12. Harry
— ? —
Harry
She’s sitting up in bed with her chest heaving and her eyes wild and unfocused.
I cross the room in three strides and sit on the edge of her bed.
“Jules. You’re safe. You’re here. It was a dream.”
She flinches when I touch her arm and pulls away instinctively. Then her eyes focus on my face, and she seems to realize where she is.
“Harry?”
“I’m here.”
She throws both arms around my neck, bandaged hands and all, and she holds on. She’s shaking, her whole body trembling, and her breath is coming in harsh gasps.
I pull her against my chest and hold her.
She doesn’t push me away. For once she doesn’t fight it. She just clings to me in the dark with her face pressed against my shoulder and her arms locked around my neck.
“I was back there,” she whispers. “In the bathroom. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t breathe.”
“You’re out. You’re here. You’re safe.”
“You weren’t there. You weren’t coming.”
“I’m here now.”
We sit there in the dark with her body pressed against mine while her trembling slowly subsides. I hold her and I don’t say anything else, because there’s nothing else to say. I wasn’t there. She’s right. I wasn’t there when she needed me most.
After a while her breathing evens out. Her arms loosen slightly, though she doesn’t let go.
“Is it always the same dream?” I ask quietly.
She’s silent for a long moment. I think maybe she won’t answer, and maybe she’ll push me away now that the panic has passed.
Then she starts to talk.
“It’s never the fire,” she says. “You’d think it would be the smoke, or the ceiling coming down. It isn’t. It’s the window.” Her voice is flat, and she’s reporting it more than reliving it. “I’m at the glass and you’re down on the street, and I’m hitting it with both hands, and you never look up.”
I don’t say anything.
“You know most of it already. I told you the first night, Avery’s voice and the bolt and her heels walking away, and I’m not going through all that again.” She’s quiet for a second. “There are things I didn’t tell you.”
I hold her tighter, and she doesn’t pull away.
“Near the end I tried the handle again, and it was hot. Really hot. I could feel the heat coming off the metal before I even touched it.”
I look at her bandaged hands, at the burns I’ve been watching heal for six days.
“I grabbed it anyway,” she says. “I thought maybe the heat had warped the lock. I grabbed it with one hand and then the other, and I couldn’t hold on. That’s how I did this. Nobody did it to me. I did it trying to get out.”
“Somebody did that to you, Jules. She just wasn’t in the room.”
“And there’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.
” She pulls back slightly, enough to look at my face.
“While I was calling you, a number I didn’t know came up on my screen.
I swiped it away, because I didn’t want to lose the line.
” She swallows. “That was you, on somebody else’s phone.
I worked it out the first night, when you told me you’d borrowed one, and I couldn’t say it. ”
It takes me a second to answer. “A woman from HR lent me hers.”
“So you were calling me, and I hung up on you so I could keep calling you.”
“You didn’t know.”
“No. And you didn’t know where I was. I’ve gone over it a hundred times. Nobody knew anything, and I still ended up on that floor.”
She says it without any blame in it, and that’s harder to hear than if she’d screamed it at me.
I make myself listen, and I make myself hear every word. I make myself feel it too, the fear and the aloneness of being trapped in a room that was filling with smoke while the man who was supposed to protect her stood outside with someone else.
“I went to the window after that,” she says. “I saw you down on the street, and I was so relieved. You were safe. You were alive. And then I saw her on your arm.”
“Jules…”
“I pounded on the glass. I screamed until my voice gave out. I called you one last time and I watched you, and you didn’t even reach for your phone.”
I want to tell her where my phone was. I want to tell her what I was doing at every one of those moments. She already knows some of it, and none of it is what she needs from me tonight, so I keep my mouth shut and I don’t look away from her.
“All I could see was you with her,” she says. “While I was dying. And I kept thinking that you would never know what really happened. You would just believe whatever she told you.”
She stops for a breath, and I don’t fill the silence.
“Then the ceiling started cracking.” Her voice is steady, almost eerily calm. “I could hear it groaning above me. And I knew. I knew I was going to die in that room.”
“Do you know what I thought about, right at the end?” she says.
“Nothing important. I thought about my slides still being open on my computer. I thought about Pickle under my pillow at home, and who was going to explain to my sister why a grown woman still had him. I thought about you making coffee for one.”
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I don’t.
We’re silent for a moment.
“By the time I was locked in that bathroom, I already knew I couldn’t count on you,” she says finally. “You didn’t teach me that in the fire, Harry. You taught me that over two years of choosing her over me. The fire just proved I was right.”
The words hit me square in the chest.
She’s right, and I know she’s right. Whatever Avery did, and whatever lies she told, none of it would have mattered if I had listened to Jules in the first place.
“That’s on me,” I say quietly. “That’s on me and nobody else.”
She doesn’t respond. She just looks at me for a long moment, searching my face, and I’m not sure she finds what she’s looking for.
Then she leans back against me with her head on my chest and her hand over my heart, and she doesn’t say another word.
I shift us both so we’re lying down, with her head still on my chest and my arm around her shoulders. She curls into me, warm against my side, and her breathing slowly evens out.
I stay awake.
I lie there in the dark, feeling her breath against my neck and her bandaged hand resting on my chest, and I memorize every second of it, the weight of her against me and the smell of her freshly washed hair and the way she fits in the curve of my arm.
Around 4 a.m., Odette slips in to check the monitors.
She sees Jules’ bandaged hand lying on my chest, even in sleep. She sees the way Jules is curled against me, with her face peaceful for the first time in days.
She doesn’t say anything about the rules, or about visiting hours, or about the fact that I’m on the bed with my shoes on. She just checks the monitors and slips back out, leaving the door ajar behind her.
***
In the morning, Jules pulls away.
I feel her wake up, from the change in her breathing and the slight tension in her body. For a moment she doesn’t move. She just lies there against me, breathing.
Then she pulls away and sits up, and her face is closed again.
“That was a moment of weakness,” she says. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.”
She holds my eyes for a second. Then she turns away and presses the call button for the nurse.
The physical therapist arrives an hour later. She’s brought a forearm walker, since Jules’ palms are still too tender for crutches.
“Let’s see if we can get you on your feet,” she says cheerfully.
I offer Jules my arm to help her off the bed, and she ignores it.
The therapist positions the forearm walker in front of her and adjusts the armrests. “Okay, Mrs. Winslow. Forearms here and here, so your hands don’t take the weight, and we’ll take it slow.”
I’m standing about three feet away with my hands at my sides, ready to catch her if she falls.
“Mr. Winslow.” The therapist looks at me with polite firmness. “Could you give us a little more space? I need room to work.”
“I’m fine here.”
“You’re hovering.”
“I’m observing.”
Jules settles her forearms into the supports and pushes herself up. Her arms shake with the effort, and I take a step forward without thinking.
“I said I’m fine,” Jules snaps. “I don’t need a spotter.”
“You have a broken leg and burned hands.”
“I’m aware of my own injuries, thank you.”
“Then you’re aware that falling would be bad.”
“I’m not going to fall.”
The therapist clears her throat. “Mr. Winslow. Please. The corner.”
I look at Jules. She’s glaring at me with her jaw set and her arms braced on the walker.
I go to the corner.
“Thank you,” the therapist says. “Now, Mrs. Winslow, let’s try one step.”
Jules takes a step, and then another. Her face is pale with concentration, and her breathing is carefully controlled.
“Good. That’s very good. A few more.”
“I can do more than a few.”
“Let’s not push it on the first day.”
“I said I can do more.”
From the corner, I watch her take a third step and a fourth. Her arms are trembling, and sweat is beading on her forehead.
“Mrs. Winslow, I think we should stop.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I said I’m fine.”
I push off from the wall, and the therapist holds up a hand.
“Mr. Winslow, please stay where you are.”
“She’s about to…”
“I’m not about to anything,” Jules says through gritted teeth. “I can do this myself.”
She takes another step, and her balance goes.
She starts to tip forward, with her arms too weak to catch herself, and I’m across the room before I know I’m moving.
I catch her around the waist.
We stand there for a beat too long, with my arms around her and her forearms braced on my shoulders and our faces inches apart.
She’s glaring at me, and her eyes are bright with frustration and pain.
“Let go,” she says.
“Not until you’re steady.”
“I’m steady.”
“You’re not.”
We stare at each other, and neither of us moves.
The physical therapist waits a moment. “Maybe we should try that again.”
I release Jules slowly and carefully, keeping one hand on her elbow until I’m sure she’s got her balance. Then I step back and let the therapist take over.
But I stay in the corner, and I don’t leave.
She makes it three more steps before she has to sit down. Her arms are trembling and her face is tight with pain.
“That was great,” the therapist says. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
She leaves. I’m still standing in the corner, and Jules doesn’t look at me.
A few minutes later, a nurse appears in the doorway with a bouquet of lilies.
“These just arrived for you, Mrs. Winslow.” She sets them on the bedside table. “There’s a card.”
Jules reaches for the card with her bandaged hands. Her fingers fumble with the envelope, but she manages to pull it out.
She reads it out loud.
“‘So glad you’re okay. Harry has been beside himself. Take care of him for me. Avery.’”
She looks up at me.
I look at the flowers, and at the card in her hands, and at the name signed at the bottom.
Jules doesn’t say anything. She just watches my face, waiting to see what I do.