The world returned to her in fragments.
First came the sound. A high, regular beep that seemed to pierce the fog in her skull. It was steady, insistent, impossible to ignore — each note like a hand tugging her upward from the depths. For a long moment she clung to the darkness, but the machine kept calling her back.
Then came the smell. Sterile, sharp, almost metallic. Antiseptic bit at the back of her throat with every shallow breath. It mingled with something fainter — plastic tubing, latex gloves, disinfected linen. It was a smell she knew instinctively, though she had never wanted to be surrounded by it: the smell of a hospital.
Next was sensation. Her right arm was heavy, immovable, wrapped in something solid and unforgiving. Her skin itched beneath the weight of plaster. The crown of her head throbbed beneath a tight, scratchy bandage. Every pulse of her heart sent a dull ache through her temples, a reminder that something inside her skull was bruised, unsettled.
Her eyelids fluttered. The light above her was white and cold, glaring against the fragile slits of her vision. She winced and let them close again, retreating from the brightness.
Voices reached her through the haze.
"She's very lucky," one said — a man's voice, steady, professional. "The concussion is mild, the arm fracture clean. There's a laceration, but we've closed it. No lasting damage that we can see. She should wake properly very soon."
Another voice answered, lower, hesitant. "That's… good. Thank you, doctor."
She knew that voice. Even half-buried in fog, even with pain clawing through her body, she would have known it. Her fiancé.
Relief washed through her, weak but genuine. He was here. The thought soothed her more than the painkillers dripping into her veins.
She wanted to open her eyes again, to see him. To reassure herself that the familiar face was really there. She wanted to speak, but her throat was dry, her lips cracked. Her tongue stuck like paper to the roof of her mouth. All she managed was the faintest groan.
There was a scrape of chair legs against linoleum. A shadow fell across her. "She moved," he said quickly, voice tight. "Doctor—she—"
"Perfectly normal," the doctor interrupted calmly. "She's surfacing. Give her a moment. Don't crowd her."
She forced her eyes open again, and this time they stayed. The ceiling swam into focus, then the fluorescent light, then the shape leaning over her.
He looked terrible. His dark hair was mussed, as if he'd been dragging restless hands through it for hours. Shadows ringed his eyes, bruised crescents of exhaustion. His jaw was tight, his lips pressed thin. He wasn't looking at her but at the doctor, as though trying to measure his words against something invisible between them.
Her heart ached at the sight. He had been worrying. He had sat vigil by her bed, waiting, fearing. She had put those lines there.
She wanted to reach for him, but her plastered arm refused to move, and the IV tugged against her other wrist. So, she simply blinked at him, soft tears slipping from the corners of her eyes.
His gaze flicked to her at last. Their eyes met.
"You're awake," he said, voice hoarse.
It wasn't the rush of relief she expected. No flood of joy, no trembling laugh. Just three quiet words, flat as though he were noting the time of day.
Her lips parted, but nothing came. Her throat felt like sandpaper.
The doctor stepped closer, checking her pupils with a small flashlight. "Can you hear me?" he asked.
She gave the smallest nod.
"Good. Do you know where you are?"
She drew in a breath that scraped at her lungs. "Hos…pital." The word rasped like stone on stone.
"Correct. Do you remember what happened?"
Her mind offered her broken flashes: headlights too close, screeching tires, the sickening roll of metal, glass exploding into a thousand stars. Her body flinched with the memory. "Accident," she whispered.
"Very good." The doctor's tone softened. "You've been unconscious for a few days, but everything looks stable. Just rest."
She nodded again, though her gaze drifted back to her fiancé. He hadn't moved closer. He stood at her bedside but slightly back, arms crossed, as if holding himself in check.
Why?
He must be terrified. He must be trying to keep control. That was it. He was always the steady one, the composed one. It was why she had loved him, why she had said yes when he slipped the ring on her finger. He was strength when she wavered.
And now, she thought faintly, I've scared him to death.
Her eyelids drooped again, heavy with exhaustion. The beeping steadied, pulling her into shallow sleep. But even as she drifted, she clung to the sight of him — her fiancé, waiting by her side, too worried to even breathe properly.
When I'm stronger, she thought dimly, I'll make it up to him.