It’s gross, but it’s a mildly unpleasant gross. Her back is bright red from her left hip to her right shoulder, dotted with yellow button-sized blisters. It’s shining wetly, and it sure doesn’t look fun, but I’ve seen grosser.

Bone sticking out of a guy’s arm? Check. Welts on my brother’s back so swollen and infected they looked like he was smuggling giant slugs underneath his skin? Check.

The right side of my mom’s face so black and blue I barely recognized her? Also check.

Like I said, Darcy’s burn is mildly unpleasant to look at. Like taking a shower after everyone else in your family, so the water only heats up to lukewarm.

“She’s doing well enough that we’re giving her a new type of dressing,” the nurse says, handing me latex gloves. I pull them on and they stretch like balloons on my hands.

“We’ll get you some extra-large ones,” the nurse says, adjusting hers. “First, we spray the wound with this anti-bacterial spray. Very important that you don’t let anything touch the wound, since at this point our number one concern is infection...”

The whole process is pretty simple: take a bandage off, put new stuff on Darcy’s back, put a new bandage on, tape it to her skin. The hardest part is the end, when we have to wrap her in bandages again, and she sits up, topless, with only a hospital gown hanging loosely around her neck as I hand her the roll, she wraps it around herself, and hands it back to me from the other side.

She’s hurt, I keep telling myself. She’s hurt and you’re helping, you goddamn pervert.

“Very nice,” the nurse says when we’re finished, checking out my work. “Make sure you don’t put these on too tightly, or they might irritate the wound. Now, you remember the first rule of burn care?”

Darcy and I look at each other.

“Don’t... fuck it up?” she asks.

“Right, don’t let anything that isn’t sterile touch the burn,” the nurse says, even though Darcy got it pretty wrong. “Let me get your vitals one more time, you can fill out some paperwork, and you’re ready to go home.”

* * *

A couple hours later, they let Darcy leave, or at least to the Snokamie River Inn where we’re staying. She doesn’t say anything the whole ride until I shut off the car and reach for the door handle.

Then: “Hey, Trent?”

She’s staring straight ahead, like she’s nervous about something. She’s wearing a t-shirt of mine that I brought her along with a pair of workout shorts, the only thing I had that would even come close to fitting her, so she wouldn’t have to wear a hospital gown out of the hospital.

The outfit she was wearing last night is... crispy.

“Yes, Darcy?” I answer, hand still on the door handle.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says, twirling one finger in the hem of the shirt she’s wearing, eyes still dead ahead through the windshield. “I really don’t mind going back in so they can change the bandages at the hospital, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. Just in case you’ve had second thoughts or something, I mean, I know back at the hospital you didn’t want to look like you were a bad friend or whatever in front of the nurses, but I can tell them that something came up in Los Angeles and you had to—”

I open the car door, cutting her off.

“For fuck’s sake,” I say mildly, and get out of the car. Darcy shoots me a frown as I leave, then slowly unbuckles herself as I walk around the car. I open her door before she finishes, offering her my hand.

She sighs, makes a face at it, but she takes it and I pull her up.

“Bring it up again and I’ll carry you into the woods so you’re eaten by bears,” I tell her.

“That seems kind of extreme,” she says, taking a deep breath, her face pale. I can tell that everything hurts, especially since the hospital didn’t want her taking anything more serious than ibuprofen once she left. I grab a plastic bag with her stuff and shut the car door.

“Also, I can walk,” she points out. “And I can walk away from bears just as well as you can, so your plan is dumb.”

“Grizzly bears can sprint at up to forty miles per hour,” I say.

“There aren’t grizzly bears here, just the little kind.”

“They’ve been reintroduced to the Pacific Northwest, and the little kind of bear can still fuck you up, so quit asking whether I really want to stay here and care for your disgusting back or not, because it’s happening.”

We walk through the lobby of the Snokamie River Lodge, which looks exactly like a lodge in Washington State should: made of enormous logs, supple leather furniture, vast stone fireplace with a mounted buffalo head on one side and an elk on the other.

“Thanks,” she finally says when we reach the other side of the lobby, and I look down at her.

Darcy breaks my fucking heart sometimes, because as much as she acts like she’s made of broken glass wrapped in barbed wire, I know her more than well enough to know better. And I hate that deep down, she thinks I only volunteered to help her so I’d look good to the nurses, or that I don’t really want to be here with her.

My life was pretty fucked up for a pretty long time, but at least I know what being loved feels like. Sometimes it was toxic and sometimes it fucking hurt, but my mom really did love me. My little brother Eli really did love me, even if they were awful at showing it.

But Darcy? There’s a reason she’s got spikes a mile long.

“You’re welcome,” I finally say, even though it isn’t one hundredth of what I want to say to her. We reach our rooms in more silence, then say goodnight to each other.

When I’m inside I don’t turn the lights on, just toss my keycard onto a table and slump onto a couch, my face in my hands. I accidentally bump my split lip and remember again that I’ve got it.

That black hole deep inside me is still there. Punching the guy who fucked up the fireworks didn’t make it go away. Knowing that Darcy is gonna be fine a couple of weeks didn’t make it go away.

It’s still there, small but heavy and sharp, gnawing at me. Saying things like maybe he should get lit on fire, see how he likes it, and I know better than to listen to it but times like this, when I’m tired and it’s dark and I can’t stop thinking about the way Darcy clenches her jaw in pain every time she moves the wrong way, that it’s the most tempting.

I take a deep breath. I clench my hands, unclench them, and don’t punch anything, not even a pillow. I just go to bed.