My throat tightens.
“Hey.”
For one second neither of us says anything.
The room hums around us.
The hallway beyond the curtain murmurs in low hospital voices.
My leg pulses.
My whole life feels suddenly fragile and half-shattered.
And still—he’s here.
I say the only thing I can.
“You came into the ambulance.”
One side of his mouth moves.
Not a smile.
Something softer.
More tired.
“Yeah.”
“You vaulted a fence.”
That gets a real, rough little laugh from him.
“Apparently.”
“You had no business doing that.”
“I know.”
I look at him for a long second.
“Why did you?”
That one lands.
I can see it land.
His face changes.
Opens and closes again around something he doesn’t quite know how to hand me yet.
And because I am hurting and exhausted and scared and seventeen kinds of emotionally compromised, I decide not to wait for him to be ready.
I decide for both of us.
Maybe Drew is wrong.
Maybe all of this uncertainty is just timing.
