“Wake up,” I mutter.
Nothing.
“Come on, Beda.”
Still nothing.
The nurse told me it could take time. That her body needs rest. That the surgery went well. That she’s stable.Stable.A word doctors use when they want you to stop looking at them like you might kill them if they say another word.
I lean forward until my forehead almost touches the edge of the bed.
“I’m here,” I tell her quietly. “So wake the fuck up.”
The words come out rougher than I mean them to. Like anger. Everything in me always sounds like anger.
Minutes pass. Or hours.
I don’t know.
I just know the room stays dim and cold and the machines keep making noise and she keeps lying there while I keep breathing like a man trying not to drown sitting upright in a chair.
Then her fingers twitch.
I freeze.
At first I think I imagined it. My eyes lock on our hands.
Another twitch.
Then a faint sound leaves her throat. Barely anything. Just a rough little scrape of breath and pain and waking. I’m up so fast my blood rushes.
“Ayla.”
Her face tightens. Her head shifts a fraction on the pillow, brows pulling together like even that tiny movement hurts.
“Ayla.”
Her lashes flutter. That’s all it takes.
I’m moving before my brain catches up, shoving wires aside, climbing onto the bed like a fucking lunatic, careful and not careful at all, one knee sinking into the mattress, then the other, leaning over her, trying not to jostle anything and jostling everything anyway.
She groans.
“Fuck—sorry. Sorry, baby. Sorry.”
I ease myself down beside her as best I can in the narrow hospital bed, injured arm sliding under her shoulders, the other pulling the blanket and her, all of her carefully into me. Tubes shift. A wire tugs. Something protests in a soft electronic beep.
I don’t give a fuck.
She’s warm.
Warm.
Her body is warm against mine and I drop my face into her hair, breathing her in so hard it hurts. Antiseptic and her. Under all the hospital smell, those fucking marshmallows still linger.
A sound breaks out of me that I don’t recognize at first. Then I realize it’s me trying not to fucking cry.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper against her temple. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
