I woke to fluorescent lights and the smell of antiseptic. My arms were wrapped in thick white bandages from wrist to elbow. The fabric was tight. I could feel my pulse pressing against it with every heartbeat.
A nurse leaned over me. Her name tag said Maria. "Mrs. Henderson, you need to rest. You've given too much blood."
I shook my head. The hallway tilted a little. I gripped the edge of the gurney and sat up anyway. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You've been transfusing for three days straight. Your hemoglobin is—"
"I said I'm fine." My voice came out sharper than I meant. I softened it. "Please. I need to see him."
Maria looked at me the way nurses do when they've seen this before. Women who give too much. Women who don't know when to stop. She sighed and stepped back. "Room 304. But you sit if you feel dizzy."
I nodded and walked down the hall. My legs felt light. Not in a good way. Like they might fold under me if I moved too fast. I didn't care. Lachlan was awake. They'd told me ten minutes ago. Three days of sitting outside his room, watching doctors go in and out, waiting for someone to tell me if my husband would live or die. And now he was awake.
I reached his door and stopped. My hand hovered over the handle. I was shaking. I told myself it was the blood loss. I told myself everything would be fine now. He was awake. We would go home. I would make him soup. He would hold my hand and tell me he was sorry I had to be so scared.
I pushed the door open.
Lachlan was sitting up in bed. His face was pale but clean. Someone had shaved him. He looked like himself again. I felt something crack open in my chest. Relief. Love. The kind that makes you stupid.
"Lachlan," I said. My voice broke on his name.
He turned his head toward me. His eyes were clear. Dark brown, the same eyes that used to find me across a crowded room and make me feel like I was the only person in the world.
But now they were empty.
He looked at me the way you look at someone who got on the wrong elevator. Polite. Distant. Wrong.
"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "Do I know you?"
I laughed. It came out strange and high. "Lachlan, it's me. It's Adaline."
He didn't smile. He looked at the nurse standing beside his bed. An older woman I hadn't seen before. "Could you ask this woman to leave? I don't know who she is."
The nurse glanced at me. Uncomfortable. "Mr. Henderson, this is your wife."
"My wife?" He said it like the words didn't fit in his mouth. He looked back at me. Studied my face. I waited for the recognition to come. The moment his memory would snap back into place and he would reach for me and say my name the way he used to. Soft. Like it mattered.
It didn't come.
"I don't remember her," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. "I don't remember anything after my twenty-fifth birthday."
Twenty-five. We met when he was twenty-six.
I stood there. My bandaged arms hung at my sides. I had bled myself nearly empty to keep him alive. I had sat outside his room for three days without sleeping, praying to a God I wasn't sure I believed in. And he looked at me like I was no one.
"Lachlan, please." I stepped closer. "It's me. We've been married for five years. We have a son. Ethan. You love him. You love me."
He didn't blink. "I'm sorry. I don't know you."
The door opened behind me. I turned.
Emerald Powell walked in.
She was wearing a cream silk blouse and tailored pants. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was perfect. She looked like she'd stepped out of a magazine. She looked like someone who had never sat on a hospital floor at three in the morning begging doctors for updates.
She walked past me without a glance. Straight to Lachlan's bedside.
"Lachlan," she said softly. Her voice was warm. Familiar.
His face changed. Everything about him changed. His eyes went soft. His mouth curved into a smile I knew by heart because I used to be the one who put it there.
"Emerald," he said. He reached for her hand.
She took it. She sat on the edge of his bed. She touched his face. "I was so scared," she whispered.
"I'm okay," he said. "I'm okay now."
I stood there. Watching.
Lachlan looked down at their joined hands. Then he looked at mine. At the ring on my left hand. The one my mother designed before she died. The one I'd worn every day since our wedding.
He reached over. His fingers closed around my wrist. Not gentle. Firm.
"This doesn't belong to you," he said.
He pulled the ring off my finger. It caught on my knuckle. He pulled harder. It came free.
I couldn't breathe.
He turned to Emerald and slid the ring onto her hand. It fit perfectly. Like it had always been hers.
"This belongs to the woman I love," he said.
Emerald smiled. She looked at me for the first time. Her eyes were bright. Triumphant.
I looked at my hand. At the pale strip of skin where the ring used to be. At the bandages covering the places they'd taken my blood. At the man I'd almost died for, holding another woman's hand with my mother's ring on her finger.
No one said anything.
I turned and walked out of the room. My legs carried me down the hallway. Past Maria. Past the other patients. Past the elevators. I walked until I found a bathroom. I locked the door. I stood in front of the mirror.
My face looked strange. Pale. Hollow. Like someone had scooped out everything inside me and left just the shape.
I thought about Ethan. My son. My baby. Waiting for me at home.
I would go home. I would hold him. And everything would be okay.
It had to be.
