The first thing Anna became aware of was the weight. Not physical weight, though her limbs certainly felt heavy, but emotional weight. It settled on her chest like a sleeping animal, impossible to move, impossible to ignore. Something inside her felt cracked open, painfully raw and exposed, as though her heart had been thrown into sunlight after years in the dark and had been left out there for hours, her eyelids fluttered, sticky and slow. Her head ached and she wondered how she had hurt herself this time, it seems she was prone to getting hurt all the time. She almost laughed at the thought.
Then she saw him. Ryan. Sitting beside her hospital bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed, his fingers tangled in his hair. He looked devastated, no, destroyed—as though he had spent the entire night
