I had to be back at the hospital where Jenny passed away a couple of days later for some other health errand. As I approached the area where she stayed, one of the male nurses that attended us just happened to be passing by. He smiled. He recognized me, and that surprised me for some reason. My private grief now had a knowing observer. Tears rushed into my throat to choke me, but I swallowed them. I smiled back. As I gazed in the direction of her unit, I felt the inexplicable desire to go back through the big impenetrable orange door. I wanted to ring the bell and see her there, half asleep, half awake. I wanted to have a quiet coffee by her side, and to feel exhausted to the comforting sound of nurses chatting in the hallway. But she had been moved to the mortuary by then, and I felt like I had missed a scene. I no longer had a VIP pass to Hospitalisatie 24. And for some reason, I suddenly got major FOMO. Maybe it was just the banality of the everyday slowly starting to settle back in, stilling my adrenaline high, and numbing me back into my all too familiar state of lethargy.