I laugh. It hurts — the kind of laugh that travels through your whole trunk and reports back from every broken thing along the way — but I can't stop it.
But the laugh changes. Somewhere between the third second and the fourth, it catches on something real. Because I don't actually know the answer. The doctor said things — through the morphine filter, through the fog — and the words I caught werebassin,chirurgie,sensible,and I don't know ifsensiblemeant what I think it means and I'm not going to ask in this room.
My hand tightens on the sheet. Nobody sees. I make sure nobody sees.
"Everything's fine," I say. In the Guard voice. The one that's lighter than it should be, the one that saysI'm making this small so you don't have to worry.
Camille looks at Nora. Nora looks at the floor. Maman looks at the ceiling.
The doctor comes through again— brief, efficient, his explanation filtered through morphine into a handful of words I keep:fracture,surgery when swelling goes down,recovery will take time.That's all I hold. The rest slides.
Eventually Maman runs out of ways to delay. She kisses my forehead. Cries one more time. Makes Nora promise to call if anything changes. Camille reaches out and very carefully squeezes my big toe — making sure not to jostle the frame holding my legs — and whispers, "If it helps, my boyfriend's is pretty average too," and Maman drags her out of the room by her sleeve.
The door closes.
It's quiet.
Nora is still here.
She sits back down in the vinyl guest chair. Pulls her knees up. My jacket falls over them like a blanket. She's looking at her phone — the screen is dim, almost dead — and she's typing something, and then she puts it down and leans her head back against the wall.
I should say something. I should saythank youoryou were incredible last nightorI saw you cry in my mother's arms and something happened in my chest that I don't have a word for.
What I say is:
"You don't have to stay."
I say it to the ceiling. I can't look at her when I say it. I say it too fast, or too quiet, or with some gap I don't close on purpose. I don't know.
She doesn't answer immediately.
Then: "I know."
Two words. She doesn't explain. She doesn't leave. She settles deeper into the chair and closes her eyes, and the tension leaves her shoulders — not asleep, but close. The stillness of someone who has decided to be here.
The room is quiet. The machines beep. The fluorescent light hums the same note it's been humming all night.
I don't understand why she's here. We've been on four and a half dates. We've kissed twice. I don't know her middle name. I don't know if she likes cats or just tolerates them. I don't know what she looks like when she's angry or what she sounds like when she's not trying to sound like anything.
But she's here. In the chair. In my jacket. With a smudge of mascara under her left eye that she doesn't know about, and if she knew, she'd fix it, and the fact that she hasn't is the thing I keep looking at.
I close my eyes.
The crack in the ceiling is still there. The morphine is still filtering. The pain is still underneath everything, patient, waiting for the drugs to thin.
She didn't leave.
I don't know what that means. But she didn't leave.
5
HOSPITAL DAYS
Ilearn the schedule.
Not because anyone teaches it to me — no one sits me down and sayshere's how days work now.I learn it by being present long enough that the patterns press themselves into you.
Vitals check every four hours — blood pressure cuff, thermometer, the nurse typing something into the screen without looking at you. Breakfast tray around seven-thirty, always cold by the time someone removes the plastic lid, always including a yogurt that Ethan won't eat and a juice box that he drinks in two pulls like a kid at recess. Shift change happens quietly in the hallway — footsteps overlapping, clipboards exchanged, a murmur of French too fast for me to follow even though I've spoken it my whole life. Physiotherapist at nine, if she's not running late, which she always is. Doctor rounds somewhere between ten and noon, depending on the day, depending on the emergencies that outrank a stable pelvic fracture in the triage of someone else's worst morning.
