Recovery does not arrive all at once.
It comes in fragments. In hours stitched together by hospital lights that never fully dim. In pain medication schedules and whispered conversations with nurses who learn our names too quickly. In the quiet, sinking understanding that surviving something does not mean escaping it untouched.
I stay.
There is never a discussion about it. No one asks if I am going home. Not the staff. Not the doctors. Not Damian. It is simply assumed, the way gravity is assumed, the way breathing is. I sleep in the narrow hospital bed with him once they allow it, curled carefully around his uninjured side, my body molded to his like we are relearning the shape of each other after almost being torn apart.
Every night.
Every morning.
The bed is too small. The sheets ar
