Page 46 of What We Become

SAGE

“No strenuous activity for two weeks.” Dr. Shahid signs the discharge papers with zero enthusiasm. “Lungs are clear, but the respiratory lining is still healing.” He hands the paperwork to Holden because apparently I can’t be trusted with my own medical documents. “Avoid chemical exposure, dust, smoke, strong fumes. If she develops a cough, shortness of breath, or chest tightness⁠—”

“We bring her straight back,” Holden says.

“Immediately. Not in an hour. Not after you’ve assessed the situation. Immediately.”

“Understood.”

Shahid turns to me. “The rib will take around six weeks to be fully healed. No heavy lifting. Hug a pillow when you cough.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Miss Adams. It’s been an experience.”

“I’ll miss you, Doc McStuffins.”

“Please don’t come back.”

“You owe me so many raspberry Danishes,” I say to Micah, because priorities are important and near-death has only sharpened my commitment to pastries.

Micah smiles, and it’s the first one in days that reaches all the way to his eyes. “As many as you can eat, baby girl. I’ll have them delivered daily.”

“Careful,” I say. “I will financially ruin you with pastry.”

“Please do.”

A nurse appears with a wheelchair, and I immediately object on principle. “I can walk.” Or sprint, honestly. Because after five days in this room I’m crawling out of my skin.

“Wheelchair,” Holden says.

I turn my head slowly and stare at him. “You know, one day, I might recover enough to become inconvenient again.”

“That day is not today.”

“Bossy.”

“Alive.”

It’s annoyingly effective, that one-word answer. Hard to argue with it when a chunk of my recent memories involves coughing up black filth and wondering if my lungs were going to dissolve in real time.

Knox takes the wheelchair from the nurse before I can mount a proper rebellion, and Milo’s already loaded the basket, the duffel, Milo Number Two, and approximately nine hundred dollars’ worth of cashmere into a rolling suitcase he produced from God only knows where.

“I can at least get myself into a rolling seat,” I object, while Knox lifts me off the bed and into the chair like my limbs are merely decorative.

“You weigh nothing,” he says, which isn’t what my objection was about but is apparently what he heard.

“I said I could get in the chair on my own.”

“Heard you.” He moves around to the back and releases the brakes. “Just don’t care.”

Okay, then.

Knox wheels me down the corridor, the others falling into formation around me—Holden ahead, Micah and Eli flanking, Milo bringing up the rear with the suitcase rumbling over the marble.

This is the first time I’ve seen the facility properly. I arrived unconscious on a stretcher, and I’ve spent the best part of five days in one room, so the compound beyond my door has been an abstract concept—footsteps in corridors, voices through walls, the occasional glimpse of mountains through a window.

Now, wheeling through the lobby, I see it. Stone floors polished to a mirror shine. Timber beams overhead. A wall of glass that opens onto a courtyard with beautiful landscaping—low hedges, gravel paths, a water feature that would either be relaxing or pee-inducing depending on how much you had to drink that day.

The place looks like somewhere Fortune 500 executives come to dry out, or where diplomats recover from things that never make the news. The fact that it exists, that Odin controls it, that he sent a helicopter to bring me here—the scale of his wealth is something I haven’t fully let myself think about until now.

I’m wondering how many zeros are in Odin’s bank account when I spot him.