The hospital room smelled of iodine, lilies, and Theo's blood dried on my skin.
Late afternoon light slanted through the blinds, striping the bed in gold and shadow. Theo slept (finally) after the morphine drip took the edge off the pain. The bandage on his left side rose and fell with each slow breath. His hand still rested on my stomach, fingers splayed wide, as if even unconscious he needed to protect what was his.
I hadn't moved in six hours.
I sat curled in the vinyl recliner beside him, knees to chest, wearing one of his black T-shirts and nothing else. Between my thighs I was raw, swollen, sticky with him (from the careful, desperate sex in the bathroom at 3 a.m. when the nurses were gone and he'd needed to feel me alive around him). Every shift sent another slow pulse of warmth slipping free, soaking the cotton shirt hem. I didn't care.
A soft knock.
