"My mom," I say, and that's all I need to say.
He's already reaching for his jeans.
Twenty minutes later we're in the car. He's driving too fast down streets that are still gray with morning, one hand on the wheel and the other resting flat on my knee like he can keep me from shaking apart just by touching me. I don't tell him to slow down. I don't tell him anything. There's a version of me from months ago who would have made him drop her a block from the hospital, who would have made him wait in the car, who wouldhave kept him a secret the way I kept everything a secret back then.
That version of me doesn't exist anymore.
"You okay?" he asks at a red light, glancing over.
"No," I say honestly. "But I want you there. I want you there for this one."
His hand tightens on my knee. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to.
The hospital smells the way it always smells, bleach and old coffee and something underneath that I've never been able to name. I walk fast down the corridor I've walked a hundred times, past the nurses' station, past the vending machine that's been out of order since March, until I'm standing outside room 412 with my hand flat against the door like I need a second before I can push it open.
Seven years.
Seven years since I stood in the doorway and promised a seventeen-year-old's promise. I'll come back for you.I’ll come back and save you.I remember saying it into the dark like it was a fact instead of a hope, like saying it hard enough would make it true.
It took seven years. It took a wedding I didn't choose and a man I was terrified of and then wasn't, at all. It took a bullet and a body in a concrete driveway and every single thing I swore I'd never let touch her.
But I'm here.
Nico's hand finds mine before I push the door open, and I let him.
"Ready?" he says.
"No," I say again, and open it anyway.
She's smaller than I remember, and the math is wrong: she's been lying in this bed for weeks and shouldn't have changed at all. Machines hum around her the way they always have. But her eyes are open.
Her eyes are open, and they're moving.
"Mom." My voice cracks on the single syllable. I'm at the bed before I've decided to move, dropping into the chair, taking her hand in both of mine. Her fingers are cool and thin and they don't grip back yet, not really, just a twitch, a flutter, her whole body still climbing up out of wherever it's been.
"Bianca," a nurse says gently from the doorway, "can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me."
Her eyes drift, unfocused, sliding past me, past the ceiling, past a version of the world she hasn't seen in so long. Her mouth moves. Nothing comes out.
"It's okay," I whisper. "Take your time. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Minutes pass like that. Long minutes stretch and fold back on themselves, and I don't let go of her hand. Nico stands close behind my chair with his hand on my shoulder, silent and solid.
Then her eyes find mine.
Really find them. Focus, this time, sharpen, catch.
"Lyddie."
My name in her voice for the first time in months breaks something open in my chest that I didn't know was still shut.
"Yeah," I choke out. "Yeah, Mom, it's me. It's me, I'm here."
"Lyddie." She says it again like she's testing whether it's real, whether I'm real, her hand finally, finally curling around mine with a strength I didn't think she had left in her. Tears track sideways down her temple into the pillow. "Baby."
"I'm here." I'm crying too now, not bothering to hide it, not bothering with anything except the fact of her hand in mine. "I'm here, I'm okay, we're okay."
She looks past me then, to Nico, confusion flickering, and I feel him go still.
