At least we stayed together.

Till the very end.

I sat bolt upright. Hospital bed. Something trilled frantically, a machine about to explode—the heart monitor, matching my pulse.

Ellis lurched from a nearby chair. “It’s okay,” she said, rushing to my side. “It’s okay. Don’t scream.”

Was I screaming?

“We were in the river.” I grasped her forearm. “The car was sinking. I couldn’t wake you up. I never meant to hurt you, I just—”

Didn’t want to lose you.

My mouth fell as I heard the words in my head.

“Vada?”

I settled back into the bed. “Nightmare. I was having a nightmare.”

We were never in the river.

Just a dream.

Oddly, I could still feel imaginary frostbite searing through my arms. Wait. One arm. The immobilized one.

I wrenched Elle’s wrist, and her face scrunched up.

“I can feel it,” I said through gritted teeth. “It hurts. Like a motherfucker. But I feel it.”

“I feel it, too.”

I looked at my hand on her, and let go. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Pain is good, Vada. It means the nerves are working.”

“They’re really, really working.”

Her smile turned tremulous, that watery quality it took on just before she cried. She so rarely did. And only in front of me. I could never watch without joining her.

“Don’t cry, you big nerd,” I said gently.

“You either, dork.”

My right arm was on fire and it felt fucking glorious. I could feel.

Elle leaned in and half hugged me, resting her forehead against mine. Her tears and touch made me drop the tough-girl act. Pain flared through me, striped every nerve from fingertips to brain stem with living fire. My arm sizzled like a sparkler firework but it wasn’t dead, it was bright and sweet with agony, and I began to laugh in delirious relief.

“Are you okay?” Ellis said.

“You’re here.” I brushed her cheek with my knuckles. A tear laced between them. “And I’m whole. Yeah, I’m okay.”

She cupped my chin in her hands, let a thumb stray over my bottom lip, then the top one, as if to ensure I was real. My heart played a skittery staccato on the monitor. Elle’s breath smelled like mint grown in shade, a forest coolness—the scent of her vaping liquid. Her face was so close. Freckles dusted her cheeks like cinnamon, sandy against milk-white skin. I skimmed a finger over them.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from the door.

We jerked apart.

New nurse, female. She bustled in and checked my IV and vitals. Ellis skulked near the window, looking silly, a redheaded scarecrow, too tall to be inconspicuous.

“How do you feel?” the nurse said.

“Terrible.” I beamed. “It’s fucking amazing. I can actually feel stuff.”

Her eyebrow twitched. I caught the slip of a smile. Then she said, “Only immediate family is permitted after visiting hours.”

Ellis and I blinked at each other. What an absurd thing to say. No one in my life was more immediate family than her.

“She’s my best friend,” I said. “She’s—”

The nurse—Halsey, according to her ID—interrupted. “I’m sorry. Legal family only. Is she your partner?”

Strange that such an innocuous word could freeze me up so fast.

Partner.

Your best friend is your partner, right? The person you’ve lived with going on five years. Shared your life with. Shared everything with. Matching tattoos, an encyclopedia full of inside jokes, a scrapbook stuffed with memories. The person whose heart you know better than your own. Because you’ve listened to it so many nights, that small, fierce tapping against your ear, your jaw. A little bird hurling itself at the bars of its cage.

Elle stared at me, waiting for my answer.

“No,” I said.

Her mouth fell.

I wanted to disappear.

“Miss,” Halsey began, and Ellis said, in a raw voice, “It’s fine, I’m leaving,” and something rose up in my chest like a tidal wave.

“Don’t go,” I called as she reached the door. “Elle, please don’t go.”

She turned back partway, wearing that wounded expression that wrecked me every time, and words formed in my throat—Fine, she’s my partner, whatever you want to call it, just let her stay—and then heel clicks sounded from the hall, and a voice that filled me with warmth and dread.

“Here you are.”

My mother stepped into the room, flawless, as if she’d walked straight off a photo shoot and not half a day sitting in coach on some shoestring airline. Camila Pérez Bergen: nearly six feet tall, skin the tone of aged brass, bone structure that could facet diamonds. Her withering eyes sized us up in one sweep. She kissed Ellis’s cheek and hauled her by the elbow back to my bedside. I got two kisses and a series of tsks and a sigh.

“Let me see,” she said perfunctorily, plucking at the sheet.

“Mamá,” Elle said—my mother called Ellis her third daughter—“careful. She’s healing.”

“Explain this to me, chiquita. Apparently I’m the only one in this fucking hospital who speaks English. Can she work? Do art?”

My mom spoke rapid, flawless English with a Puerto Rican accent, dipping deep into vowels, rolling and hissing consonants agilely, musically. Her voice always reminded me of a song picked up in the middle, her words one long lyric.

“She has nerve damage,” Elle said, eyeing me askance. “Think of a puppet. You know how the strings move the arms? Hers were cut. Not all the way through, but bad enough.”

“Is she in pain?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m right here. You could just ask me.”

Neither looked my way.

“Yes,” Ellis said. “A lot of pain. But that’s sort of good. It means the nerves work. The doctors sewed them back together, but that’s only a partial fix. Her body has to heal them fully.”

“Gracias a Dios. I thought she was paralyzed. I was sobbing on the plane. People thought I was going to a funeral.” Yet her makeup was immaculate now, of course. Mamá rubbed Elle’s shoulders. “You should be a doctor. So much smarter than the ones here.”

Ellis blushed furiously. The nurse cleared her throat.

“Ma’am, are you the patient’s mother?”

My mother narrowed her eyes, not dignifying that with a response.

“I’m sorry, I need anyone who’s not immediate family to leave the—”

“We are all immediate family. Thank you.” Mamá gestured to the door.

Despite myself, I caught Elle’s eye and traded a small smile with her.

No one got between my mom and her family. Ever.

But the smile faded swiftly. They hadn’t told me I had nerve damage. What the extent was. The prognosis. My right arm was crawling with fire ants, but I didn’t want more painkillers. I wanted to know, for sure, that I was still whole. More specifically, to what degree.

When the door clicked shut my mother rounded on us. “What have you told the police?”

Elle blinked, owlish. I shifted in the bed.

“Did they question you?” Mamá pressed.

“Yeah. That night.” I scratched crosses into the sheet with a nail. “I told them what happened. I was driving, it was icy on the bridge. The other guy hit us.”

My eyes flicked to Ellis. She swallowed.

“And you, chiquita?”

“They didn’t question me yet. Because of my head injury.” Elle spun a lock of hair around one finger. “I’m supposed to give a statement later this week, but . . . I still don’t remember anything.”

“Do you remember getting in the car?” I said. “In the passenger’s seat?”

She squinted at me.

“I buckled you in. You drank too much and felt sick. I made sure your seat belt was secure. You were on your phone right before he hit us. Remember?”

Remember how you were breaking my heart?

Elle’s breath quickened. Very softly, she said, “Are you coaching me?”

I didn’t answer.

My mother frowned, then clapped her hands, startling us both.