Too quiet.
My fingers froze on the tablet.
No.
No, we were not doing this.
Not beside Georgia’s coffee cup.
Not with his fiancée’s sweater on the chair.
Not after he held Georgia’s hand while I stood in the hallway with my heart in my throat and my dignity in both fists.
“I remember patients,” I said.
Lie.
The monitor betrayed him with one sharper beep.
I pretended not to hear it.
He did not.
“Right,” he said.
I moved to his side to check what needed checking. Dressings, drains, lines. Clinical things. Real things. Things that did not care about longing. He stayed still beneath my hands, but stillness from Dylan had always been deceptive. Even half-wrecked in a hospital bed, he seemed leashed rather than weakened.
I lifted the edge of the blanket carefully. “Any dizziness? Nausea?”
“No.”
“Shortness of breath?”
“No.”
“Chest pain?”
His eyes flicked to my face. “That a medical question?”
I should not have looked at him.
I did.
The silence thickened.
There it was.
Everything unsaid.
Cabo.
The grave.
Santa Monica.
The ICU.
His hand in mine.
