Pride hurt worse than the bullet.
Look at you, Beautiful.
Look what you became.
I wanted to say that.
I wanted to tell her I knew. I knew about the school, the grades, the cat with the stupid name, the matcha, the friend from Idaho, the way she had built herself into something strong enough to stand beneath hospital lights and order death to wait its turn.
Instead, I think I said her name.
Maybe not even that.
Then the world turned into doors and metal and cold.
The OR was brighter than the desert.
Whiter too.
There was no romance in it. No softness. No place for ghosts. Just masked faces, gloved hands, instruments, machines, blood, pressure, commands. They cut me into survival while I hovered somewhere above myself, half in my body and half watching from a place men weren’t meant to see.
I heard things in pieces.
Pressure.
Suction.
More blood.
He’s dropping.
Move.
Hold.
Again.
Sometimes I thought I saw Georgia at the foot of the table, wearing her blue dress from La Jolla, ring shining under surgical lights. She looked sad, not scared. Like she already knew what I had done before I did.
I’m sorry, I tried to tell her.
She only looked past me.
Destiny stood there too.
Not in scrubs now.
In Cabo. Sun on her skin. Diamonds not yet in her ears. Hair loose in the ocean wind. She was eighteen and not eighteen. Girl and woman. Wound and healer. She held the mother-of-pearl cuff in both hands like an offering.
You gave me blank pages, she said.
I did.
You forgot to ask if I wanted you written out of them.
The monitor screamed.
Everything narrowed.
