I sigh.
Replaying the past won’t change anything.
Henry and I are over.
If we even existed in the first place.
Still, though, I don’t sleep. I relive the evening, the man, the fright.
And I know my life is forever changed.
Six
Henry
The first thing I notice is the light leaking through the blinds.
Daylight.
The second thing is the beeping. Steady, like it’s keeping time.
I swallow. My throat is raw, and I taste something weird. Plastic, maybe.
I blink. Everything’s blurry. I blink again until my vision begins to clear.
Ceiling tiles. A clock. An IV line taped to my wrist.
Then I see them. My parents. Watching over me like I’m a newborn in a cradle.
My mother’s face is the closest. Her eyes are red and puffy, and her hair is pulled up in a messy bun, the one she wears when she hasn’t had time to do anything else.
She smiles at me. “You’re awake,” she whispers. “Thank God.”
My father sits in a chair next to her, stiff-backed, his big hands braced on his knees. He looks older somehow, his forehead creased. He exhales slowly. “About time, son. You had us scared half to death.”
I try to lick my lips, but my mouth is bone dry. My voice comes out like sandpaper scraping across rough wood. That’s what it feels like too. “What…happened?”
They trade a look, one of those wordless conversations I’ve seen them have many times before when they’re trying to decide how much to tell us kids.
Except I’m no longer a kid.
My father shifts forward. “A support beam gave way at your place. Caught you across the head.”
The words slam into me harder than the wood did. My house. The place I was redesigning and renovating, as if fixing walls could fix what’s wrong inside me.
I shut my eyes, and the memory flickers. Dust in the air, a sudden crack, the sickening impact, and then Zach’s bark tearing through the dark.
Yes, Zach. My dog. His name is Zach.
“Zach,” I rasp.
My mother nods quickly, tears spilling again. “He saved you, Henry. That dog saved your life. He ran all the way to our ranch house. He wouldn’t stop barking, scratching at the door, running back and forth until we followed him. We knew something was wrong because of him.”
I picture it—my dog, sprinting across the fields, chest heaving, foam at his mouth maybe, refusing to quit until they came. Loyalty in motion. The image splits me wide open. My chest aches in a different way from the surgical wound in my scalp.
“Good boy,” I whisper, my throat raw. “Such a good boy.”
“You were out cold when we got there,” my father says, his voice low. “Blood everywhere. You weren’t moving. For a second, I thought—” He stops, his jaw tightening.
