It’s Sal.
It has to be.
For a long second, after he steps inside the small room, Luke’s speechless.
The woman he loves stares back at him from the hospital bed.
Haunted. Beautiful. Alive.
Sal.
Luke would know her face in the fucking dark. Every inch of her he’s traced with his hands, his mind, his heart. His constant. His whole world. His life force.
His wife.
Emotion hits Luke all at once, and he has to blink away tears, choke down the knot in his throat.
God, he wants to fall to his knees right here and now. Nothing about this makes sense, and yet, here she is. Alive and breathing and whole and so goddamn beautiful that for a long second, he can’t breathe.
But then Sal’s eyes are meeting his and suddenly he can.
He is back. Because she is.
“Sal?” he begins. “It’s me, Luke.”
He moves slowly into the room, not wanting to scare her.
Sal, looking extremely tiny in the hospital bed, sits up, her hands folded in her lap. Wires and tubes run to her arms. Her chocolate-brown hair hangs loose around her face. Her big green eyes, blank with recognition, take him in.
“Hi, Luke,” she says with a small, uncertain smile.
Luke has to steady himself on the wall when he hears her speak. It’s the same smoky voice he loved. He always said Sal’s voice was like a melody. It made him want to write a song.
Her eyes land on his wedding ring. “I hear you’re my husband.” Her smile wavers for a second before she shakes off the hint of sadness.
“You hear right.”
Her slender hands twist together. “I’m sorry. I don’t have my ring. I—”
“Don’t you worry about that.”
He keeps his voice light, jovial. Pushing through his own pain to focus on his wife.
Sal feeling bad or afraid for not remembering him is not an option. He’ll do his damnedest to make sure she knows it’s not her fault. That she knows he’ll do everything in his power to help her.
Pulling up a chair at her bedside, Luke sits. He wraps his hands around the divider bar to give them something to do since it’s taking every unholy ounce of strength he has not to touch her. He’d give anything to pull her into his arms and tell her that he loves her. That he missed her so goddamn much he thought his own heart would break a million times over. But he resists, not wanting to overwhelm or frighten her. Seth had warned him she was skittish.
Luke’s eyes brush over Sal, shocked by her weight loss, by the hellish changes she’s been through. The first time he’s seen her in nine months.
Her hospital gown has slipped off one bony shoulder, making her look extremely small and fragile. Her face is gaunt, her cheeks hollow, her hair wild and bedraggled. But none of that matters to him, because even as thin as she is, she’s as beautiful as Luke remembers.
It takes him a minute to realize she’s studying him too. Her head cocked, her narrowed eyes float around his face. When she sees Luke’s caught her, she flushes and drops her eyes.
Clearing his throat, he says, “How are you doin’?”
“I’m okay. Confused.” She lets out a little sigh. “But I guess they probably already told you everything.”
Luke nods slowly. “They did.”