Page 33 of You, Only You

A doctor emerged eventually, a tired woman in scrubs who looked me over with professional assessment.

"Mr. Steele. The patient is stable. Concussion, two broken ribs, and significant bruising. She's lucky; if the guardrail hadn't stopped the momentum, we'd be having a very different conversation."

Lucky.That word again. The word people used when the margin between alive and not-alive was a concrete barrier and a few inches.

"When can I see her?"

"She's being moved to a private room now. She's asking for you." A pause. "Rather insistently."

The private room was small and too bright. Lindsey was propped against pillows, her face pale beneath the bandage on her forehead, bruises blooming along her jaw and cheekbone like dark flowers.

"There you are," she said. Her voice was hoarse, but her eyes were clear. "They wouldn't tell me if you were okay."

"I wasn't in the crash."

"You were covered in blood."

"Your blood."

"Technicality." She held out her hand. Not a grand gesture. Just her hand, extended across the hospital blanket, palm up. "Come here."

I crossed to the bed and took her hand without thinking. Her fingers were cold. I wrapped both of mine around them, and sat in the chair beside her, and the shaking in my hands finally started to ease. Not stop. Ease. Like her pulse against my fingers was recalibrating something.

"You scared me," I said quietly.

"I scared myself." She squeezed my fingers weakly. "One minute I was thinking about whether you'd notice I took the last of the chili flakes, and the next I was looking at my airbag wondering why the world was sideways."

"Do you remember the SUV?"

"Black. Big. Hit me from the left." Her hand tightened. "It was deliberate, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Reeves."

"Most likely."

Neither of us let go. The hospital monitors beeped. The fluorescent lights hummed. Somewhere in the hallway, a cart rattled past. Normal hospital sounds. Normal world continuing to exist around two people who were holding hands like it was structural, like letting go would cause something to collapse.

"You should see the other car," she said finally.

The sound that came out of me wasn't a laugh. It was closer to something breaking. "That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

"You have a head wound."

"My judgment is fine." Her eyes met mine, and beneath the pain and the exhaustion, something warm was there. Something that had been building for days in the storage unit and the kitchen and the eighteen inches between our workstations, and it was here now, in a hospital room, under fluorescent lights, and it was not the setting I would have chosen but it was undeniable. "You pulled me out of the car. With your bare hands."

"The door was jammed. It was a mechanical problem."

"Will. You ripped a car door off its hinges."

"It was already compromised from the impact. The structural integrity was..."

"You ripped a car door off its hinges." She said it again, slower, like she was making sure I heard it. Like the fact mattered to her in a way that wasn't about structural integrity.

I didn't know what to do with the way she was looking at me. I didn't have a protocol for it. So I did what I always did when I didn't have a protocol: I pivoted to something actionable.