I wake up before she does, and for the first time in four years the first thing I feel isn’t pain.
The leg is there. It’s always there, the low hum of nerve damage that greets me every morning whether I want it to or not. But it’s not the first thing. The first thing is warmth. The weight of her body tucked against my right side, her head on my chest, her hand resting over my heart. Red curls fanned across my skin. The slow, even rhythm of her breathing.
I don’t move.
The cabin is still. Gray light coming through the windows, the woodstove burned down to coals; the air carrying that particular cold that means the fire needs tending. Chief is at the foot of the bed, curled in the space between our feet, his chin resting on Bianca’s ankle. His eyes are open. He’s watching me.
I wait for the guilt.
It’s a reflex. The way you wait for a blow you’ve learned to expect. Every morning for four years, the guilt has been sitting inthe chair across from me before I’ve had my first cup of coffee, asking the same question. Why you? Why are you the one who gets this?
I wait.
It doesn’t come.
The light grows stronger through the windows. Bianca shifts against me and makes a small sound in her sleep. Chief’s tail moves once against the blanket.
Gratitude.
I don’t examine it. Don’t try to name the shape of it or figure out where it fits. I just let it sit there, filling the spaces that used to be empty, and I don’t kill it.
I press my mouth to the top of her head and breathe in.
I let it stay.
She wakes up. A shift in her breathing, a stretch of her fingers against my skin, and then her eyes open and she blinks at the cabin and at the light and at the chest she’s been using as a pillow, and I watch the moment she remembers.
The flush starts at her collarbones and climbs.
“Hi,” she says. Soft. Almost shy, which doesn’t track with what we did last night, and the contrast makes my ribs ache in a way that has nothing to do with pain.
“Hi.”
She presses her face into my chest. “What time is it?”
“Early.”
“I have to be at the clinic by nine.”
“I know.”
Neither of us moves.
Chief solves it for us. He stands up on the bed, shakes, and steps onto my bad leg on his way to the floor. The pain is sharp enough to make me grunt, and Bianca sits up fast, concerned, and I’m laughing before I can stop it.
Laughing.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed. The sound is rusty and surprised and it makes Bianca stare at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide and then she’s laughing too, pressing her hand over her mouth, and Chief stands at the bedroom door with the patient disapproval of a dog who does not understand what’s funny and would like to go outside.
I make coffee. She borrows a flannel that hangs past her thighs and sits at the table with her legs pulled up, and I stand at the counter and watch her drink from my mug in my shirt in my kitchen.
The cabin has never looked like this. Like somewhere a person would choose to be.
“I’ll drive you to work,” I say.
She looks up. The offer sits between us, and we both hear what’s underneath it. Not just a ride. Driving into town together. In the morning. In yesterday’s scrubs and his flannel. In front of Iron Peak and everyone in it.
“Okay,” she says.
