Chapter 20: The Chair

Dante reached the teaching hospital in nineteen minutes, and he remembered none of the drive.

Daniel met him at the doors of the emergency ward with his face wet and his freckles standing out.

"Collarbone," Daniel said, fast. "Three ribs. Concussion. A cut on his scalp they glued shut."

"His hands are fine. I asked first. I asked them to check his hands."

"Is he awake?"

"On and off."

"Where?"

"Bed nine."

Dante walked down the ward.

It was the longest walk of two lives.

Curtains, trolleys, a woman crying quietly on a bench, the squeak of rubber soles.

He had walked a corridor exactly like it in the other life, at the end of that year.

He had carried a bouquet he could never remember buying.

He pushed the curtain aside.

Javier lay propped on three pillows, gray under the lights, with a strap across one shoulder.

A pink line of glue ran above his hairline.

His glasses were broken on the bedside table.

His eyes were closed.

Dante's knees went.

He caught himself on the rail, and the bed shook, and Javier's lashes moved.

"You came," Javier said, without opening his eyes. "Daniel said you were at the family thing."

"I came."

"I got hit by a car."

"I know."

"It was a gray one." A pause. "I'm going to be so mad about this when the morphine wears off."

Dante made a sound that wasn't a laugh.

A doctor came in with a clipboard and told him, in a flat, practiced voice, everything Daniel had already said.

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