Teri-Wakes up
952 Words
I wake up wrong.
Not all at once — not clean — but in pieces, like my body is remembering itself out of order. First sound: a steady beep that doesn’t belong to the ocean. Then light, too white to be sky. Then the ache — everywhere and nowhere — like I’ve been carrying something heavy for too long and just set it down.
My mouth tastes like metal and salt.
I try to swallow and my throat objects.
“Hey,” a voice says immediately. “Nope. Easy. You’re okay.”
Lena.
The relief hits first. A rush so fast it almost makes me cry. I turn my head and there she is, hair pulled back wrong, eyes too bright, a hospital bracelet looped around her wrist like she’s claimed the place by sheer force of will.
“Hey,” I croak.
She’s already standing, already leaning over me, already pressing a cup with a straw to my mouth. “Sip. Don’t argue. I swear to God, if you argue I will scream.”
I sip.
Water never tasted so much like forgiveness.
“You scared me,” she says, voice steady in that way she gets when it isn’t. “You don’t get to do that.”
I close my eyes for a second, let the room settle. The beeping fades into background noise. My body sorts itself into pain categories: leg — bad. Head — worse. Everything else — simmering.
“Where…?” I start.
“Hospital. Palermo.” She pauses. “You’re alive.”
“That’s… reassuring.”
She huffs a laugh that breaks halfway through. “Don’t be funny. I already cried enough for the both of us.”
I try to smile, but something tugs in my chest — a hollow pressure, like I’m missing a step in a staircase I’ve walked a thousand times.
I open my eyes again.
And then it hits me.
“Where is he?”
Lena stills.
Just a fraction. A pause too clean to be accidental.
“Who,” she says carefully.
My throat tightens. “Raf.”
The name comes out easier than I expect. Like my body knows it before my brain catches up.
Lena exhales slowly through her nose. She reaches for my hand and grips it, hard enough to anchor me.
“He’s not here,” she says.
The words shouldn’t hurt like they do.
It feels like a trapdoor opening under my ribs.
“Oh,” I say.
I wait for the rest of it.
It doesn’t come.
“He—” I swallow. My leg pulses in angry agreement. “Did he leave?”
Lena’s jaw tightens. “He made sure you were safe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” she agrees. “It isn’t.”
The room tilts slightly. Or maybe that’s just me.
“He was there,” I say, more to myself than to her. “He was with me.”
“I know,” Lena says quietly. “I know.”
My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with injury. I stare at the ceiling and try to line up my memories — water, dark, his voice, his hands, the way he kept telling me not to leave him like it was a favor I could do.
“Did I imagine him?” I ask.
Lena’s grip tightens. “No.”
“Then why isn’t he—”
“Because,” she says, cutting in gently but firmly, “whatever he is, it’s not something he can be near us without hurting you.”
That lands harder than any truth she could’ve offered.
I turn my head toward her, eyes burning. “You don’t know him.”
“I know what I saw,” she says. “And I know what he didn’t say.”
Silence stretches between us, thick and complicated.
“Did he say goodbye?” I ask.
Lena shakes her head. “No.”
That hurts worse.
I close my eyes. Something wet slides sideways across my temple and into my hair. I don’t bother wiping it away.
“Okay,” I whisper.
It’s a lie. But it’s a functional one.
Lena leans in and presses her forehead to mine. “You don’t have to be okay right now. That’s my job.”
I breathe with her until the ache dulls into something manageable.
“Am I going to be… okay?” I ask finally.
“Yes,” she says immediately. “Your leg’s infected but responding. Fever’s down. You scared the hell out of some doctors.”
“That tracks.”
She smiles, then sobers. “We’re staying. A few more days. We eat good food. We walk slow. We don’t make decisions while you’re on pain meds.”
“Are you making decisions for me?”
“Absolutely.”
I huff weakly. “I missed you.”
“I know,” she says, brushing hair off my forehead. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
The door opens quietly. A nurse steps in, checks the monitor, smiles at me like she’s seen worse and lived.
“You’ve got a fierce friend,” she says to me.
“I know,” I reply.
When the nurse leaves, Lena settles back into the chair, eyes never leaving my face.
“Sleep,” she says. “I’ll be right here.”
I let my eyes close.
But even as the room softens again, there’s a space beside the bed that doesn’t belong to anyone else. A shape I can still feel.
And for the first time since the island, I’m not afraid of the dark.
I’m afraid of the quiet.
- Writer
