“You look like hell,” I told her.
She smiled anyway. “Good morning to you too, Doctor Vaughn.”
I watched her sign a form for me.
Watched her talk to my nurse.
Watched her move through my discharge instructions like she belonged there. Like this was normal. Like she hadn’t spent the last week holding me together in ways that had nothing to do with medicine.
I hated how much I needed her.
Loved it too.
They transferred me into a wheelchair. I knew the protocol; I knew I had sustained a life-changing injury. That did nothing to stop the welt of emotion building in my gut.
I made a joke, but no one laughed.
Anya crouched in front of me to adjust the blanket over my legs. Her hands were gentle. Too gentle. Like I was fragile.
I wanted to tell her not to look at me like that, and in the same breath, thank whatever god brought this exact angel into my life.
The nurses hugged her.
Actually hugged her.
Two older women who had seen everything there was to see in a hospital leaned in and squeezed her like she was a part of their little family.
“Take care of him,” one of them said. Like Anya wastheprescription.
“He’s a stubborn one,” the other added, patting her gently on the cheek. “But he listens to you.”
I stared at the floor. Because that was mortifying, albeit true.
The ride down in the elevator was quiet.
The hospital smells gave way to air that smelled like the outside. Real air. Car exhaust. Coffee from somewhere nearby. Life continuing as if my body hadn’t been rewritten behind hospital doors.
Anya helped me into her car. Not the hospital transport.Hercar.
That felt like crossing a border.
She adjusted the seat. Buckled me in. Her hands brushed my chest by accident, and neither of us commented on it. “I didn’t lose my arm, you know.” I tried to joke.
She didn’t smile. Or… she did, but it was pained. The wound was still too fresh, in all tenses of the word.
I stared out the window and pretended not to feel like a fraud in my own skin.
My house looked the same. That itself felt like a personal attack. Stone steps. Clean lines. The place I’d bought because it was close to the hospital, and because I could afford it, and because it had felt like proof I was successful, self-sufficient, untouchable.
Now it just looked like a place with too many stairs.
Anya parked.
Got out.
Came around to my side.
She opened the door and held it like I would have.
