She's standing at the dresser with her back to me. She's wearing one of my shirts, white cotton, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. Her hair is damp from the shower, pushed over one shoulder, and she's running a brush through the ends of it with the careful, slow strokes of a woman whose head still hurts.
She sees me in the mirror.
"Hi," she says.
Something in my chest cracks open a fraction. Just enough to let something warm flood through the gap. She's upright. She's standing on her own feet in my bedroom, the color has come back to her face, and her eyes are clear for the first time in days.
"Hi." I lean my shoulder against the doorframe and loosen my tie with one hand. "How do you feel?"
"Human." She puts the brush down and turns around. She leans against the dresser and folds her arms across her chest, and the shirt rides up an inch on her thighs. I keep my eyes on her face because I'm a man who is trying very hard to be decent about the woman he's in love with.
"Your sugar?"
"One-twenty-two. Mikhail checked before he left. He said I could shower if I was careful." She pauses. "He also told me I was the most stubborn patient he's treated since someone called Yuri, and I should take that as a compliment."
The corner of my mouth lifts. "Yuri would agree. I’ll have to introduce you when he returns to work."
I reach into my jacket and pull out her phone. I'd had Dmitri retrieve it from her apartment along with clothes and her diabetes supplies. I cross the room and hold it out to her.
"You need to call Dr. Mehta," I say.
She takes the phone. Looks at it, then at me. "Why?"
"Because she came to your apartment two minutes after I did. She was the one who administered the glucagon, Sadie. She kept you alive until I could get you to Mikhail."
Her face does something complicated.
"How did she know?" Sadie asks.
"She tried calling you when you didn't show for your shift. Priya told her you hadn't called in. Mehta went to your apartment. She got there just after I broke the door down."
Sadie looks at the phone in her hand for a long time. Her thumb moves across the screen and then she looks up at me.
"Thank you," she says.
"Call her. She's been asking about you every day. Then eat something. There's food downstairs."
I turn to leave, to give her privacy, because a phone call to the woman who saved her life is not one I should be in the room for.
"Nick."
I stop.
"How was the funeral?"
I look at her over my shoulder. She's still leaning against the dresser. My shirt, my bedroom, my house. She looks like she belongs here in a way that makes my ribs ache.
"It was a funeral," I say. "He's buried. The rest is politics."
She nods once. She understands more than I've told her. It’s another aspect of her that I appreciate. Another reason I found myself falling in love with her.
"I'm sorry about your father."
"Thank you."
I close the door behind me and go downstairs. I pour a glass of water and stand at the kitchen counter, pressing both hands flat against the marble as I just breathe for a moment.
I give her thirty minutes.
