No breaking this room apart because grief has found my throat.
I move to the side of the bed with steps so careful they feel ritualistic. The chair beside her is too small. I do not sit. I kneel instead, lowering myself until my face is level with her hand resting on the sheet.
Her hand is bruised.
There is a blood oxygen clip on one finger.
A small burn crosses her knuckles.
I hover above it, not touching.
“Evie,” I whisper.
She does not move.
The diagnostic field pulses. Machines hum. Rain taps faintly against a reinforced window somewhere beyond the curtain. In the corridor, voices blur into meaningless murmurs. This room smells of antiseptic, healing gel, blood beneath sterilization, and the faintest trace of her hair where rain and sugar remain despite everything.
“I am here.”
The words are useless.
Too late.
I press my forehead to the edge of the mattress, careful not to disturb her. My entire body shakes once. I stop it because if I allow one tremor, the rest will follow.
“I should have been there.”
The monitor continues its soft rhythm.
“I know you would tell me Ron did this. You would be angry if you heard me taking his guilt onto myself. You would say it in that voice you use when you are right and furious about being right.” My breath breaks, and I force it steady. “But I should have been there.”
Her eyelashes do not move.
I look at her hand again.
“I made you feel abandoned.”
That is the wound I cannot dress with violence.
“I thought distance protected you. I thought if I carried the ugly parts away from the bakery, away from your apartment, away from your life, then maybe I could build some wall between you and what I am.” I laugh once, quietly, bitterly. “I keep learning the same lesson and failing the examination. Walls are not love. Silence is not protection. Leaving is not safety.”
My voice roughens.
“I heard you when you asked me to move in.”
The memory rises: her kitchen, sauce on the stove, rain on the glass, her face brave and terrified because she offered me a home.
“I heard you. I wanted to say yes.”
The words break loose, and once they start, I cannot stop them.
“I wanted it so badly I could not speak. I imagined my coat on your hook. My tools in your drawer. My mornings beginning with your terrible humming and Darlene threatening me before coffee. I imagined sleeping beside you without waiting for the night to take you away. I imagined keys.” My throat closes around that simple word. “Keys, Evie. To a door where I belonged.”
The monitors continue their soft, steady pulse.
“I said it was a big step because it was. It was the largest step anyone has ever offered me. Not because I did not want it. Because I wanted it enough to feel the ground disappear beneath me.”
I lift one hand slowly and touch the sheet near her fingers.
