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elsblunt · 27 days ago

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CHAPTER ONE ━━ Three Weeks Gone By

𖥔 ݁˖ ━ word count: 5.9K

𖥔 ݁˖ ━ warnings: descriptions of injury, smoking, and mental health issues

𖥔 ݁˖ ━ links: my masterlist, where’s my love masterlist, ao3 link

𖥔 ݁˖ ━ author’s note: sorry for the emotional damage lol. also keep in mind i am not a doctor (yet) so take the diagnoses and hospital things with a grain of salt pls. this is just fanfiction so nothing will be entirely accurate

THE HOSPITAL waiting room is too white.

That’s the first thing Paige notices—like really, fully notices. She’s been sitting here for God knows how long, but it only hits now, as the adrenaline thins from her blood and leaves her shaking in the absence of it: everything is just so fucking white. The walls. The doors. The fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Even the chairs are some awful shade of muted off-white that looks like it’s been scrubbed with bleach a hundred too many times.

Paige sits there, elbows on her knees, fingers laced so tightly together it feels like they might fuse. Her knuckles are white. Her mouth tastes like copper and she still hasn’t blinked long enough to let her eyes water. The floor is this dull, speckled tile she’s been staring at for what feels like hours, just so she doesn’t have to look at anything else. Just so she doesn’t have to see the blood that’s probably still under her nails, even though Nika shoved a pack of wipes at her the second she arrived and told her to clean up. She did. She changed, too—black sweatpants and a UConn long-sleeve Nika must’ve yanked from Paige’s laundry pile. Her original clothes are somewhere in a plastic bag, splattered with blood and glass and God knows what else. She doesn’t want to think about them.

She doesn’t want to think about anything.

But she can’t stop.

The thing is—she knew. She knew it was bad the second she saw Azzi slumped against the passenger side door, face pale and lips parted, seatbelt digging into her chest like it was trying to hold her soul in. Paige doesn’t remember screaming, but her throat still burns, vocal cords raw. She doesn’t remember leaning across the center console, glass shredding her shirt and arms, only that she touched Azzi’s neck with shaking fingers and begged, “Please. Please, wake up. Please, Azzi. Baby, come on. Please—”

The word has been on a loop in her head since.

Please.

She hears footsteps before she registers Nika shifting next to her, their thighs pressed close between the hospital chairs. Caroline’s on her other side, arms crossed tightly over her chest, jaw clenched like she’s trying to keep her heart from falling out of her mouth. Neither of them have said much since they got here. Nika tried at first—asked questions, rubbed Paige’s back, offered water. But Paige couldn’t answer. She was too busy staring at the doors, waiting for someone in scrubs to walk through and change everything.

She still is.

Her leg bounces, then stops. Starts again. Her stomach turns with every passing second. It’s almost worse now, now that she’s been cleared. Now that she’s fine.

Fine.

That’s what the nurse said after dabbing the cuts on her cheek and arm. “You’re lucky,” she’d told her, “Could’ve been a lot worse.”

Yeah. Paige knows.

But also, not really. Not hardly at all. She walked away, sure, but Azzi didn’t. Azzi’s still behind those swinging double doors, hooked up to machines Paige doesn’t understand, and the blonde is out here sitting on her hands like that means something.

Nika moves beside her again. “Do you want me to call your mom?” she asks gently, like she’s trying not to scare a wild animal.

Paige blinks slowly. Her voice cracks when she says, “No.”

She’s not ready to call either of her parents yet. Because, really, what is there to say? Hi guys, I crashed the car and Azzi’s unconscious and maybe dying. Also, my hands won’t stop shaking and I don’t know how to breathe properly anymore. That’ll go over well.

God.

She glances at the clock on the far wall. The red numbers burn into her vision. Almost 1 AM. It’s been… what? Two hours? Three? Time’s folding in on itself. She remembers calling Katie at some point, her voice high and frantic and barely able to form words. “It’s bad. She’s not… I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong. I think it’s her head.” Katie had said she and Tim were getting in the car. Said to hang tight. It’s six and a half hours from Virginia to Connecticut, maybe a little under six if they speed. It might as well be a lifetime.

Paige feels like she’s living inside a nightmare someone else wrote.

And then—

The door opens.

A doctor walks out. Late thirties, maybe early forties. Blue scrubs, dark hair, clipboard in one hand. He looks tired. Too tired. He scans the room, and when his eyes land on Paige, he approaches.

“You’re Paige?” he asks gently.

Her mouth’s too dry to answer. She nods.

He glances at Nika and Caroline, but directs his voice to her. “I’m Dr. Kamal. I’ve been overseeing Azzi’s case.”

Case.

Like she’s a fucking file.

Paige nods again, standing without realizing she’s doing it.

“I want to be as transparent with you as I can,” Dr. Kamal says. “Azzi sustained a traumatic brain injury—a moderate diffuse axonal injury. That means there was widespread damage to the connections in her brain due to the sudden movement during the crash. It’s not uncommon in high-impact side collisions, especially when the head whips hard in one direction.”

Paige swallows. Her ears are ringing. She forces herself to nod again, even though her body is beginning to shake.

“She also has a couple fractured fingers on her right hand, some cracked ribs, and some minor internal bleeding that we were able to stop quickly. The most serious concern is the brain trauma. She’s currently in what we call a post-traumatic coma. It’s not medically induced—it’s her body’s response to the injury.”

The words feel like a foreign language.

Fractured fingers, cracked ribs, internal bleeding, coma.

“So she’s…” Paige sways slightly. Nika moves closer, subtly bracing her elbow. Paige barely notices.

“She’s unresponsive,” Dr. Kamal says, voice gentler now. “Her vitals are stable. Her body’s doing what it needs to do to heal, which is… rest. Sometimes for days. Sometimes lo my er. We won’t know the full extent of the injury—or what recovery could look like—until she wakes up.”

“If she wakes up,” Paige hears herself say. Her voice is hoarse and empty. It doesn’t sound like herself.

Dr. Kamal doesn’t rush to correct her. He hesitates. “We’re hopeful,” he responds. “Young, healthy patients often have strong recoveries. But brain injuries… they’re unpredictable.”

There it is.

The line no one ever wants to hear. The one that means: We don’t know. We can’t promise you anything.

Paige tastes acid in the back of her throat and doesn’t know if it’s from fear or guilt or both. She drove. She was driving. She was the one behind the wheel. And now Azzi is behind glass, behind monitors, behind time, and Paige is standing here like she didn’t cause it all.

“Can I see her?” she asks, voice breaking on the second word.

The doctor says, “She’s in the ICU. We’ll do one at a time, for now. You can sit with her.”

Paige nods too fast. Her vision goes fuzzy at the edges. Nika squeezes her arm as she steps past them, toward the hallway Dr. Kamal gestures to.

The walls blur as she walks. Her footsteps feel uneven, like she’s not quite connected to the ground.

And then she sees her.

Azzi.

So still.

Wires trailing from her arms, an oxygen tube nestled beneath her nose, her head slightly turned to the side. Her curls are pushed back awkwardly, dried blood still cli my ing to her hairline, her temple wrapped with a gauze bandage. Her face looks too pale, too quiet. Like it doesn’t belong to her.

Paige sinks into the bedside chair slowly and doesn’t say anything for a long time.

She just watches.

Azzi’s chest rises and falls. Slow. Machine-paced. Mechanical.

She reaches out, touches Azzi’s left hand gently, the one without broken fingers. It’s warm, at least. That has to mean something.

“I’m sorry,” Paige whispers, barely audible. “I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t let go.

She just keeps sitting there, hand in Azzi’s, like maybe if she holds on long enough, Azzi will come back to her.

Like maybe love might count for something, even here. Even now. Even after everything

And still—please.

Please.

Please come back.

THE FIRST WEEK feels like it doesn't belong to real life.

It moves too slow and too fast all at once, like time can't make up its mind. Everything around Paige is hazy, like it's all being filtered through water or fog or static—like she's watching herself from somewhere else. There's this distant awareness in the back of her head that she should be falling apart, crying in corners, screaming at God or punching walls or something, but none of that happens. It doesn't even feel like an option. She's stuck in this weird in-between place. Numb, but raw. Hollow, but aching.

It's almost worse than full-blown grief. This version of grief is shapeless. Unfinished.

Because Azzi's not gone. But she's not here either.

She's in that bed, looking pale and frail and hooked up to so many machines Paige has started to hate the sounds of beeping. She's breathing, kind of. Sort of. But she's not there. She hasn't opened her eyes. She hasn't said anything. She hasn't squeezed Paige's hand. She hasn't done anything, not since that night.

And Paige keeps waiting. For something. For anything.

The doctors were hopeful at first—cautiously optimistic, they said. It's common with TBIs for people to wake up in the first few days. Some don't, sure, but a lot do. The brain is strange and resilient and unpredictable. That's what they said. Every day, they repeat some version of it with softer voices and more careful phrasing. It's still early, it's not uncommon, we're watching for signs, we just have to wait.

They don't say she might not wake up. But it lingers there, just under the surface, every time they talk.

By day four, Paige stops listening. She hears the words but doesn't let them inside.

Katie and Tim haven't left since that first night. They're always here—always hovering, always holding Azzi's hand, always whispering soft things to her like she's just sleeping. Jon and Jose showed up on day three, bags still packed from a weekend trip they had to cut short. Jon cried when he walked in and saw her. Jose didn't. He just stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, face pinched, looking like someone had gut-punched him. The whole family moves like they're trying to hold each other up, like if one person crumbles, they all will. Paige has never been so grateful that she's close with them, that she feels like part of them.

She's there from open to close every day. Only leaves when she absolutely has to. Her mornings start with the training staff—rehab for her ACL. It's almost a relief, the structure of it. Her knee's almost fully recovered now, so the work is mostly just maintenance. Stability drills, lateral movement, a little shooting here and there. It's easy, in the way that routine is easy. She doesn't talk much during it. The trainers try to make small talk. She doesn't answer unless she has to. (They think it's weird, she knows that. Usually, she's essentially incapable of shutting up. Now, it's all she really does.)

After rehab, she heads straight back to the hospital. She doesn't even shower sometimes. Just throws on clean clothes from the gym bag she keeps in Aubrey’s car (she’s been letting her drive it considering her own is totaled) and goes. Sometimes, the nurses give her a look like they wish she'd go home, rest, sleep like a normal person. She doesn't care. She doesn't sleep anyway.

And when visiting hours end—when someone finally makes her leave—she goes back to her apartment and wants to crawl out of her skin.

It's not right without Azzi. Too quiet, too cold, too empty, despite having two other roommates.

Each night, she goes to Azzi's apartment and sits on her bed for just a few minutes. She stares at the dent in the pillow where Azzi's head used to rest (when it wasn't on Paige's chest or in Paige's bed), traces the edge of the blanket they used to fight over, looks at the random pairs of socks Azzi always leaves scattered near the hamper. There's a sweatshirt crumpled on the desk chair that still smells like her shampoo—she must've worn it that day. Paige presses her face into it one night and just stands there for ten minutes, breathing it in like that might bring her back.

She hates it.

All of it.

Everything.

She lays down. Sometimes in her bed, sometimes in Azzi's. But she never really sleeps.

Most nights, she ends up in the gym, ball in hand, headphones in. Shooting until her arms ache. Until her mind finally shuts up. Until it's late enough that she can go home and pretend she's tired.

A couple of times, the night nurse lets her stay at the hospital. Just quietly waves her past the desk like she didn't see anything, like she's giving Paige this secret gift no one's allowed to talk about. She curls up on this tiny cot that's basically just a folding chair with a sheet on it and doesn't sleep there either—but at least it's next to Azzi.

At least it's close.

She stares at the monitors, the rise and fall of Azzi's chest, the soft hiss of oxygen, the tube down Azzi's throat. She watches the numbers even though she doesn't fully understand what they mean. She listens to the way the IV pump clicks every ten seconds, counts the spaces between beeps. She keeps waiting for something to change.

It never does.

Geno shows up more than she expects him to. Doesn't really say much—just brings coffee, makes sure Azzi's parents have everything they need, stands next to Paige in the hallway sometimes and says things like "she's strong" and "she's gonna fight through this." He's different lately. Not that he was ever cold exactly, just gruff, but there's a softness to him now that Paige isn't used to. He talks slower (if that's even possible). Doesn't tease as much. On the third day, she thinks he almost cried. She pretends she didn't see.

The rest of the team filters in and out every day. Ice and Amari come in the mornings, bring muffins or coffee or snacks from the student union. Nika and Aaliyah and Aubrey stop by in the afternoons. Caroline and Colleen are here more often than not. Ines, too, who tends to hang out with Jon and Jose the most. Sometimes, people just sit with Paige in the waiting room for a bit, not even saying much. Everyone's worried. Everyone keeps checking in. Everyone looks at her like she might break at any second.

But she doesn't.

She just keeps going. Numb, repetitive, and waiting.

Her parents show up on day five. She hadn't really planned on calling them—hadn't even wanted to—but Nika forced the issue. Said they deserved to know. Said Paige couldn't keep doing this without family.

So, she called.

Told her mom in a flat voice what happened, recited it like a police report. She didn't cry or pause. Just said it. Said she was fine. Said Azzi wasn't. Said she didn't know anything else. When she hung up, she felt like the inside of her chest had been scraped out.

Less than twenty-four hours later, her mom and dad were in the waiting room together. Despite the fact that Amy lives in Montana and Bob lives in Maryland. They'd clearly coordinated, and they both hugged her like they didn't care about anything but her being alive.

Her mom kept whispering, "Baby," like it was a prayer. Her dad didn't say much, but he didn't leave her side for two days.

She doesn't know what to do with that.

She doesn't know what to do with any of this.

The thing is... she still doesn't believe it. Not really. She walks into that room every day expecting to hear Azzi's voice. Like maybe this was all a bad joke, and Azzi will sit up with her perfect bunny smile and say something dumb like, "Did I miss practice?"

But it never happens.

She just lays there, still. Like time forgot her.

And Paige keeps showing up anyway. Keeps waiting. Keeps whispering, Please, please, please, under her breath.

She can't let herself imagine what happens if Azzi doesn't wake up. She just can't.

Because then the world would end. Because then she would end.

THE SECOND WEEK is a lot heavier, if that's even possible. Like the weight of it all has finally caught up to Paige, lodged deep in her chest like a stone she can't cough out.

At first, it was just numbness—an ache behind her ribs and a dull ringing in her ears she tries to ignore. But now, it's sharp. It has teeth and edges and it keeps biting into her until she's bleeding with no bandages.

They move Azzi on the seventh day. Out of the hospital in Connecticut and into a new one back home, closer to her family's house in Virginia. It makes sense, everyone keeps saying. Paige even says it, to her teammates and to the doctors and to Geno and to herself, over and over again like that'll make it easier to swallow.

"She'd be going home after the semester anyway," Katie had told her gently, hand resting on Paige's shoulder. "And the doctors there are great. They'll keep a closer eye. It's just... it's better this way."

Paige had nodded because what else is she supposed to do? Scream? Cry? Handcuff herself to Azzi's fucking hospital bed?

Because the truth is, it doesn't feel better. It feels worse. It feels like a door closing that she's not ready to let shut.

And what makes is unbearable is that Paige can't go with her. Finals. A stupid stretch of exams she doesn't even care about anymore, tethering her to Connecticut like a leash. She tells herself she can push through two more days. Two. Just until the ninth day. But every hour she’s not in the same state as Azzi feels like a betrayal.

She finishes her last exam in a daze. She can’t even remember what class it’s for when she walks out of the lecture hall. She doesn’t care. Her bag’s slung over one shoulder, her legs carrying her on autopilot to her apartment just long enough to shove some clothes in a duffel and drive straight to the airport.

She doesn’t eat. She barely drinks water. The whole flight to D.C. feels like she’s holding her breath.

Bob meets her at the airport, and the second she sees him, her whole body just folds into him like she’s five years old again and not twenty-three. He hugs her tight. Doesn’t say much, which she’s grateful for. He’s always known when to leave space for silence.

She spends that night at his place. It’s cleaner than usual. She sees Drew right before his bed time, holds him a little longer than usual. Bob offers to drive her to the hospital in the morning, but Paige is already out the door before the sun finishes rising.

And then she sees Azzi again. Hooked up to a different set of monitors, in a room with warmer lighting but the same godawful stillness. Same absence.

Katie hugs her, and so does Tim. Jon and Jose do, too, their honorary older sister. Jon squeezes her tightly and Jose presses a coffee into her hand that she doesn’t end up drinking.

The nurses know her by name. They let her sit beside Azzi for hours, fingers loosely curled around Azzi’s hand, tracing the veins in her wrist, the soft ridge of her knuckles. She whispers things sometimes. Little nothings. Jokes Azzi would laugh at if she were awake. Updates about practice. Apologies.

She says “I love you” more than anything else.

No one tells her she’s saying it too much. No one dares.

Time warps. She’s either in that room or driving between it and her dad’s house or the Fudd’s. Sometimes she sleeps in the guest room at their place. Usually, she doesn’t sleep at all.

She’s quiet a lot now. Like if she talks too much, she’ll lose her grip on whatever’s holding her together. When people ask her how she’s doing, she lies. Easy lies. “I’m okay.” “Hanging in there.” “Just tired.” And no one calls her on it, because what else could they say?

The only thing she actually feels is anger.

She can’t remember when it started—probably sometime around day ten—but it’s here now, buzzing just beneath her skin like static.

She’s not proud of it, but most of it is aimed upward. At God. At the sky. At the version of faith she’s been clinging to for as long as she can remember.

She’s always believed in Him. Trusted that there was a plan, that there was purpose in the pain. Her ACL injury? Okay. She could understand that. A lesson in patience, in humility, in discipline. She got it.

But this?

This doesn’t make sense.

Why Azzi? Why now, when things were finally getting better again? Why, when Paige was just starting to feel whole?

She’s never been the kind of person who yells at God, but she’s finding it harder and harder to pray these days. When she tries, the words catch in her throat. It feels fake. Hollow. Like she’s talking to someone who’s not even listening.

She sits in the hospital chapel almost every day. Not to pray, just to sit. The silence there feels different—less medical, more ancient. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t.

But on day twelve, it breaks her.

She’d gone outside for air. The room had felt too small, too sterile, too suffocating. Azzi hadn’t moved an inch all day, not that she ever does. Her monitors beeped on like they always do. Paige’s throat hurt from holding everything in.

She found a bench behind the hospital, near the staff parking lot. It was late—close to the end of visiting hours. And cold. She sat with her hoodie up, trying to disappear into herself.

That’s when the man sat beside her. Not too close, just close enough to be real. Older, probably in his sixties. Tired eyes. A pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket and one already lit between his fingers.

He didn’t ask her anything. Didn’t tell her she looked too young to be there or ask if she was okay. He just nodded, once, and offered the pack without looking.

She stared at it for a second. And then she took one.

It burned her throat. Made her cough the first drag. Made her eyes water.

But it gave her something to focus on. Something sharp. Something that hurt in a way she could understand.

They talked. A little. His wife had terminal cancer. He’d been here every day for the last five months. “Sometimes it helps,” he said, gesturing to the cigarette. “Not much, but enough to get through the next few hours.”

That was all it took. The next morning, Paige left the hospital, walked three blocks to a corner store, and bought a pack. Marlboro Lights. She doesn’t know why—maybe because the man had them, or maybe because she’s still too much of a coward to go full strength.

She hides them in her jacket pocket. Doesn’t tell anyone. Lights one on the balcony of her dad’s condo when he’s already gone to bed. She watches the smoke rise and thinks about how if Azzi could see her right now, she’d roll her eyes so hard they might fall out of her skull.

She laughs, just once, and it cracks halfway through.

Because none of this feels real.

And the thing she keeps coming back to—over and over, like it’s stitched into the rhythm of her heart—is how good that night was. That whole day, really. How bright Azzi had been. How pretty her laugh had sounded through the music. How soft her hand had felt in Paige’s.

She’d looked over at her just minutes before it happened, SZA playing low and sweet, and thought This is it. This is my forever.

And then it was all gone.

Not metaphorically or anything.

Literally just gone.

And now all she can do is wait. Light another terribly tasting cigarette. Try not to cry when no one’s looking. Try to remember the sound of Azzi’s voice, and pray—silently, bitterly, desperately—that she’ll hear it again.

Because if she doesn’t… Paige doesn’t know what happens next.

She’s not sure there is a next.

WEEK THREE might be the worst. Not in a sharp, stabbing kind of way like before—like the first few days when everything was chaos and adrenaline and shock and she couldn’t even sit still. Not like the second week either, when she kept clenching her fists, when she snapped at people, when she caught herself pacing the edge of the hospital parking lot muttering, “Why, why, why—” like if she said it enough, God might finally give her an answer.

This is worse.

This is slower. Sink-deep. It’s a kind of sadness that sits on her chest and doesn’t move. A kind that clings to her like smoke, pressing into her hair, her skin, her fucking bones. The anger’s dulled now, exhausted itself, and what’s left behind is just… her. Paige. Alone with the truth of it all.

It’s the guilt that does her in the most. She wakes up with it, goes to sleep with it, eats around it like it’s another person at the table. No matter how many times people—Katie, Tim, her parents, her teammates, even the nurses—say she didn’t do anything wrong, that she couldn’t have stopped it, that the other driver ran the stop sign… she doesn’t care. It doesn’t register. She was driving. She was the one behind the wheel. Azzi trusted her, and she didn’t protect her.

She should’ve had faster reflexes. She should’ve seen it coming. Should’ve done something. Anything.

But she didn’t. She didn’t do enough. And now Azzi’s stuck in a fucking hospital bed with a tube down her throat and monitors beeping constantly and a room full of decorations that make Paige want to scream.

Katie put up rainbow streamers a few days ago. Said Azzi would like it—bright, cheerful, something to make the place feel less like a room built for dying. Paige had nodded, had helped hang them even, biting her lip so hard it bled because Azzi does love rainbows, loves unicorns even more, and it was a sweet gesture. Kind. Loving.

But that’s the thing.

It’s sweet because it assumes Azzi’s coming back.

And every day that she doesn’t, Paige wants to rip the damn streamers down. Wants to grab the unicorn pillow they’ve propped under Azzi’s head and throw it across the room because what if she never gets to hold it again?

What if this is it? What if this is just the rest of their life now—Azzi stuck in this frozen state, and Paige sitting here day after day pretending she’s not losing her mind?

Some days, Paige showers. Some days, she doesn’t. She lives out of a duffel bag that’s been tossed in the corner of Bob’s guest room for nearly two weeks now, and she wears the same pair of UConn sweats way more than she should, just because they still kind of smell like Azzi’s detergent. On the nights she stays at the Fudds’, she sleeps in their guest bed even though she never had before because she can’t bring herself to sleep in Azzi’s bed, not without her in it.

She tried, once. Opened the door to that soft lavender room, climbed into the neatly made bed with the stuffed animals and USA medals and the photo strip of the two of them tacked up by the mirror.

She laid there for about three minutes.

Then she got up and locked herself in the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach but spit and shame.

Azzi’s injuries are mostly healed now. That’s the kicker. The internal bleeding’s gone. Her ribs don’t need wrapping anymore. The bruises are fading, and the cuts on her face have scabbed over. Even the deep one across her forehead has started to pinken into a scar. The worst of the physical damage, at least the visible stuff, is behind them.

Except for her brain.

They’re waiting. All anyone does is wait.

The doctors won’t run another MRI until she wakes up. No point, they say. The first scan showed she was stable, and they want to avoid unnecessary stress on her body. But they think it’s healing. Judging by her original scans, it’s probably mostly healed. Probably. Paige hears that word and wants to punch a wall.

It’s not about her brain anymore, not technically. It’s just about whether or not she wants to come back. Whether or not she can.

That’s the part Paige can’t handle. The unknown. The way people say things like “in her own time” and “you just have to keep talking to her” and “she’s strong,” as if Azzi’s off somewhere making a choice. Like she’s on the other side of some locked door and Paige just needs to knock loud enough.

What if she doesn’t answer?

What if Paige never gets to hear her voice again, the soft rasp of it in the morning, the way she says Paige’s name like a prayer? What if she never opens her eyes again, never rolls them playfully when Paige says something dumb, never looks at her the way only Azzi ever has—like she’s both the sun and the problem?

Paige thinks about all of that too much. She chews on it like it’s gum she can’t spit out. It’s in her mouth, behind her eyes, in the tight ache of her chest that never really goes away.

On the twentieth day, though, the what ifs halt.

Paige is in the hospital cafeteria with Drew, trying to act normal. Or—whatever version of normal she can fake for her ten-year-old brother, who has no real understanding of the weight pressing down on her chest like it’s trying to crack her ribs from the inside. They’re eating cheese pizza, which tastes like cardboard and salt, and Paige is letting him ramble about basketball—his rec league game last week, how many points he scored, the crazy block he had.

She laughs at the right times, nods along, tosses in a “no way” and “you’re so annoying” every now and then so he doesn’t see the cracks spiderwebbing down the center of her. She tells herself this is good—this distraction, this pretending. If she doesn’t act like she’s dying inside, maybe she won’t. Maybe her brain will start believing the lie she’s trying to sell it.

Drew’s halfway through talking about how bad his classmate on the other team (who he decidedly does not like) was bricking when Paige’s phone buzzes. She flips it over instinctively, thumb unlocking it before she can even blink.

Katie

Come back up here. Quick

Her stomach drops through the floor.

She’s on her feet before her brain catches up, grabbing napkins, stuffing uneaten food into the trash. Drew looks up, confused, mouth still full of pizza. “What?”

“We gotta go,” Paige says quickly, trying not to sound panicked. “Come on.”

“What? Why?” he asks, but she doesn’t answer, just grabs his hand and starts walking fast enough that he has to jog to keep up.

Elevator. Seventh floor. Heart pounding. She’s not sure if it’s dread or hope or fear or all of them crashing into each other like a ten-car pileup in her chest. She’s trying not to let her thoughts spiral, but something about the way Katie texted her—short, urgent—makes her feel like she might throw up.

Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.

The elevator doors open and she’s pulling Drew out before they’ve fully slid apart. She jogs down the hallway, nurses glancing up from their stations as they pass, and then they’re there—Room 712—and Paige skids to a stop in the doorway.

And everything inside her stops.

Azzi is sitting up.

Sitting. Up.

Not hooked up to a ventilator. Not still. Not lifeless. She’s there. Her body is upright and moving, chest rising with real breath, her head turning toward Katie as if she’d just asked her a question.

Paige can’t breathe. She can’t move either. Her legs go heavy like someone filled them with cement.

Azzi’s awake.

Azzi is awake.

She stares. Her mouth might be open. She has no idea. Her eyes are locked on Azzi’s, and they’re open—wide, warm, beautiful. Big brown eyes that Paige has missed like air. For twenty straight days, all she’s seen is them shut. Unmoving. She’s dreamed about them opening. About Azzi smiling at her, saying her name, joking that Paige’s hair looks stupid or that her outfit is ugly or that she missed her so much it hurts.

Now they’re open. But they’re not looking at her like that.

They’re not looking at her with love.

They’re not looking at her with anything.

And then Drew, somehow, moves first.

“Azzi!” he shouts, beaming, darting forward like he’s just seen his favorite superhero come to life.

Paige’s hand shoots out, fingers curling gently around his shoulder, instinctive. “Hey,” she says quietly, trying not to scare Azzi. “Go slow. She might be—just go slow, okay?”

Drew nods, softening his step as he moves into the room.

Katie and Tim are standing by the bed, teary-eyed and beaming in that overwhelmed, shellshocked way that Paige understands intimately now. Like they’ve been holding their breath for three straight weeks and are just now remembering how to breathe.

Paige watches as Azzi looks at Drew, her brows pulling slightly together. She doesn’t speak right away. Just studies him with soft confusion. And then, slowly, her eyes shift again.

To Paige.

Everything in Paige lifts for a second. Just a second. Like maybe it’s happening—maybe this is the moment. Maybe Azzi looks confused because she’s groggy or tired or in pain, but it’ll wear off. She’ll blink again and say her name. Maybe she’ll cry. Maybe they’ll both cry. Maybe Paige will crawl into bed next to her and press her forehead against Azzi’s and feel her heartbeat and finally, finally exhale.

Paige takes a step forward, her lips twitching into the beginnings of a smile. It feels like her whole body is trembling. “Hey, Az,” she murmurs, voice soft and shaky.

Azzi stares at her.

No smile. No tears. No flicker of something behind her eyes.

Just stillness.

Paige feels a fist closing around her throat.

Azzi turns her head slowly, looking at Katie, her brows furrowed now. “Who—?” she starts, then looks back at Paige. Her voice is hoarse, unused, quieter than Paige’s ever heard it, but still clear.

“Who are you?”

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