"Sit down. Don't stand up—your head hit is serious."
"Okay." Holly obeyed. Her voice was small in the ER intake doorway, but the man on the stretcher heard it. He blinked and tried a smile that came out jagged.
"Maxwell?" the nurse asked, checking his collar and pupils. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"It's fine," he said. His voice landed precise and flat like an order. "She—" He looked at Holly. "—you drove, remember? Took the Pier Road exit. You hate the drizzle."
Holly's mouth went dry. She stepped closer because everyone else did. The stretcher passed her like a fast island. Maxwell's hand twitched as it brushed the rail. He was awake in a way that was safe and wrong.
"What?" Holly said.
An older ER tech, Jorge, glanced between Max and Holly and barked into a radio, "Trauma team in ten!" He moved with calm urgency. People shifted aside.
"He just called you his girlfriend. What?" Gordon's voice came from behind a wall of scrubs. He appeared wearing the exhausted loyalty of long nights—scrubs half-tucked, surgical pen behind his ear—and he did not bother lowering his volume.
Holly's brain tried to catch the sentence and failed. "He—what? No. I'm—"
Maxwell's eyes fixed on her like a laser with the focus of someone who had stitched someone through midnight shifts and remembered every scar. He squeezed his hand into a fist, reached for her in
