"Just say it," I tell him. "Get it over with."
"If you insist."
"I do."
"She's in recovery."
It takes a few beats for those words to sink in. I look at him again. "Recovery?"
He nods. "It was touch and go for a bit… punctured a lung, fractured some ribs, but we repaired the damage. She was lucky you were there when it happened. Your quick thinking saved her life."
I should feel relief from that, but I don't.
I didn't save her life.
I almost had it taken from her.
"Thank you," I say. "Can I see her?"
"Soon," he says. "She's still unconscious, but she'll be moved to a room in a little while. The nurse will come for you as soon as you can go in."
It's three hours later when they come get me.
I know for a fact this time, because instead of staring at the door, I stared at the clock. In that time, the old man got good news, the chatty woman fell asleep, and the mother was told her world would never be the same again.
The nurse leads me to a dim room in the ICU. I pause in the doorway, staring at the bed. Karissa lies completely still. She's breathing, but not on her own.
She's on a ventilator.
"You can have a few minutes," the nurse says, "but then I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Visiting hours are already over, so you'll have to come back tomorrow."
The nurse walks away, and I stand there in the doorway, watching her, listening to her heartbeat on the monitor. I don't wait for the nurse to come back.
I just leave.
I don't go far, though, ending up back in the waiting room. I camp out in a chair in the corner, getting no sleep. People come in and out all night long and well into the next afternoon. I wander around the hospital occasionally, passing the minutes in a daze.
I'm standing along a far wall near the ICU twenty-four hours after Karissa was brought in, still wearing the same clothes, covered in her blood. I stare out the window, into the parking lot, watching as the cars come and go, when someone approaches from behind. "Mr. Vitale?"
I turn around, coming face-to-face with the doctor who delivered the news to me yesterday. He stalls when he gets a good look at me, stammering a moment. "You've been here this whole time?"
"Yes."
"You should go home," he tells me. "Get some rest."
I glance down at myself and shake my head. "There's nothing there for me."
"At least get cleaned up," he says. "Let me get you a pair of scrubs. We have showers you can use."
I want to argue, to refuse, but a shower sounds good right about now. I follow the man to the locker room on the next floor. He hands me a pair of dark blue scrubs, telling me to take my time.
I stand under the warm spray for a long time, washing the red tint from my skin, trying to absolve myself of the memories but they haunt me. Every time I close my eyes, I see her ashen face, the stunned look in her eyes, the blood gushing from beneath her skin.
I shut the water off eventually, drying off and pulling on the scrubs. I discard my suit right in the trash before walking out. I stroll around the hospital again and head back to the ICU. I make my way to Karissa's room, pausing outside the doorway.
She's awake.
The machines are still beeping but the ventilator is gone. A nurse stands beside her bed, checking her vitals, as Karissa shifts around a bit. I watch curiously, quietly, waiting until the nurse is done. The lady walks out, flashing me a smile.
Once she's gone, I slowly step inside the room, watching her. Her eyes drift toward me. I'm not sure what to say. An apology is on the tip of my tongue, another fucking apology, but she breaks the silence and speaks first.
"Stealing scrubs again?"
Her voice is scratchy and faint, but she's joking around. It instantly sets me at ease, relieving the tension I've carried in my muscles since yesterday. I stroll closer, encouraged by the fact that she didn't tell me to get the fuck out. "You said we borrow them, remember?"
"I remember."
"So I'm trying out this look again. The black suits just aren't doing it for me anymore."
"I like it," she says, smiling softly. "You look… doctor-y."
"Doctor-y," I repeat, pulling a chair closer to her bed and sitting down. "I'll have to remember that."
Her smile wavers a bit as she stares at me. She reaches her hand out toward me, and it shakes when she tries to hold it there. Sighing, I grasp ahold of it, pressing it between both of my hands. Her skin is ice cold.
"You scared me, sweetheart," I say quietly.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," I say. "Never apologize to me. This isn't your fault… it's mine. If anyone should be apologizing, it's me."
She slowly shakes her head. "The doctor says you saved my life."
"I put you in that situation to begin with," I say. "You shouldn't have been there. You left, and I told you not to come back… I said if you walked out, to keep going, to never come back. Why were you there? What were you thinking?"
Her voice is even quieter now as she answers. "I missed you."
"You missed me," I say, laughing with disbelief. "Seriously… you missed me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
She stares at me again. She doesn't answer.
"You should've been rejoicing. I told you I wouldn't come after you, and I didn't. You were free and clear."
"That's the problem," she says. "I knew you weren't coming."
"I thought that's what you wanted, Karissa. You wanted me to let you go, so I let you go."
"I thought that's what I wanted, too, but what I wanted was the option. I wanted to have a choice. I wanted you to ask."
"I did ask."
"No, you didn't. You said you were asking me to stay, but you never asked. You never do."
It makes no sense to me. It's a petty argument. It doesn't matter how I worded it… if she wanted to go, she would go, and she did. She left.
And I don't understand why she would come back.
"I missed you," she says quietly as I stroke her hand. "I didn't expect to miss you as much as I did. I missed talking to you… missed the way you tease me, the way you look at me. I hate the things you do… I hate parts of you, monster you can sometimes be, but I don't hate the man I fell in love with. And he's the one I missed."
"I'm not a good man, Karissa."
"You're not a bad one, either, Ignazio."