Page 52 of Bitter Truths

“It’s good to meet you,” Matt adds, adjusting his glasses. “I’m glad you came. Your brother has missed you.”

The memory hits me—one of our sparse phone calls from a few years ago. Winston telling me about meeting Ben and Matt at some karaoke bar near school, how Clara had dragged them all out for “team bonding” and they’d ended up singing terrible duets until closing time. When he’d invited me home for their bonding celebration, I’d frozen. There was no way I could handle coming back. I’d told him how happy I was for him, how much I loved him, how much I wished I could be there. He’d been so understanding about it all, never making me feel guilty for not coming.

“He said you had a total tomb raider aesthetic going on,” Matt continues with a slight grin. “Now I get it,” he adds, adjusting his glasses with a nervous energy.

I roll my eyes and let out a short laugh. “Of course he did. Can I see him?”

Clara nods quickly. “Room 314. But he’s...” She can’t finish.

“He looks pretty bad,” Ben says. “All the equipment, the machines. Just so you know.”

Room 314 is all beeping machines and white walls that smell like bleach. The kind of place that makes you whisper even when there’s no one to wake. Winston’s in the middle of it all, and fuck—he doesn’t look like my brother at all.

His face is purple and swollen, bruises covering everything I remember. But his chest moves up and down, and the heart monitor keeps beeping steadily, so he’s still here. Still fighting.

I pull the chair closer to his bed, trying not to look at all the ways his body is damaged, and settle in for what might be a long wait.

“Hey, Winnie,” I reach out, taking his limp hand in mine, my words softer than I intended. “It’s Bianca.”

Nothing but the mechanical sounds of machines keeping him alive, so I fill the silence with stories about the refuge, carefully editing out the dangerous parts. I tell him about learning to hunt and track, about the people who’ve become my family, about morning coffee with Megan and her terrible pottery experiments, about Ezra teaching me to suture wounds and set bones.

“Guess we both became doctors,” I say with a weak laugh. “Although I’m not sure if you would approve of my methods.”

An hour passes. Nurses come and go, checking vitals, adjusting medications. Clara comes to check on me a few times, sitting with us for a few moments before quietly giving me space with him.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so fucking sorry, Winston.”

His breathing stays steady. No change.

“I should have been here. Should have celebrated when you all bonded. Should have been at your graduation. Should have called more. Should have...” I stop. The list is too long.

“I was so afraid of falling apart again that I forgot about everyone else. I forgot that you needed me.”

I reach out, careful of the IV line, and take his hand. It’s warm. Alive.

The machines keep beeping. Winston keeps breathing.

“I borrowed your baseball mitt when we were kids,” I say. “The good one Dad got you for your fourteenth birthday. Left it outside during that storm and ruined the leather. I let you believe Tommy stole it from your locker. You were so mad at him you didn’t talk to him for a month.”

I squeeze his fingers, silently begging him to respond.

“Oh, and I totally read your journal when you were dating Clara. Your poetry was really bad, Winnie. Like, embarrassingly awful. But you were so sweet when you wrote about her that I couldn’t even make fun of you for it.”

His fingers are warm in mine. I hold on to that warmth like it’s everything.

“I’ve got about a million more confessions if you want to wake up and hear them. Most of them involve me breaking your stuff or eating your Halloween candy. You were way too trusting for your own good.”

Time moves strangely in hospital rooms. Could be minutes or hours since I started talking. The light outside has changed, gone softer. Evening, maybe.

I don’t need a sign to tell me I’m not supposed to be doing this, but still, I squeeze into the tight space beside him on the bed, careful not to touch anything that matters.

“You need to wake up,” I demand. “I’m not ready to lose you, Win. I need more time to fix us... need to know everything I missed.”

I close my eyes, listening to his heartbeat through all the machines.

That’s when I smell it.

The scent that drifts through the room when the door opens behind me.