Fifteen
Awareness came slowly. Small details filtered through the comfortable, murky darkness—the beeping first, then quiet voices he couldn’t make out. Little by little, consciousness returned, and with it came the bigger details. Why was his throat so raw and why did his body feel so sluggish? As the pieces came together, fragments of memory returned. A helicopter. Paramedics and doctors and nurses. Blood. Pain. Aaron telling him he couldn’t die in his arms like his first wife had. Heather telling him that he couldn’t leave her because she loved him and adored him.
Heather.
He smiled. Or rather, tried to. He didn’t have the energy to do more than make his lips twitch.
He opened his eyes, and when his surroundings came into focus, he was unsurprised but disoriented to find himself in
