Page 47 of Seven Minutes
His mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Alive, upright, and still fighting me about definitions.”
That earned him a wheezy laugh. “Guess I’m fine, then.”
He nodded, a low exhale leaving his chest. “You’ll get stronger every day.”
“You make it sound like a promise.”
“It is.”
And the way he said it—quiet, sure, a man swearing an oath—made me believe it, if only for that single moment.
Nightin the ICU wasn’t quiet so much asmuted.
Machines whispered. Oxygen hissed. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor alarmed, muffled by distance and walls. Idrifted in and out of sleep, body too heavy to move, mind too full to rest.
I’d thought silence meant peace once. Now it just meant there was nothing left to distract me from how much everything hurt.
The nurse had dimmed the lights after Adrian left. I’d insisted after he kept nodding off. He promised he’d only be gone for a few hours—to shower, grab a bite, check in with the department—but I’d seen the way his hand lingered on the rail before he turned away. The way he looked at me with fear, terrified I’d stop breathing the second he wasn’t here to watch.
The truth was, I was afraid of that too. And the moment the door clicked behind him, the air changed. It was as if the room exhaled him, leaving only the echo.
The physical therapist had been in earlier, trying to move my arms, my legs, testing muscle tone. My chest felt packed with glass. Every motion was a reminder that recovery wasn’t linear—it was a climb. And goddamn, I was so tired already.
Every inhale scraped like sandpaper. Exhaustion haunted me every waking minute. I turned my head toward the window, wincing at the pull along my ribs, and stared at the city lights beyond the glass. Somewhere out there, people were laughing, spilling drinks, hailing cabs. Living.
I tried to imagine joining them again, walking, working, coming home to… what? The ache that rose had nothing to do with injury.
For months before the accident, we’d barely spoken except in arguments. I’d told myself that space was better, that maybe we both needed time apart to remember how we used to fit.But now, lying here, tethered to tubes and pain, all I could think about was the things I hadn’t said.
I replayed the sound of Adrian’s voice when he’d whispered,You’re okay.The way his thumb had brushed my hand. That even, grounded tone he used when the world was falling apart, and he refused to let it.
God, I’d missed that voice.
I stared at the ceiling until my eyes blurred, blinking against the hot sting that came anyway.
In the dim light, I lifted my hand to study the bracelet resting on my wrist. I didn’t remember putting it there. My fingers were clumsy against the rough braided vine. Adrian must’ve done it. The memory of his voice from that afternoon replayed in fragments?—
“You remember this?”
“The vineyard… You looked beautiful that night.”
The vineyard.
Our first anniversary. The place we swore we’d go back to every year and never did.
I hadn’t thought about that night in a long time. The moonlight, the wine, his mouth on mine, the way he’d laughed when I said the bracelet would fall apart in a week.
And now here it was—frayed but whole—a ghost of a promise we’d both let fade. I turned my wrist, tracing the edge of the band. The skin beneath it was pale and soft, unfamiliar. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I didn’t feel like anyone.
Earlier, I’d told him about the dream. About the minutes I’d experienced when everything went dark, how they were all of him. Every single one. The look on his face when I said itstill haunted me. Hope, regret, something else I couldn’t name.
He kissed my forehead. Whispered,“I’m here now.”
But for how long?
I stared at the bracelet again, my chest tightening around the question. Adrian had that look lately, the one he wore when he was planning something. Schedules. Appointments. Recovery timelines. The same look he used to have before a big surgery. Efficient. Focused.
It was easier to live in logistics than in emotion.
