In the beginning, it was hard to measure the improvements. They would happen in the slowest, most drawn-out increments. It took that whole first day for the fever to subside. But in the following two days, the improvements came by the hour. Starting with her cognition, the fever giving way to cool, clear-headed thought patterns, Clara’s real personality coming back. She and the nurses held a little celebration when she was back to full cognitive capacity. No more forgotten names of nurses. No more hallucinations at 3 a.m. Non-fever Clara, a new favorite of the nurses, was using her call button a lot less often.

By the second day she had become physically independent, getting her mobility back. Even her cardio, or at least what she could muster from a few laps around her floor. She had felt none of the tightness or the burning from her “cardio” in that courtyard.

Now she was practically speed-walking her way out of the hospital, pushing open the glass door with a rush of adrenaline. She needed to be outside and free again in the fresh air. She had spent far too much time in the stale, medically circulated oxygen of the hospital. Far too long lying down. Far too long a victim. Clara emerged in the pristine afternoon sunshine, and she was a new woman.

Bren would be first to meet the new Clara, partly because Clara’s car had been driven back home by her, and also because—while she felt amazing—she knew that she looked like hell. She’d already put Sam through enough. He didn’t need to see that part of her. Clara planned to go home and take a three-hour shower before she could even think of meeting up with Sam. She’d be sure to fit, somewhere in there, a three-hour hug with Molly.

Still waiting for her ride, the thought of her daughter and taking a shower made her painfully impatient. The nervous energy got her walking circles around the small shuttle-bus terminal right outside the main doors. She walked lap after lap, probably looking like an escapee from the mental ward. On each lap, on the road side of the terminal, she would peer down the street, hoping to see her car zooming up, hoping Bren would come and take her the hell away from this place.

But on each lap, nothing.

Very soon after, she had resigned herself to sitting and looking anywhere but the road. It was something similar to watching a pot of water come to a boil . . . until its white foam roiled over the lid and sizzled onto the stovetop.

Her boiling water had arrived. Her hot date, Sam.

He had parked along the curb, driver’s window rolled own, his grin lit up by the low afternoon sun. In a sexy drawl he asked, “Looking for a ride?”

Clara rushed toward his car without a word. There was nothing to say. Nothing to do except dive into his arms after he’d gotten out. He picked her up, lifting her, swinging her around in a 180. He was surprisingly rough with her, but it was all the better. She might have been sick for a day, but it didn’t turn her into porcelain.

Sam seemed so excited, squeezing her and asking, “How do you feel?!”

“I’m just . . .” Her smile made it hard to form the words right.

He laughed and said, “What?”

“I’m just so glad to see you.”

“You’re glad to see me? I didn’t think it would ever happen again. I thought you were . . . I dunno . . .”

“Nah,” she said.

“Yeah, I did.” His smile faded a little. “I thought that was it.”

She shrugged. “Surprise?”

When they finally broke their embrace, Clara noticed a news van pulling up and parking behind Sam’s car.

“Uh-oh,” he said, watching another arrive from the opposite direction, parking across the street. “Here come the vultures.”

“You wanna help a girl escape?”

Sam opened Clara’s door and helped her in, the whole time looking around, head on a swivel, likely looking out for more incoming platoons of paparazzi.

“We seriously just made it,” he said, sliding into his seat and starting the engine. “Any later and they would’ve started up with the interviews. They know what you look like.”

“How?”

“You made the news.”

Clara didn’t like knowing that. “How?”

He chuckled a little, shaking his head as he pulled the car out of the parking space. “It was how I found what hospital you were at. So I guess we owe them a little gratitude. Who would ever think the fifth estate would actually serve the people?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ah, never mind.”

She reached up and flipped his sun visor, getting a brief but frightening look at her face. “Holy Jesus.”

“What?” She turned to Sam and found him looking in his rearview. “What, are they following us now?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “Never mind.”

She had expected her appearance to be altered in some way from the incident, and from spending days in a hospital. That was a given. But the face staring back at her had the pale hollowness of someone who had survived something.

While Sam drove, she had the time to study his face more carefully, too. She watched him closely as he focused on merging onto the highway. He’d undergone some transformation, too. And like hers, it was not for the best. But she rather liked it that way, the two of them carrying the scars of survival, a little more depth to an already burgeoning array of stress lines. The most astonishing thing about Sam was his eyes, the dark circles around them. Even when the sun shone on his face, they still resembled black pits of worry.

“So, how have you been?” she asked. “You’ve been sleeping okay?”

“Why?”

“Because it looks like you’ve been on a three-day heroin binge.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said, laughing. “It looks like you’ve joined me.”

“I’ve got an excuse. What’s yours?”

Sam’s laughter quickly died off, and in the following silence she almost felt bad about it.

“Clara, I was right with you in the hospital. Even when I wasn’t.”

“I know.” She knew how much sleep he’d missed, how many more of those stress wrinkles she was responsible for. “Sam?”

“Clara?”

“I think you look hot.”

Sam laughed.

“Yeah.” She placed a hand on his thigh. “Remember that edgy, junkie look that was so popular with models in the nineties?”

“Yeah. Where did that go?”

“I don’t know. I think they all died.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I know. Aren’t we?” She moved her hand up higher, squeezing a mound of his quadricep muscle between her thumb and index finger.

He took a deep breath, and then made another lane change, to the off-ramp.

“Where are you going?” She laughed, a little nervously now. “Where are you taking me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Anywhere.”

A moment later they had pulled off the road and into a dirt parking lot behind a gas station.

“Sam, I think you’re taking that junkie comment too literally.”

One of his hands undid his seat belt while the other shifted the car into park. Clara wasn’t sure what was happening, but she liked the developments. She liked where he was heading, especially his leaning over to her, his sleep-deprived face suddenly looking bright and refreshed, and hungry.

“Sam?”

He stopped midway to her. “What?”

“I just got out of a hospital. I’m pretty gross.”

He shrugged.

“I might be contagious.”

“I might be, too. I was there in the courtyard.”

“But you weren’t fully exposed.”

He smiled. “Then fully expose me.”

Clara let her own seat belt go with a click, but before she could slip it off, he’d already shifted over and straddled the center console, already wrapping an arm around her and moving in—albeit very awkwardly—for a kiss.

She closed her eyes when they met, feeling his wet warmth at her mouth. The weight of his body, too, slightly off balance and still sitting and leaning into her awkwardly. But she liked it. She loved his efforts, his desperation. She’d loved everything he’d done in the past several days for her and Molly. And now this, and whatever else life had in store for them.

* * *

“What’s this?” Clara asked, watching her daughter in mild bewilderment. “Is this something new?”

Molly had been dancing a lot more than Clara had ever remembered, her little girl flying through the house as if in some invisible musical, up and down the stairs and back again with arm flails and head tosses, wrapping everything up in one big dramatic swan dive onto the La-Z-Boy recliner.

Clara shot a nervous glance to Bren. “Please tell me it’s just sugar and not permanent.”

Molly crawled off the recliner and was now on her hands and knees, crawling across the carpet, crawling over to Clara.

“I think she’s just happy you’re home,” Bren said.

“I think she’s absolutely insane.” Clara reached down to give Molly a hand off the floor. “Isn’t that right, Molly?”

Molly ignored the hand and just grappled her little fingers around Clara’s ankles, holding on tight, head down, turning herself into dead weight.

“She’s not letting you go,” Bren said, laughing.

“Good girl, Molly,” Sam said. “Don’t ever let her go.”

Clara shot Sam a dirty look before bending her knees and squatting, meeting her daughter on the ground, eye level, kiss level. “You’re never ever gonna let me go, huh?”

Molly’s face turned up from the carpet and a devilish smile emerged.

“Aww,” Clara said. “There’s my little psycho.”

Molly nodded emphatically.

“I missed you. You missed me?”

Still nodding.

“Give me a kiss?”

Molly smooched her face and then bolted back up to her feet so that the show could resume.

“I’m sure she’ll wear herself out,” Bren said as the show moved into another room. “It’s the only way I could get her to sleep last night, her knowing you were coming home and everything. She just about blew a gasket with all the singing and dancing.” Bren laughed. “I almost blew one, too, waiting for it to end.”

The show had continued to fade further away, getting a little muffled and distant.

“I have to soak it all up,” Clara said with a sigh. “Gotta enjoy it now while it lasts.”

“Nah,” Bren said. “Take your time.”

“I feel like I’ve aged twenty-five years from this shit. Molly too, probably. Pretty soon she’ll go the way of all teenaged daughters and not want to have anything to do with me.”

“Nah,” Bren said again. She was being polite.

“By the way, guys, thank you so much for not having some crazy surprise welcome-home party thing. I mean, it would have been a nice gesture and everything, but—”

“Oh, well, that reminds me,” Bren said.

“No . . .”

“Yep,” Sam said, nodding, grinning. “We’ve got a little something for you.”

“What is it?”

“Just a little something. Follow us to the dining room?”

“Come on guys . . .” Clara walked hesitantly behind Bren and Sam. At each step, she felt more dread for what was behind the dining room door. “I just want to take a shower and then go to bed forever. I’m serious.”

“Straight through here,” Sam said, holding open the door.

“No,” Clara said again, this time feeling her voice fading as her mental capacity went toward a slow acceptance of her fate with a surprise party. And then the quick preparation to be social and present, and to not look like a corpse.

“Surprise!”