She woke up three days later in a hospital room.
Tubes ran into her arms.
Stitches pulled along her ribs.
Her left wrist was wrapped.
Her mother slept in a chair beside the bed with an untouched paper coffee cup in one hand, the cardboard gone soft from being held too long.
The TV on the wall was muted.
Rain tapped the window like a finger that would not stop asking to come in.
Emily did not understand at first why her whole body felt like it had been built wrong.
Then she turned her head and saw the flowers.
Not wedding flowers.
Hospital flowers.
White lilies in a glass vase on the windowsill.
The smell hit her before the memory did.
She tried to sit up and made a sound so small it woke her mother instantly.
“Emily,” her mother said, already standing. “Baby, don’t move.”
“Nathan,” Emily said.
