A weak laugh escapes me. We breathe.
In.
Hold.
Out.
I don’t know what recovery is going to look like from here. It feels huge and terrifying. But right now, in this moment, it’s just this:
The beep of a monitor.
The sting of an IV.
Miguel’s fingers wrapped around mine.
My chest rising and falling when it almost didn’t.
I focus on that.
One breath.
Then another.
FORTY-SIX
MIGUEL
By the time I’m back in Luis’s office, I feel like someone wrung me out and hung me over a space heater. Same ugly carpet. Same plant in the corner that refuses to die. The same soccer scarf over the back of the visitor chair. None of it looks different, but I do. I have the hospital visitor tag on my sweatshirt, and Caleb’s blood is still trapped under one fingernail, stubborn as hell.
Luis watches me as I drop into the armchair. He doesn’t reach for his notebook right away. Just… waits.
“How’s your week been?” he asks, like we didn’t spend part of it texting about Caleb being in the ICU.
I laugh, and it comes out sharp. “You mean besides my boyfriend trying to die in our bedroom while I was sitting in this exact chair talking about trusting the fucking net?”
He doesn’t flinch. “Yes,” he says calmly. “We can start there.”
“Cool,” I say. “Then I’d rate it as… suboptimal.”
He huffs, a tiny almost-smile that doesn’t quite make it. “Walk me through it from your side.”
I stare at my hands, they look more or less normal. The bruise on my upper arm from slamming the door is a sick yellowunder my sleeve. “We already walked it,” I say. “In the ER. On the phone. In the fucking ambulance.”
“That was triage,” he says. “This is processing. Humor me.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right. I lean my head back against the chair and stare at the ceiling.
“I left him that morning,” I say. “He was… loud. Seven, maybe eight. He said seven. Told me he was tired. That his dad’s call was ‘a lot.’ That he didn’t have the word count for it yet.” I swallow. “I believed him. Or I decided to believe him.”
“You chose to trust what he said,” Luis says. “That’s different from blind belief.”
“Feels like the same thing,” I mutter.
“Keep going.”
I pick at a loose thread on my jeans. “I went to work. Tried not to think about it too hard. Checked my phone every ten minutes like a maniac. He texted once, a picture of his coffee and ‘studyingggg.’ No volume number.” I blow out a breath. “Then I came here. Sat in this chair. Talked about how I was practicing net-thinking and not going full SWAT every time he sighed.”
My throat tightens. “While I was here, he was at home taking the pills.”
