My leg.
The thought was automatic. Reflexive. A mental inventory I’d done a thousand times with patients.
I tried to shift it.
Nothing happened.
Well… not nothing exactly. There was sensation — pressure, heat, a strange buzzing numbness — but the movement didn’t follow. The signal went out and came back distorted, like a bad radio transmission.
“That’s odd.” I found myself murmuring as my brow furrowed faintly. I tried again, focusing harder.
Move your foot.
Curl your toes.
The sensation was there.
Theresponsewasn’t.
It felt like when a limb falls asleep — like it was wrapped in thick static. Like it belonged to me, but also didn’t. A wrongness that wouldn’t quite rise to panic yet.
“Morphine,” I whispered, trying to shift the IV bag into focus. Trying to shiftanythinginto focus.
I breathed slowly through my nose, forcing myself to stay calm. Iknewthis territory. Trauma did strange things to the nervous system. Swelling. Shock. Temporary paralysis. Phantom sensations.
Phantom.
The word drifted through my mind, wholly uninvited.
My memory tried to catch up.
Bus.
Impact.
Heat.
Pressure.
Pain so loud the entire world went white.
Then Anya’s face, over me, too close, too real, her voice low and steady, telling me to stay with her.
Anya.
My gaze shifted, and not without effort.
ICU.
White walls. Low lights. Curtains half-drawn. Tubes. Lines. The soft mechanical breathing that wasn’t quite my own. My chest rose and fell, but there was help involved. Oxygen. Maybe more.
And as I turned my head slowly, there she was.
Curled sideways in one of those atrocious hospital chairs, the kind designed by someone who clearly hated the human spine. Her hair was loose, slipping over her face. Her cheek pressed into her forearm. One hand still rested on the edge of my bed, fingers slack with sleep.
She looked absolutely wrecked. And that was before I noticed the shirt she was wrapped up in. My ancient Yale sweater. The one she’d worn while we were dancing in my kitchen. The one she’d worn while I fell just a little harder for the girl that was supposed to be just a one-time thing.
Dark circles ringed her eyes. Tension even at rest. Like she’d folded herself into that chair because she refused to be anywhere else.
