ALEX’S POV
The machines were still humming when she woke up. That was the first thing I noticed, not her eyes fluttering open, not the slight tightening of her fingers around mine, but the steady, mechanical rhythm of the monitors, as if they were daring me to believe everything was normal, nothing was normal.
I had been sitting beside her bed for hours. Long enough that my jacket lay forgotten over the back of the chair, my phone facedown on the small table, unanswered calls piling up like debris I didn’t have the energy to clear. Long enough that the city outside the window had shifted from afternoon brightness into the muted glow of evening.
Hospitals distort time, they stretch minutes thin and compress hours into something shapeless. Control doesn’t exist here, only waiting does.
M
