Weeks passed. The hospital garden bloomed with late spring, and Benny’s red scarf was replaced with a new one, blue with small white stars—an upgrade for a hero who didn’t ask for medals.
He made his rounds, wagging through hallways, spreading quiet where chaos tried to live. But every so often, he’d pause near the elevator, nose twitching, ears tilting as if catching an echo from another floor.
Elena sometimes wondered if dogs remember the same way humans do—through smells, through sounds, through the weight of someone’s absence.
“You still waiting for her?” she asked one afternoon. Benny blinked slowly, which in his language meant *always.*
In the therapy logbook, Elena penciled in an unapproved note: *Benny requests reassignment to pediatrics indefinitely.* No one erased it.
Every morning, the dog made one quiet lap around the garden before starting rounds, like a soldier walking a border he’d promised to guard forever.
And when he passed the bench near the fountain, he’d always stop—because that’s where she’d said, “Don’t forget me.”
And he hadn’t. Not even once.
