No.
I didn’t want hospital.
Hospitals asked questions. Hospitals called cops. Hospitals made men into charts and families into waiting room ghosts.
A mask came over my face.
I tried to push it away.
Failed.
“Dylan Degan,” someone said.
My name sounded wrong in a stranger’s mouth.
Then another voice.
Female.
Close.
Steady, but not steady enough.
“It’s me.”
My heart tried to climb toward it.
No.
Couldn’t be.
I forced my eyes open, but the lights broke apart. Mask. Scrubs. Hair tucked back. Eyes. Those eyes.
Destiny.
That was how I knew I was dying.
Because of course death would look like her.
Of course the last mercy life gave me would be the one woman I had spent years teaching myself to survive without.
“Beautiful, is that you?”
I didn’t know if I said it.
I thought I did.
Maybe I only wanted to.
Her face hovered over mine, masked and gloved and impossible.
“You’re at Albuquerque General,” she said. “You were shot. We’re taking you to surgery.”
Destiny Rourke in scrubs.
Destiny with a nurse’s voice.
Destiny grown into the life I had told myself I was giving her by staying gone.
