The ceiling changed again. It was now cold white tiles and buzzing lights that hummed louder than they should have. I blinked at them, numb, disconnected, unable to process where Khalil was or if he was even behind me.
“What’s your pain level on a scale of one to ten?” a nurse asked, walking beside me.
I turned my head to meet her eyes. “I don’t know yet,” I said quietly.
She nodded like she understood, but I doubted she did.
They took me into a trauma room, one wall open to the hall, and began hooking me to machines before I could ask any questions. Wires were clipped to my chest, a cuff tightened around my arm, and a nurse lifted my shirt to check for bruising. I let them do whatever they needed. I didn’t care what was broken.
Not if Khalil was still lying in the street.
Not if he never made it out of that car.
“Can someone check on the driver?” I asked finally, my voice thin and hoarse.
The nurse beside me glanced at her chart. “You mean the male passenger?”
“No,” I corrected, eyes locked on hers. “The driver. He was unconscious at the scene. Khalil Bulgari.”
“I’ll find out,” she said, but she said it like she was trying to quiet me, not like she intended to do it.
I looked away.
I wasn’t sure what hurt more, the fear that he might die, or the knowledge that even if he lived, nothing between us would ever be the same.
He wouldn’t forget the argument.
He wouldn’t forget the swerve.
And if he pieced together that I saw Sophia and Dallas before the crash and didn’t say anything, I wasn’t sure he’d forgive that either.
I lay there, staring up at the ceiling while the beeping of machines filled the room. My body ached, my side throbbed, and my chest burned with the kind of guilt that didn’t leave bruises but still left marks.
I wanted news.
I wanted updates.
But most of all, I wanted Khalil to open his eyes and be angry. I needed him to yell. I needed him to curse at me. Because as long as he was yelling, he was still breathing.
And I could live with the rest.
Time didn’t move inside that room.
The machines beeped, the lights buzzed, and people came and went, but none of it mattered. Not when every breath I took felt like a countdown. Not when I kept waiting for someone to walk through the door and tell me whether or not he made it.
I couldn’t cry.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to—I just couldn’t. The tears sat too high in my chest and too far behind my eyes, like they refused to fall unless someone said the words out loud. Until then, I would stay stuck in this purgatory between hope and regret.
Eventually, a nurse came in and handed me a pain pill and a paper cup of water.
“Any news?” I asked, my voice quieter now.
She paused for a second longer than I liked, then gave me a vague, rehearsed smile. “I don’t know yet.”
I nodded and took the pill. It scraped down my throat, making me feel even more guilty because it was my drug habit that got me into this in the first place.
She adjusted my IV, checked my vitals, and scribbled something on the chart. I didn’t ask for her name. I didn’t want to remember anything about this moment except whether Khalil lived or died.
