I’m in the donut room, waiting for a page to tell me Landon’s been transported to ICU, when Eilert comes in. Her eyes are red. Her face is drawn. I notice tears on her cheeks, and I almost faint.

“Did something happen?” I jump up from where I’m sitting.

She gives me a look. “Your cohort just got sliced and diced. What do you mean, did something happen?”

“Is he okay?” I ask her, seeing stars.

“Jones?” She shakes her head, confused. “What do you think?”

“Did it go okay?” I half gasp.

“If by okay you mean I operated on a guy I shoot the shit with every day, a guy who hours ago was grinning his fool head off, and then I walked down to the ICU and watched him start to wake up, moaning from the surgery that I just did, then yeah, it went great.”

A sob bursts from my throat.

“Also,” she says slowly, “two of my interns have been having a relationship. If you think that’s okay, then yeah, we’re good.”

My heart stops at her words.

“Sit down,” she says. “Or you can head on to the ICU. You think I didn’t see you crying while I was working on your boy? Just because I’m cutting doesn’t mean I’m blind. Why didn’t you tell me, Evie?”

I shake my head. I’m trying not to lose it.

“It’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.” She wraps an arm around me, and I sob my brains out as she tells me all about the surgery, how well he’s doing and how fit he is. “I don’t think he’ll have any complications. I don’t know, of course, but I don’t think so. He’ll be on the other side again in just a few months.”

“Months,” I cry.

“Yeah, two or three. And he might fall into the next cohort, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because he’s your boyfriend. He is your boyfriend? Not just your bed buddy?”

I nod, and then, because I’m such a basket case, and so riddled with guilt, I tell her everything, confessing so fully, her jaw drops.

Afterward, Eilert signs me in to the ICU as Landon’s next-of-kin, an easy move because he already listed me in the computer as his emergency contact.

Finally, I step into his little glass-walled room, and am stunned to see him extubated with his gray eyes cracked half open.

As soon as he sees me, his mouth seems to soften, and his eyes fill up with tears. I see his shoulders rise and fall, and see his mouth tug to the side in a wince—I guess from the pain of breathing.

I step slowly closer to him, my heart in my throat. When he doesn’t protest—he just looks at me with dazed eyes—I lean down and stroke his hair. His gaze lifts slowly up to mine, eyes rolling for a second as he struggles to keep them open.

“Evie,” he whispers hoarsely, “I can’t…feel them.” He inhales, then recoils from pain. My throat aches as tears fill his eyes.

I lean down, so he doesn’t have to look up to see me, and, after a moment’s hesitation, take his hand. I stroke his fingers. “You’re okay. You’re just still numb. You know, you just got out of surgery.”

He blinks, seeming half asleep. “Can you…cut me?”

“What?”

His eyes widen before they roll again. “To…see.”

My stomach flip-flops as I realize what he’s asking. “No.” I squeeze his hand between mine. “No, Landy. We don’t need to do that. It was Billard. Eilert, too. They did a good job. They were sure.”

His eyes open. “Please?” His face—dear fuck. I’ve never seen him look so anguished. Maybe earlier, in the hallway, when he told me about—

“I promise,” I whisper. “Trust me.”

His mouth tugs to the side, and his eyes shut. Two tears leak out.

I’m pretty sure my heart is broken.

Landon peeks at me once more before the morphine drags him back under. I spend the day beside him, stroking his hands and cheeks, and pouring over his labs and meds and vitals like the psycho cross-breed of a helicopter spouse and overzealous doctor.

I test his reflexes myself and spend hours analyzing every fresh scan, particularly the MRI he gets toward the afternoon to check the innervation near L1. His nerves are fine. His nerves are fine. He’s breathing fine. His chest tube’s fine.

For the next two days, he sleeps, and I work in a kind of numb, efficient stupor, stopping by his room all through the day and playing with his hair, kissing his hands, kissing the bridge of his nose.

I can tell he won’t remember any of it. He’s pale and sweaty, his eyes dazed from painkillers. He hasn’t even gotten up yet. When he does, he might tell me he hates me. How selfish that I even think about myself.

If only I’d just told him when we first talked. I’d do anything to change it now.

On the second night, his eyelids lift a little. His eyes roll around the room, and when they land on me, he croaks, “Which…ones?”

It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s asking. “It was L1. Just L1.”

He nods once, and I can see him struggle to re-focus. “Evie?”

“Yeah?”

His mouth goes sad and soft. “I’m…sorry that…I didn’t…stay.”

For just a second, he gives me this pointed look, and I know what he means.

That’s the only sign I have that hope’s not lost.

* * *

The third day, Eilert lets me know they’re going to cut back on Landon’s morphine and try to get him out of ICU. She gives me the day off, and I’m so grateful, I cry in the donut room over a strawberry cruller.

When I get to Landon’s room, his bed is elevated more than I’ve seen it since surgery. He’s sitting mostly upright, with his middle wrapped in bandages, and over those, a hard brace. He looks heavy-lidded and tight-jawed, the way people only ever look when they’re in pain and taking big-gun drugs.

I stop there in the doorway, my body freezing as his gaze finds mine. When one side of his mouth twitches in a small-smile greeting, I nearly faint with relief. The sensation is followed by a heavy wave of guilt. I step slowly inside the little glass room, folding my arms around myself.

Landon rests his head against the back of the bed and shuts his eyes. His lightly bearded face is grim. I can see pain in the tension of his shoulders, in his shallow, careful breaths.

When I murmur, “Hi,” his eyes peek open, and the misery I see there…

I swallow as tears sting my eyes.

“You had a baby.” His voice is rough and monotone, with no inflection. His eyes on mine are flat, his pale face a mask. I think of what he must be thinking—I did this to him, me with my horrible lie—and I feel like I might be sick.

I want so much to say I’m sorry—more than anything, I want to throw myself at him and beg forgiveness, not just for letting someone have our baby, but for letting years pass without telling him it happened. I’d do anything to make it right, but everything I have to say is meaningless, and much too late.

I wipe my eyes and nod slowly.

His eyes shut. “What…was it like?”

“What part?” I whisper. I step a little closer to his bed, inhaling deeply as I clench my shaking hands.

Landon looks down at his blanket-covered lap, and then back up at me. His face looks neutral. So impassive that I know he’s schooling it. “Did you hold her?”

“Yes.” I press my lips together, blink my leaking eyes. “I fed her. For the first night.” My voice wobbles.

Landon swallows, the corners of his mouth tugged sharply downward for a second.

“She was perfect, Landon. I loved her more than anything I’d ever seen…except for you.” I shake my head, breathing deeply so I don’t break down completely. “We looked for you…during the pregnancy. So I could get your take on things. We even ran an ad in the newspaper,” I say thickly.

Landon bites the inside of his cheek, tears welling in his eyes, and I can’t stay so far from him. I sit in the chair beside his bed, then stand and move the bed rail down as he blinks at me through tears.

I sit there on the edge of his mattress, wanting to touch him but not sure if I still can.

When he doesn’t recoil at my nearness, I take his hand and bring it to my throat, then tuck my chin down over it. With my sweaty fingertips, I stroke his knuckles. I can feel his guilt. It’s loud like mine, expanding in the air between us.

“It’s not your fault,” I murmur, looking at him so he can see I mean it. His lips press together. “Landon…when you got to the ER—when you first got in the other day—do you remember getting upset?”

He nods once, eyes closing. The man from the group home Landon ran away from tried to hold him down and hurt him once, when he was sleeping. Before that, the man had kicked him. One of his currently broken ribs has been broken before. So it’s no wonder the restraints on the backboard bothered him.

“I’m so glad you left. I fully understand why you left.” Had he stayed in-state, and been picked up by someone, he would have been punished for leaving the group home—maybe even sent to juvie.

I kiss his fingers.

“That was the right thing—what you did. It’s what I would have wanted, had you asked. But since my parents held your letters,” my voice cracks, “I didn’t know. That’s the only reason I didn’t write you back when you were still there at the group home. And since I didn’t…” I breathe deeply. “How would you have known to come to my house? How would you have known? You didn’t know.”

He shakes his head, a ghost-slight movement.

“I hate it that you had to run like that. And that I wasn’t with you,” I rasp. “But you don’t ever have to say you’re sorry. Ever.”

His face looks tired as he says, “Why, Evie?”

I search his voice for anger, but I hear none. Still, I let go of his hand and get back up so I have the distance that I need to answer honestly. Standing by his bed, I shake my head. “I couldn’t do it. I was seventeen, and my heart was in a million pieces. It wasn’t some kind of…selfishness that stopped me. I promise it wasn’t. I would have given everything up if it had felt like the right thing.”

Tears fall from my eyes, as I confess this—my deepest secret. “I knew someone else could do it better. The Deckerts—her…parents—they wanted her so badly, Landon. Their whole world was right for her, and mine just wasn’t. I feel like I should hate myself, like maybe something’s broken with me. That I didn’t…act illogical and run away to somewhere. Raise her in the woods.” I wipe my eyes, and Landon manages a small smile. “But really, I’m just grateful that it worked out like it did. I love them, the Deckerts. I love her. I still see her, Landon. That’s part of the reason I came here for school. Their family had moved here.”

He nods, tight-lipped, and I can’t read his face. Does he hate me? Does he blame me? How could he not?

After a moment, though, he reaches for me, and I sit back down on his bed with my breath held. His eyes on mine are warm and kind, not blaming. My fingers intertwine with his, and I try to give him more.

“When my heart stopped hurting for a baby right then, I knew she’d have a good life. And she does.”

He swallows, nodding. His eyes are on his legs.

“Do you hate me?” I ask, through my aching throat.

“Evie…I could never hate you.”

“Do you wish you could?” I whisper.

“No.” He shuts his eyes. His shoulders, drawn up tightly, slowly deflate. For a long time, he’s just still, his big hand limp in mine. I think he’s asleep when, in a murmured rasp, he says, “I found my mother, Evie. She has…four…other kids.” His hand twitches, as if he’s nodding off, and he pulls his eyelids open. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely. “Took something…”

“No, don’t be sorry. You need it.” I set his hand back on his lap and push the pillow by his head a little closer. I’m leaning in to place a kiss on Landon’s cheek when Billard walks in, looking so serious, it sends a shot of panic through me. He walks up to me and looks down, pushing a finger up against his horn-rimmed glasses.

“I’m sorry, next of kin,” he says in a friendly tone. “I hope you’re not too scarred from being in the OR.”

“No—I’m fine.” A necessary bluff…

He motions me out into the hallway, where he says, “You should have told me. Stuck up for yourself.”

I smile sadly, shaking my head. “I hesitate to say this out loud, but…I wanted to watch him. Over him,” I clarify. “I couldn’t have stood not being in there. I would rather have to do the entire surgery than not be there.”

He nods, and then he winks. “That’s a surgeon for you. We’re a different breed. I would do the same for my wife, no doubt. Still, though, I’m impressed you made it. Well done.”

“I don’t really feel that way,” I answer honestly.

He claps my shoulder. “Sometimes you don’t.”