But Malik had seen the man through the glass so many times. Tubes. Stillness. Silence. To Malik, it didn’t look like sleep.
It looked like being trapped.
That afternoon, after a storm flooded half the neighborhood, Malik came in soaked. Mud covered his hands, his knees, his face. Security was distracted. The door to 701 was unlocked.
He stepped inside.
The billionaire lay there unchanged—skin pale, lips dry, eyes closed like they’d been sealed shut by time itself.
Malik stood quietly for a long moment.
“My grandma was like this,” he whispered, though no one had asked. “Everyone said she was gone. But she could hear me. I know she could.”
He climbed onto the chair beside the bed.
“People talk like you ain’t here,” Malik said softly. “That’s gotta be lonely.”
Then he did something no doctor, no specialist, no family member had ever done.
He reached into his pocket.
Pulled out wet mud—dark, earthy, still smelling like rain.
And gently, carefully, Malik smeared the mud across the billionaire’s face.
Across his cheeks. His forehead. Down the bridge of his nose.
“Don’t be mad,” Malik murmured. “My grandma said the earth remembers us. Even when people don’t.”
A nurse walked in and froze.