I nod at Vincenzo, stepping out of the car and into the busy rush of an unfamiliar city. Cars rush by, honking their horns like it’ll make the lights turn green faster. The people hurry around like they have places to be.
For all the trauma in my life, I’ve hardly ever set foot in a hospital. Before the helicopter crash, my life was very uneventful. Still, everything looks shinier, newer, more luxurious than the tired hospitals back home. It looks more like a technology store.
I go up to three different receptions, passed around like a pinball. The fourth woman looks me up and down, chewing her gum. “You from the media?”
“No, I’m … I’m family.”
“You that girl who leaked the article?”
My exasperation reaches new levels. “No, that wasn’t me. But please just let me see Alex.”
“Never really liked Cain Green, anyway,” she says. “Have you got our app?”
“No,” I say, feeling my final shred of patience slither out onto the busy streets below.
“It’s got a map on it.”
Why must everything be an app? If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.Everythingis becoming an app. “Please could you just point me in the right direction?”
It takes another ten minutes, but I’m finally taken to a quieter hallway several floors up. I know I’m in the right place, because a tall, stocky bald guy with an earpiece is in the hallway.
He recognizes me, somehow. “Ms. Winters.”
“Did Alex leave with Fleur?”
He shakes his head and tilts it toward a doorway to his left.
It’s a dim examination room, mostly covered by a paper curtain. I gently push down the handle and step inside. “Alex?”
I round the curtain and find him sitting in an armchair, elbows on his knees and head in his hands.
“Alex.”
He looks up, andfuck. A sharp pain twists my stomach.
He looks completely broken. And he clearly hasn’t seen any of the texts I’ve sent him, because he looks like he can’t believe I’m here. For the briefest of seconds, I see all the questions he’s too exhausted to ask flit through his eyes. Thewhyand thehowand thewhen.
“You’re not real.”
I squat down opposite him and thread my fingers through his. “I’m real.”
“You’re not here.”
For him, I keep my tears at bay. “I’m here.”
And like he’d been waiting for me without even realizing it, his head collapses forward, face buried in my hair.
The first silent sob that racks his body sends a hairline crack down the middle of my heart, the second splits it into two. I snake my arms around him and use everything that’s left in my tired muscles to hold him together.
“I’m so tired of treading water, Ophelia. I just want to let go.”
I scratch my fingers through his hair. “I know.”
“I’m all out of fight. I don’t want any of this anymore.”
“I know. But I’m here to tread water for the both of us.”
And so we sit like that. Me on my knees, him on the chair. Him falling apart, me holding myself together. Him convinced the world is ending, and me, for once, convinced we have a place in it.
