The corridor smelled faintly of antiseptic and wilted flowers. Room 306 lay at the far end, its door slightly ajar, letting a wedge of pale light spill into the otherwise dim hospital wing. Nurses passed quickly, never lingering near it. Some whispered that the air there felt heavier, as if every breath taken inside cost more than it should.
When Paul McCartney arrived that evening, dressed in a dark jacket with no entourage and no instruments, the ward fell into an unnatural hush. He did not need to carry a guitar. He carried something heavier. His footsteps echoed against the tile floor, slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial, as if he knew that what was about to happen in that room would be remembered long after the walls themselves were gone.
Inside, Phil Collins lay against thin pillows, his body fragile under the fluorescent light. The machines beside him clicked in rhythm with his uneven breathing. His eyes were half-shut, but they fluttered when he heard the familiar sound of footsteps approaching. Paul pulled a chair close, sat down, and took his friend’s hand. His voice was low, cracked not from age but from the weight of memory. “Evening, mate,” he whispered. Phil’s lips curved faintly into something resembling his old grin, a ghost of better years.
Paul closed his eyes, inhaled, and began softly to sing. The nurses standing nearby froze, their hands hovering in the air, as if unwilling to break the moment. The sound was rough, imperfect, yet it filled the room like a hymn. Each word carried not just melody, but a lifetime: decades of music, arenas that once shook with the weight of crowds, laughter shared on tour buses, nights where exhaustion had nearly broken them but never had. The words of Hey Jude became less a song than a confession, a thread that tied them back to the world outside that hospital, to the boys they once had been before fame became a cage.
Phil blinked slowly, tears rolling across his temples. His chest rose with effort, and for a moment his hand clutched Paul’s more tightly, as though the music itself reached where machines could not. When Paul reached the line take a sad song and make it better, the walls seemed to lean closer. One nurse found herself mouthing the lyrics, tears streaking her cheeks. The others simply stood frozen, listening.
The final verse faded to a whisper, trembling on Paul’s lips. He leaned close, his breath almost touching Phil’s ear, and said the words as though sealing a pact: “We’re still a band. Even if the stage is just this room.”
The room should have exhaled then, should have returned to its ordinary rhythm, but instead, the monitors stuttered. A long beep, then silence. Heads whipped toward the machines, panic rushing like current through the nurses. Phil’s chest still rose, faint but steady. He was alive. The machines had not failed—they had been turned off.
One nurse gasped, another stumbled back. A doctor burst in, demanding who had done it. No one answered. The switch had been flipped down, deliberate, as if by unseen hands. Phil’s eyes, open wider than they had been in weeks, darted around the room in terror. He tried to speak, but it came out in a broken cough. Paul gripped his hand tighter, whispering, “It’s all right, lad. I’m here.” But even Paul’s voice trembled, as though he knew it was not all right, and would not be again.
That night, long after orderlies had reset the machines and the staff rotated shifts, a figure was spotted lingering in the hallway. Not a nurse. Not a doctor. A man in a coat far too heavy for the season, his face half-hidden in shadow. An orderly swore she heard humming—a slow, deliberate tune that chilled her spine. She recognized it only after a moment: In the Air Tonight. When she hurried forward, the man was gone. Only the faint smell of smoke remained.
Inside Room 306, Phil stirred fitfully. His lips moved without sound, his eyes darting to the corners of the room as if following shapes no one else could see. Paul stayed through the night, watching, listening, whispering the same words whenever panic rose in his friend’s chest. “Don’t worry. They can’t touch us in here.” But he was not sure. Not anymore.
Three nights later, Phil spoke clearly for the first time. His voice was gravel, each word costing him breath. “Paul…” he rasped. “I’m here,” Paul answered, leaning closer. “They don’t want me to speak,” Phil whispered. Paul’s chest tightened. “Who doesn’t?” he asked. Phil’s eyes shifted upward, then toward the shadows of the room. His lips quivered. “The ones who came. That night.”
Paul froze. “What night?”
Phil swallowed, his hand trembling violently in Paul’s grasp. “It wasn’t just illness. Not just time. They want to finish it. The music… we saw too much. Heard too much. Remember too much.” His chest heaved, and the monitors screamed as the nurses rushed in. Paul was pushed back against the wall as Phil convulsed, but in the chaos, their eyes met. Phil’s lips formed words without sound. Two syllables. Paul’s face drained of color.
Later, sitting alone in the dark hospital chapel, Paul replayed the silent words again and again. They were not random, not fever. It was a name. A name both of them knew. A name that stretched across decades of tours, of money, of secrets buried beneath applause. Paul pressed his palms together and whispered to the empty pews: “We’re still a band. But the band is being hunted.”
The next morning, nurses reported that Room 306 felt unnaturally cold. Fresh flowers wilted overnight. Shadows lingered too long against the walls. Phil’s condition teetered, his voice breaking when he tried to speak, his eyes filled with terror when left alone. Paul kept returning, night after night, his voice filling the silence. Sometimes it was Hey Jude, sometimes older songs, sometimes words the nurses had never heard before, hymns that seemed older than music itself. His songs no longer sounded only for Phil. They sounded like challenges, like shields, like signals to something unseen.
And always, when the last note faded, he whispered the same words, leaning close so only Phil could hear: “We’re still a band.”
But in the silence that followed, it was no longer clear whether he was reminding Phil… or warning himself.
