around the room.
I was alone from what I could see. I was totally alone in the hospital room, and somehow, that was much bigger than any of my injuries. It was dark, with a soft shaft of moonlight falling through the slatted blinds and landing on my lap. From the small way I could move my head to glance around, I was plugged into several monitors and had an IV dripping something into my arm. There was a call bell next to me, and I should have pressed it—if I were my doctor, I’d want to know the second I woke up. I wanted a moment though, to feel the pain, to recognize that I was alone, to understand that something big had happened to me.
A snort stole me from my maudlin thoughts, and I flicked my eyes downward to the end of the bed.
It was easy to have missed him, because he was piled under numerous blankets and sleeping, like so many of my patients’ families that I’d seen. He was obviously cramped on the small sofa that was pressed against the wall at the foot of the bed, and I wondered why no one had brought him a cot.
Stupid, self-sacrificing man probably hadn’t wanted to bother anyone.
Even though he was currently sleeping, he looked tired.
Adrian’s eyes had bags under them. They were the kind of dark shadows I hadn’t seen on anyone since med school, and his skin looked ashen. I couldn’t tell if it was just from the dark room or if he was really that pale, but it made my heart clench. He had stubble like I hadn’t seen on him before, almost long enough to be considered a beard, and his hair looked like it had gone a while without any of the meticulous care he usually put into it.
I sighed, wanting to hold him, to ask him to take care of himself. I opened my mouth to speak and felt his name grate against my vocal cords.
“Adrian,” I croaked.
Even though it felt like I’d put enough effort in to have shouted his name, what came out was barely a whisper.
“Adrian,” I tried again, louder this time.
The creaking tones of my voice must have gotten through to him, though, because the figure on the sofa stirred. He rubbed one hand across his jaw like I’d seen him do so many times before, and then his eyes opened. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping well, since when his eyes opened, he was immediately alert.
Then his eyes met mine.
There was an eternity in the moment that we took each other in, and in that eternity, I felt all his fear, his longing, and he felt all my desperation and willingness to give up.
How could I have ever tried to give up on him?
“Stevie,” he whispered, barely breathing.
And then he was by my side. There were tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over, and I knew that I was crying because I could feel the warm tracks pouring down my face.
“Stevie, Stevie, Stevie.” He just kept chanting my name like a prayer.
His eyes traced over every inch of me, like he couldn’t believe I had my eyes open, like every breath was a miracle—maybe it was, I wouldn’t know.
“Adrian,” I responded in my own hoarse voice. “Adrian, Adrian.”
“I thought you were going to die,” he moaned, sinking into the chair by my bed. “I thought I’d killed you.”
I couldn’t tell him that I had tried to leave him, that it had been so much easier, lying in that road, to give in and give up than try to fight for him. I just shook my head but winced at the pain it caused.
Adrian sat up.
“We’ve got to tell the nurse that you’re awake,” he said suddenly, like he was coming out of a daydream.
Before I could protest, before I could tell him that I wanted to spend a few more moments in the darkness with him, he had pressed the call bell, and the door was opening to let light flood from the hallway into my room. A figure stood there in scrubs.
“She’s awake,” Adrian said, and his voice was still quiet with happy disbelief, his eyes shining with hope and joy.
The light was flicked on in the room and it burned. I winced and slammed my eyes shut. I hadn’t had them open and exposed to light in God knows how long, and it felt like the dim luminescence was burning into my pupils.
“Ugh,” I moaned.
That was