to get out of this hellish landscape.

He fell to his knees, ears buzzing. That’s right. No one was here. If there was anyone who was searching for him, wouldn’t he have seen them by now? Wouldn’t they have helped him by now? Wouldn’t it be okay to rest, just for a little while? No one would panic about his disappearance if he just rested for a bit.

He collapsed back into the snow, staring up at the dark sky. He hadn’t realized that the wind had stopped howling long ago, but his ears were still ringing. As he lay there, slowly growing more tired, he started counting again. Out of habit more than anything. After all, there was nothing around him to count.

“One, two, three, four….”

His eyes grew heavier and heavier, his counting slowed to a stop. As he fell asleep, he thought he could hear someone yelling for him, their voice panicked.

When he woke up again, sunlight was pouring in through the hospital window, and someone was holding his hand.