7. Jules
— ? —
Jules
I wake up in pieces.
First there’s the pain, a dull, throbbing ache that seems to come from everywhere at once. My head pounds with every heartbeat and my ribs protest each breath. My left leg feels wrong, heavy and immobile, and my hands are burning with a low constant heat that pulses through my palms.
Then there’s the smell, antiseptic and sterile, the unmistakable scent of a hospital, and the sounds of beeping machines and muffled voices and footsteps on linoleum.
I try to open my eyes, and the light hurts so much that I close them again.
“Jules?”
It’s Harry’s voice, and it’s close, too close.
I feel his hand close around my wrist, above the bandages, and even that sends pain shooting down into my burned palm. I try to pull away but my body won’t cooperate, and it won’t do anything I tell it to do.
“Jules, can you hear me? You’re safe. You’re in the hospital.”
I force my eyes open. The room swims in and out of focus, all white walls and fluorescent lights and blinking monitors, and there’s a chair pulled up beside the bed.
Harry is sitting in it.
He looks terrible. He’s in his shirt and his suit pants, and both are filthy and torn at the knee, and the shirt is untucked and wrinkled.
There are shadows under his eyes and stubble on his jaw, and he’s holding my wrist in both of his hands, staring at me with an intensity that makes my chest ache.
I open my mouth to speak, and nothing comes out.
I try again. My lips move and my throat works, but no sound emerges, only a rasp of air that’s painful and useless.
“Don’t try to talk.” Harry’s grip tightens on my wrist. “The doctors said your throat took damage from the smoke. It’ll come back, but you need to rest.”
A nurse appears beside the bed, middle aged and efficient, with kind eyes. She checks the monitors, adjusts the IV, and shines a light in my pupils.
“Mrs. Winslow, you’re awake. That’s good.
You’ve been out since yesterday afternoon.
You have a concussion, so you might feel disoriented for a while.
Your left leg has a clean break below the knee, and we’ve got it in a cast. Your ribs are badly bruised.
And your palms have second degree burns.
” She glances at Harry. “From the door, we think. They’re bandaged and they’re going to hurt for a while. ”
I look down at my hands. They’re wrapped in thick white gauze, so much gauze that I can barely see my fingers. I try to flex them and the pain makes my vision go white.
“Try not to move them,” the nurse says gently. “I’ll have the doctor come check on you soon.”
She leaves.
Harry is still holding my wrist and still staring at me with those green eyes.
And I remember.
One image comes back before anything else, and it’s the view from that window ten floors up. Harry is on the street below, safe and alive, and Avery is pressed against him with her hand on his arm, pulling his attention down every time he tries to look up.
I pull my arm out of his hands.
The movement sends fresh pain through my palm, but I don’t care. I turn my face toward the wall, away from him, and I close my eyes.
“Jules,” he says.
I don’t respond. I can’t respond, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. I don’t want to hear his voice, I don’t want to feel his hands, and I don’t want to look at him.
“Jules, please. Please look at me.”
I keep my eyes closed, and he stays anyway.
***
The day passes in fragments.
Nurses come and go, checking vitals, adjusting medication, and changing the dressings on my hands. A doctor arrives to examine me, asking questions I can only answer by nodding or shaking my head. A physical therapist stops by to talk about rehabilitation once I’m stronger.
I ignore all of it. I stare at the wall, or at the ceiling, or at the window where gray light filters through thin curtains. I don’t look at Harry.
He doesn’t leave.
I can hear him shifting in the chair beside my bed. I can hear him talking to the nurses in low tones, asking about my prognosis and my pain levels and when I might be able to speak again. I can hear him refusing every suggestion that he go home, shower and rest.
I don’t acknowledge any of it.
Early that evening the nurse coming on shift, whose name tag says Odette, gently suggests that perhaps Mr. Winslow might want to step outside and give his wife some space to rest.
I hear Harry say, politely but firmly, that he’s not going anywhere, and she doesn’t push.
The sun sets and the room grows dim. Someone brings a dinner tray that I don’t touch. Harry asks if I want him to help me eat, and I turn my face further toward the wall, and he stops asking.
That night, my voice starts to come back.
It’s still raw and painful, with each word scraping against my throat, but I can manage a whisper or a croak.
I’m lying in the dark, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, when I feel Harry lean forward in his chair.
“Jules?”
I don’t respond.
“I know you’re awake. I can tell by your breathing.”
I say nothing.
“Will you let me tell you what happened? From my side?”
I should stay quiet. I should keep ignoring him, and keep him at arm’s length where he can’t hurt me anymore.
But I need to know. I need to understand how I ended up in that bathroom, screaming his name, while he stood outside with her.
“Talk,” I rasp.
He takes a breath. “I was in a meeting two floors down when the alarm went off. My first thought was you. I tried to go up to your floor, but the stairwell was packed with people coming down and there was smoke in the upper stairs. A warden stopped me. She said the tenth floor was evacuating down the west stairwell, and that you’d be outside. ”
I stare at the ceiling.
“I didn’t have my phone. I left it on the conference table when the alarm started. I got outside and the first thing I said was ‘Where’s my wife?’ The first person I found was Avery. She was coughing and crying, and she’d just come out of the building. I asked her if she’d seen you.”
His voice is rough and exhausted, but steady.
“She told me she saw you leave through the east exit. She said you were fine. And I wanted it to be true. I wanted so badly for you to be safe that I grabbed onto the first thing that told me you were. But I kept looking. I borrowed a phone and called you over and over, and it kept going to voicemail, and nobody I grabbed had seen you.”
“And Avery?”
“She kept pulling at me. She said she couldn’t breathe, she said you were fine, she asked me to stay with her.
” His jaw tightens. “I didn’t. I kept looking.
Then the warden finished the headcount and told me you never checked in at any of the exits, and Avery changed her story.
She said she thought she saw you, and maybe she was wrong. ”
His hands clench on his knees.
“I stopped hearing her. I told the fire captain exactly where to look. Then I tried to run back into the building, and two firefighters took me to the ground.” He’s quiet for a moment.
“I watched the windows blow out. I watched part of the ceiling come down. When they finally brought you out on that stretcher, I knew you by your blouse and the bracelet before I could see your face, and my heart stopped. It stopped completely, until I saw you breathing.”
I don’t say anything.
“I didn’t know, Jules. I didn’t know you were still inside. She told me you were out, and I believed her, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. But I need you to know that I was looking for you the whole time. I never stopped looking.”
I think about the number I didn’t know, the one I swiped away because I was busy calling him, and I feel sick.
I turn my head finally and look at him. He’s sitting forward in the chair with his elbows on his knees, and his face is drawn and exhausted in the dim light from the monitors.
“I called you,” I say. “Over and over. It just kept ringing.”
“My phone was on the conference table, two floors below you. I never heard it.”
“I screamed your name.”
He doesn’t have an answer for that, and the words sit between us in the dark.
“I was locked in the bathroom at the end of the hall,” I say.
“After a fight with Avery. She was at my computer, going through my presentation files, and we argued. I went to the bathroom to calm down before my presentation.” My voice is giving out, but I force myself to continue.
“I heard the deadbolt click from the outside. And then her voice through the door, telling me to go ahead and make my presentation now. And then the alarm started.”
Harry goes very still.
“She stood outside for a while. I could hear her heels on the tile. And then she walked away. She left me there.”
“One of the firefighters told me that door was bolted from the outside,” he says slowly, and his face is solemn. “I thought he had it wrong.”
“You won’t believe me.”
He reaches out and wraps his hand around my forearm, and his grip is warm.
“Yes, Jules, I would.”
I stare at him.
“I believe you,” he says. “All of it.”
He picks up the phone on my bedside table and dials a number from memory. It rings twice before someone picks up.
“It’s Winslow. I need Avery locked out of the building, right now.
Her keycard, her parking, all of it. She doesn’t set foot in there again.
” He pauses, listening. “I don’t care what time it is.
Do it now. And cut her off from my calendar, my email, everything.
She doesn’t see my schedule, she doesn’t handle my messages, and she doesn’t exist as far as my office is concerned.
” There’s another pause. “Yes. Tonight. Thank you.”
He hangs up.
I’m still staring at him.
“She’s done,” he says. “Whatever else happens between us, she’s done. She will never have access to anything in my life again.”
I should feel vindicated. I should feel relieved that he finally believes me, and that he’s finally taking action.
Instead I just feel tired, and it has nothing to do with the smoke in my lungs or the break in my leg.
“I called you,” I say again. “Over and over. I screamed for you. I thought I was going to die.” My voice breaks. “And the last thing I saw was you with her.”
“Jules…”
“I can’t.” I take my hand back. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t look at you. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“Please.”
I reach for the call button with my bandaged hand. It hurts to press it, but I manage.
Odette appears in the doorway a moment later. “Mrs. Winslow? Is everything all right?”
“I need him to leave,” I say. “Please. Get him out of my room.”
Odette looks at Harry with sympathy but firmness. “Mr. Winslow, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.”
“She’s my wife.”
“I understand. But she’s requesting space, and I have to honor that.”
Harry looks at me for a long moment. His jaw is tight and his eyes are shadowed, and his whole body is rigid with the effort of not arguing.
“I’ll be right outside,” he says finally. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be right there.”
He stands up slowly and walks to the door, and in the doorway he turns back.
“I love you,” he says.
I don’t respond.
He walks out, and Odette pulls the door most of the way closed behind him.
Through the window in the door, I can see him. He doesn’t leave, and he doesn’t go home to shower or sleep or eat. He just sits down in a chair in the hallway, crosses his arms over his chest, and settles in.
He’s prepared to wait there forever.
I turn my face to the wall and close my eyes.