The room smelled like disinfectant, metal rails, and the lemon lotion the nurses used after washing their hands so often the skin around their knuckles cracked.
The ceiling above me was one long fluorescent blur.
When I tried to swallow, my throat felt stripped raw.
“Easy,” someone whispered.
I turned my head and saw my husband, Ethan, sitting beside my bed in a blue vinyl chair that looked too small for the grief it was holding.
His shirt was wrinkled.
His beard had grown in patchy and uneven.
There were purple half-moons under his eyes, and his hand was wrapped around mine like he had been afraid I would vanish if he let go.
When he saw that I was awake, his face broke.
“Oh, thank God,” he said.
My name is Mallory Hayes.
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