33. Mia
Chapter Thirty-Three
Mia
The next couple of weeks feel like time has stopped for a while.
It feels like layers of exhaustion and tenderness stacked together until I can’t tell one day from the next.
I had to call work and request a leave of absence because I honestly don’t know how much time we need to be here before we can fly home.
And the sick days and PTO are not covering me anymore.
Mornings are filled with tests, checkups, and blood draws.
Afternoons are physical therapy and exercises that make him grit his teeth and curse under his breath.
He hides it behind sarcasm, but I see it in the small things: the way his hand trembles when he tries to grip the cup; the way his jaw tightens when he shifts his weight; the way his eyes go distant when the therapist asks him to lift his arm higher and his muscles just… don’t respond right.
“Again,” the therapist says gently.
He tries again. His shoulder spasms, movement jagged and wrong. A flash of frustration crosses his face, fast and ugly.
“That’s enough for today,” she says.
“It’s not,” he mutters.
I wait until she leaves. Then I move my chair closer to the bed and sit on the edge, facing him.
“Hey,” I say softly. “You’re doing great.”
He stares at his hand like it betrayed him. “Yeah. Nailed the ‘almost lifted my arm’ thing. Really crushed it.”
“George.” He sighs, leans his head back against the pillow, eyes closing. For a moment, he looks older. Tired in a way sleep won’t fix.
“I’m supposed to be good at this,” he says quietly. “Moving. Lifting things. Carrying people. Carrying myself.”
“You almost died,” I say. “I think your muscles are allowed to be confused.” His jaw locks, but he doesn’t answer.
I reach for his hand and slide my fingers between his, careful and slow. His eyes open. He looks at our joined hands. Then at me. I brace for him to pull away, but he doesn’t. His fingers just curl back around mine, tentative at first.
“Okay,” he says, his voice softer.
“Okay.”
We start sharing meals when he’s allowed to eat more than just mush things. He sustained severe injuries to his abdomen, and his digestive system was a bit compromised for a while.
I smuggle in real food when I can, shoved into my bag: sandwiches, little containers of pasta, cookies wrapped in napkins.
I sit cross-legged in bed, and we eat together, the tray between us.
These little moments transform him from an exhausted patient to the man I know from his letters.
The man who teases me about my coffee habit, who calls my handwriting ‘tilted’, who admitted I matter to him as if it were both the hardest and easiest thing in the world at once.
Whatever this is, I don’t want to let it go.
The doctor came in to discuss next steps, transportation, and related matters. But he also shared that he is not returning to the military life he’s used to. They might be discharging him. Which was...predictable in a way, but hearing it hits different.
He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t agree, either. He just goes quiet.
The doctor explains it in clinical words: motor impairment, risk assessment, field liability. He’s careful and respectful, but the bottom line doesn’t change. George can’t do what he used to do. Not the same way. Maybe not ever.
“We can reassign you stateside,” the doctor says. “There are roles that would benefit from your experience. Training. Strategy. Advisory. But field work…”
George’s jaw locks. “I get it. I won’t be going back to combat.” He says finally.
I’m standing in the corner, nauseous and helpless, clutching a cup of coffee that’s gone cold in my hands. The doctor leaves. The door clicks shut, and silence fills the room.
I wait.
He stares at the ceiling for a long time. Then he says, voice flat, “Well. That’s that. Almost twenty years of career just down the drain.”
My heart cracks. “George,” I say softly.
He doesn’t look at me. “It was going to happen eventually. Old dog, new tricks. Or no tricks now, I guess.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“That’s what he meant.” There’s no humor in his tone now. None of the dry wit he uses to soften hard things. This is just… resignation.
I cross the room and sit on the edge of the bed. “You’re still you,” I say. “Combat or not. Uniform or not. Military job or not. None of that changes who you are.”
He lets out a low breath. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“I can understand it’s not easy for you to accept,” I answer. “I just said what’s true. The job doesn’t define you. Even if you have been doing it for almost twenty years.”
He looks at me then. Really looks. Eyes sharp, searching. “You’re the only one who’s going to treat me like I’m not broken, aren’t you?” he asks quietly.
The question cuts clean through me. “I don’t think you’re broken,” I say. “I think you’re… refurbished.”
His mouth twitches despite himself. “Refurbished, huh?”
“Yes,” I say. “Like a cellphone or a computer that was going to stop working but someone fixed it, so it works like new even though it is not. Not less, just rearranged.” He stares at me for another long heartbeat.
Then his shoulders drop, some of the tension bleeding out. “Refurbished, rearranged, and reassigned.” He says. “Retired from being blown up. Great. A whole new life full of r’s.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a new life,” I say.
His eyes flicker. “You say that like you’ve done it.”
“I’m currently living in a stranger’s old apartment, which I subleased from his ex, for two years, just because my boyfriend of six years cheated on me, broke my heart, and technically forced me to leave my apartment behind.
Oh, and I flew across the world to sit in a hospital room, to then move to a rehab facility to take care of a stranger I met through letters,” I say. “How much more new life do you want?”
He huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “Fair point.”
We sit in silence after that.
Today is the day that they will discharge him from the rehab facility.
He’s not healed, not completely, but well enough to leave.
To transition, and to start whatever this new life is supposed to be.
The nurse goes over his medication schedule with me, not him.
Hands me a folder with aftercare instructions.
Gives me that look again, the one halfway between concern and curiosity.
“Does he have somewhere to go?” she asks quietly while he’s in the bathroom.
The question lodges in my throat. His parents are gone; I know that from one of his letters.
His dad disappeared on him when he was still a kid, and his mom died a couple of years ago.
That’s why he doesn’t have a real emergency contact, well, except for Monica for a while. Now, he just has…well… me.
“Yeah,” I say now, heart pounding. “He does.”
When we’re in the cab on the way to the airport, he stares out the window, one hand pressed unconsciously to his side. “What happens now?” he asks.
I swallow. “You come home,” I say.
He glances at me. “To what home? Where?”
I hesitate only a second. “To the apartment,” I say. “To… my apartment. Yours. Ours?” The word slips out before I can stop it.
Ours.
He stiffens slightly. I rush on, cheeks burning. “I mean—just until you figure things out. It’s familiar. It has space. And it fixes the ‘where are you going’ problem. Unless you already have somewhere else in mind, I just thought—”
“Mia.”
I shut up.
He’s watching me with this soft look, like he is stunned. “You’d want me there?” he asks slowly. “With you? Every day?”
My throat feels too tight. “Yes,” I say. “I would.”
He looks back out the window. For a moment, I think I pushed too far. Stepped over a line we never defined. Then he says quietly, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. I’ll come… home.”
My chest floods with warmth and terror. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?
Not just logistics. Not just convenience.
I just invited the man I’m quietly, desperately falling for to live with me.
In his old life, but our new one. We’ll be under the same roof.
Breathing the same air. Carrying all this tension with nowhere else to go.
God help me.