5. Millie
CHAPTER FIVE
MILLIE
Everything hurts.
My left side feels like it's on fire, and every breath feels like there are gremlins inside my body stabbing me.
The pain isn't sharp anymore, it's deep, heavy, like something is sitting on my ribs and pressing down with every inhale.
The room smells like antiseptic and cold plastic tubing, and I hear the beeping of a monitor somewhere near my head, steady and mechanical, counting something I can't see.
A nurse is beside me. She's checking something on the monitor, adjusting a line on my IV, and when she sees my eyes open, her face softens.
"Hi, sweetheart. You're at St. Aldric's. Your neighbor found you on the stairs and called 911. You've been out for a little while, but you're safe now."
I try to shift, and the pain pins me flat.
My whole left side locks up, and for a second I can't breathe, and the stairwell comes rushing back—all of it, the dark, the cold tile, my mouth open with nothing to give.
Every day of my life, that silence is just how I exist. But on those stairs, it almost killed me.
"Don't move, okay? Stay still for me." She puts a hand on my arm gently. "Can you rate your pain for me? One to ten."
I hold up nine fingers.
She adjusts something on the IV. "We're going to get that down for you."
She starts asking questions. Name. Date of birth.
Allergies. I reach for my phone out of instinct, but it's not on me.
It must be with the rest of my things, wherever those were put after the ambulance.
My phone is my voice. Without it, I don't have one.
I touch my throat, shake my head. Then I mime writing, my hand moving across an invisible surface.
She understands immediately and hands me a small notepad and a pen from her scrub pocket.
I write my answers. My handwriting is shaky because every time I shift even slightly, the pain flares through my left side, and it's hard to keep my hand steady when the rest of my body braces against it.
She reads each one without rushing me. Then she asks if there's someone she can call. I write Adeena's number.
My family is in another city, and I don't have the energy to explain any of this to my mother right now.
I already hear her voice in my head. This is what happens when you live alone.
This is what happens when you won't let us help.
I love my mother. I just can't carry her worry on top of my own right now.
The ER physician comes in. He's calm, efficient, and thorough. He checks my breathing, listens to my lungs with a stethoscope cold enough to make me flinch, and palpates my ribs gently enough that I still almost black out when he reaches the left side.
He tells me they suspect multiple rib fractures and a possible pneumothorax, which he explains is a small air leak near the lung.
They need imaging to confirm. Chest X-ray, possibly a CT scan.
But before any radiation exposure, they need to run standard pre-imaging labs.
He orders bloodwork and says he's paging the orthopedic surgeon on call for a consult on the fractures.
He leaves and I lie there. The pain medication from the IV starts to blunt the edges, but everything still feels heavy and wrong. I stare at the ceiling tiles and try to breathe in shallow, careful sips because anything deeper feels like a knife turning between my ribs.
The ER is loud around me. I hear everything through the curtain. A woman two beds over asking when she can go home. A child crying somewhere down the hall. The squeak of shoes on linoleum. Monitors beeping in different rhythms. Voices layered over voices. I hear all of it.
I always hear all of it. My ears spent years compensating for what my throat can't do, and right now every sound in this building pours through me with nowhere to go.
I think about my baby. She's alone in the apartment. She doesn't know where I am. She's probably sitting by the door waiting for me, the way she does every night. I need my phone. I wait until the nurse comes back to check my IV and write on the notepad: Where are my things?
She tells me my neighbor found my phone on the stairs and brought it in with my bag and my violin case when the paramedics came. She steps out and comes back a minute later with all of it.
The latch on the case is dented. I don't let myself think about that yet. One problem at a time.
I dig out my phone. The screen is cracked from the fall, but it still turns on. I text Adeena immediately.
Millie
I'm in the hospital. I'm okay. Long story. Can you go to my apartment and check on Tofu? Feed her. She's probably freaking out.
Adeena's response is almost instant.
Adeena
WHAT?? Are you okay?? I'm on my way right now. To YOU not the cat.
Millie
Tofu first. Please.
Adeena
Fine. Cat first. Then you. But I need answers, Millie.
I put the phone down. At least Tofu will be okay. That's one thing I can stop worrying about.
I think about what happened to me. Lying on that landing in the dark, trying to scream, and the silence that answers me.
The same silence that always has. I have lived with that my entire life and I have made peace with it a thousand times, but lying on those stairs tonight, I was alone and broken and unable to make a single sound.
For the first time in a long time, I really hated it.
My eyes sting. I blink and the tears come anyway, sliding down the sides of my face into my hair.
I am so scared. I can't stop thinking how close it was.
How if my neighbor hadn't seen me, I would still be there.
My life came down to someone else's timing, and I had no say in it. I have never had less say in anything.
The curtain opens, and it's the last person I thought I'd see.
Joseph.
He's in scrubs. Dark blue, slightly wrinkled, like he's been here for hours already. He has my clipboard in his hand, and he steps in, already reading it, but then he looks up, sees me, and stops.
For a moment, I can't move. I watch the shock on his face. The last time he saw me, I was on his bed. Now I'm in a hospital gown with an IV in my arm and tears running down my face. I see the shock shift, fast, into something else. He puts the clipboard down immediately and comes to my bedside.
"Millie. Are you okay? What's wrong?"
I don't know if he's asking as my doctor or as something else. I don't know which version of him walks through that curtain. But the concern in his voice, real and unguarded, cracks something in me that I barely hold together.
More tears fall. And then I cry. My chest hitches, my shoulders shake, and the sob that comes is silent, but it moves through my ribs, and the pain is so sharp and sudden I gasp and grip the bed rail.
He's beside me in a second, one hand on my arm, steady. "Hey, hey. Easy. Don't move. Try to breathe shallow for me, okay? Small breaths."
I try. I breathe in small, careful sips. The pain settles from sharp to deep. The tears are still coming, but I'm not sobbing anymore.
He waits. He doesn't rush me. He doesn't fill the quiet with noise. He just stands there with his hand on my arm and lets me come back to myself.
When my breathing is steady again, he asks, gently, "Is it the pain? Or did something happen?"
I reach for my phone. I type slowly because my hands are still shaking.
I just got scared thinking about the accident. How alone I felt when I couldn't call for help.
He reads it. His hand is still on my arm, and I feel his fingers tighten, just a fraction, a small squeeze that's barely there before it relaxes again. Something tells me that reaction wasn't him as a doctor.
"You're safe now," he says softly. "I'm here. And I'm going to take care of you, okay?"
I nod.
He pulls a stool beside my bed and sits so he's at my eye level.
He doesn't ask me why I left that morning.
He doesn't look angry or confused or any of the things I would expect from a man whose one-night stand just showed up in his ER.
He just looks at me. Steady and focused, the way he looked at me across the restaurant table that night.
He reads my chart, then sets the clipboard down on the counter. He takes my hand in his. "Squeeze when it hurts."
I nod.
He stands. He presses gently along my back, my ribs. His fingers are careful, watching my face the entire time. I squeeze once when he reaches my lower ribs on the right, just a reflex. He notes it and moves on.
When he reaches my left side, I squeeze so hard his knuckles go white.
He stops but doesn't take his hand off me. He doesn't flinch. He doesn't pull back. He just holds my hand and lets me grip him with everything I have, and I realize I'm holding onto him like he's the only solid thing in this room, and maybe he is.
He looks at my face for a long time. Then he reaches over with his free hand and brushes the hair from my eyes, tucking it behind my ear the way you would for someone you've known much longer than one night. The gesture is so tender, so careful, that I feel my throat tighten and my eyes go hot.
"You don't have to worry," he says, and there's no doubt anywhere in it. "Let me take care of you."
I nod because I can't do anything else. My eyes are burning, and I don't trust my hands to say what I'm feeling right now, even if I can find the signs for it. He doesn't hand me a notepad. He doesn't ask me to type. He gives me his hand and tells me to use it.
I don't know what to do with that. I don't know where to put it. So I hold his hand, and I let him take care of me because right now it's the only conversation I can manage.
He orders the imaging. But before they can take me for the X-ray and CT, a nurse comes in with a small plastic cup and explains that they need a urine sample before any radiation exposure.
Standard protocol for women of childbearing age.
A pregnancy screen. Routine. I don't think anything of it.
I go through it mechanically and hand the cup back.
Joseph tells me the lab results will take a little while and that he needs to check on another patient, but he'll be back. He squeezes my hand once before he lets go. Then he's gone, and the curtain closes, and I'm alone again with the beeping monitors and the ER noise filtering through the fabric.
Adeena shows up a few minutes later. She comes through the curtain already scanning me head to toe, taking inventory of the damage.
"Tofu is fed," she says, sitting in the chair beside my bed. "She's fine. She's sitting on the couch looking completely unbothered, which honestly feels like a personal insult given how fast I run over there."
I smile and sign. That's Tofu. Zero loyalty.
Adeena knows ASL because her older sister is deaf-mute. With her, I can communicate normally.
"How are you feeling? What happened?"
I tell her the short version. Wet stairs, so I fell. It's stupid. They're running tests.
"How long are you staying here?"
Not sure yet. Waiting on results.
"Okay." She leans forward and takes my hand. "Rest. I'll take care of your cat for as long as you need. I'll come back as often as I can."
I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back.
She stays a few more minutes, talking softly about the small machinery of her life—a difficult case she's chipping away at, the barista who keeps misspelling her name on the cup, Adina, Adeenah, Adeana, never once getting it right.
Normal things. Small things. She's doing it deliberately, handing me something to hold onto that isn't pain or fear, and I love her for it.
When she leaves, the curtain swings shut behind her, and the quiet settles back in.
A little while later, the curtain opens again. Joseph. He's back, and he looks like he's been moving fast between patients, but when he steps inside, he slows down. He checks the monitors, then me.
"How are you doing? Pain still manageable?"
I nod. I hold up my phone. Better. My friend came by.
He smiles. "Good. That's good." He pulls the stool back beside my bed and sits. "So the imaging is ready for you whenever the labs come back. Shouldn't be much longer."
As if on cue, a nurse comes through the curtain. Not the same one from before. This one is brisk, clipboard in hand, already talking.
"Dr. Liu, good, you're here. Her labs came back." She glances at the clipboard. "Pregnancy test came back positive. Looks like about seven to eight weeks. We'll need to adjust the imaging protocol. Abdominal shielding before we send her down."
She says it the way you'd read a weather report. Clear skies, mild temperatures, and by the way, your entire life just changed.
Seven to eight weeks. My mind does the math before I can stop it—four programs, three weeks of rehearsal before them, and underneath all of it, one night I've spent two months trying to forget.
I look at the nurse, then at Joseph.
This can't be real.
I'm pregnant?!