I'm coming off the tail end of my shift, still in my scrubs, badge on the lanyard, coffee in hand.
I should keep walking. I should go home, shower, eat something, sleep.
I should do literally anything except stop in this hallway and insert myself into an appointment that has nothing to do with me.
"Hey, Wrenleigh," I say, because apparently I have no survival instincts.
She spots me and her face lights up—not the way it lights up for most adults, which is somewhere between tolerant and dismissive, but with actual happiness. Like she's glad to see me. "Leah! Tell my dad I can sue the hospital."
"You absolutelycannotsue the hospital."
"You're supposed to be on my side."
"I work here. That would be a conflict of interest."
She grins—fierce, sharp, full of fight. Same grin she gave me the night of the four-wheeler accident.
This girl is going to be something when she grows up. She already is.
Coin is standing a step behind her, his cut hanging open over a dark t-shirt, hands in his pockets.
He looks at me the way he always looks at me, like he's taking in more than he's planning to say.
But something is different.
I can feel it before I can name it.
There's a tension in him that wasn't there the last time I saw him — at the clubhouse, in the kitchen, picking up Sadie Jo's laptop with that almost-smile.
Last time I saw him, he was tired the way he's always tired—the ten-years-of-doing-it-alone kind.
This is different.
It's sharper, closer to the surface. His jaw is tighter.
His eyes are doing that thing where they check every corner of the hallway before they land, and when they land on me, there's something behind them that he's actively working to keep hidden.
"Follow-up?" I ask, nodding toward ortho.
"Boot day," Wrenleigh announces, like it's a national holiday. "If they don't give me a boot today, I'm staging a protest."
"She's been counting down," Coin says. "There's a calendar on the fridge."
"There's a calendar on the fridge," Wrenleigh confirms, zero shame.
I fall into step beside them without deciding to.
My shift is over.
I have no reason to walk them to orthopedics.
But my feet are moving and Wrenleigh is talking and Coin is right there, close enough that I can smell leather, cedar, and something warm underneath that's just him.
We get to the ortho waiting room.
Wrenleigh checks in at the desk with the confidence of a girl who's been navigating medical bureaucracy for six weeks and has lost all patience for it.
Coin sits down in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs—elbows on his knees, hands clasped, the same posture he held in the surgical waiting room the night of the accident.
