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Agatha remembers Rio in motion.
Laughing, smiling, leaning in for a kiss.
Rolling her eyes, sticking her tongue in her cheek, idly reaching out to toy with the ends of Agatha’s hair.
Lifting a giggling Nicky onto her hip with practiced ease. Chasing him around the park with outstretched arms, the pair of them whooping and yelling as they run, matching grins on their faces. Flailing around in the grass, playing at being the dragon that Nicky would bravely defeat with the toy sword he’d received from Lilia during the Christmas they hadn’t known would be their last.
Crying. Trembling. Sinking to her knees by the kitchen table where Agatha sits, pale-faced and grim. Harsh breaths shuddering through the whole of her body as she lowers her head and turns to press her cheek against Agatha’s legs. Begging Agatha not to make her sign the divorce papers in a voice so small and fragile, raspy and wet and breaking on every other syllable, that Agatha physically can’t bring herself to open her own mouth and insist that she does.
The point is this: Rio’s not meant for such awful, lifeless stillness.
She should be moving, fidgeting, living. Carving out a fresh start in some faraway place as Agatha’s imagined her doing a thousand and one times. Enjoying a happier existence at a safe distance from the oppressive, grayscale grief that’s been steadily subsuming Agatha, piece by piece. That’s why she’d tried pushing for divorce in the first place, after all. Agatha’s been circling the drain since the universe decided to make her the victim of another cruel cosmic joke. Motherless child turned childless mother, sorrow her only inheritance from the world.
Rio, though—she’d always been the stronger one out of the two of them. Agatha had seen a chance for her, then. A chance that Rio could make it out of the haze of their shared suffering, make a better life for herself, if only Agatha wasn’t a weighted yoke around her neck, dragging her down for both of them to drown at the bottom of the water.
She doesn’t belong in this hospital bed, limp and pale and unmoving, a discarded rag-doll amidst a sea of rumpled sheets in the same nauseating shade of white that Agatha’s abhorred for years since—
No. Not here. Not right now.
Agatha sucks in a breath. Holds it. Counts to five before letting the air slip out from her lungs once more, scraping her throat raw as it leaves her. Watches the subtle rise and fall of Rio’s chest as she sleeps, utterly unaware of Agatha’s presence in her room.
Bruises litter the skin of her face from the accident, darkly violent marks painted along the left side of her face, from temple to chin, where Rio’s head had struck the car window after impact. A small gash above her brow, butterfly-bandaged shut. There’s more bruising across her chest and abdomen from where the seatbelt had dug into the flesh, hidden by the cut of her hospital gown but openly disclosed to Agatha by the doctor who had kindly walked her through the building’s labyrinthian halls.
It’s the head trauma that Rio’s care team is most concerned about monitoring. Though she’d been awake and mostly cooperative in the hours before Agatha’s arrival, she’d initially been found unconscious at the scene and has been displaying signs of a moderate concussion ever since. Nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, disorientation—the whole nine yards, apparently.
Scans and testing had revealed a minor skull fracture and brain swelling where Rio had hit her head. Agatha had nearly keeled over on the spot upon hearing those words from Dr. Lehane, a surprisingly reassuring woman who’d told Agatha that she was more than welcome to address her as Faith as they made their way through the halls. Only sheer force of will had kept Agatha standing upright by the time Faith had finished relaying the extent of Rio’s injuries.
Rio, who technically remains Agatha’s lawfully wedded wife, according to Uncle Sam and guy who does their taxes every spring. Rio, who Agatha continues to hold medical power of attorney over and is still listed as next of kin for, according to hospital records that were still on file from the time she’d stubbornly insisted on trying to fix the gutter herself—only to fall and break her arm in two places. Because of course Rio still lives within spitting distance of the town where the happiest years of their lives had ended nearly as soon as they’d begun, of course Rio still lives near the place that Agatha hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave either. Westview, New Jersey. Or Eastview, now, for Rio.
Rio, who’s finally stirring where she lays, blinking lazily for several seconds before her eyes find their focus on Agatha with an intensity that would be unsettling if Rio’s pupils weren’t currently the size of saucers.
“Aggie?” The nickname spills out of Rio’s mouth weakly, laced with uncertainty. Agatha finds herself moving closer at the sound of it, from the foot of her bed to the side of it, helpless to resist the pull of Rio’s voice, hopeful and plaintive in equal measure. Rio reaches out, fumbling to grasp at the hand that Agatha doesn’t even realize she’s placed onto the sheets until Rio’s already holding onto it like a lifeline. “Are you really here?”
“They called me,” Agatha replies thickly, rationality running further from her with every passing second. And I still live here. You still live here. Why didn’t you tell me you were so close by? That you only moved one town over? Why didn’t I try to ask where the hell you went in the first place? I’ve been wondering since the day you left. Agatha gnaws on her bottom lip to keep the traitorous thoughts from escaping out into the yawning, impassable chasm that stretches between them. She wonders, not for the first time, if she’d made a mistake in answering the phone, in rushing over to the hospital without so much as a thought given towards whether or not Rio would actually welcome her presence. “Do you want me to leave?”
Rio’s grip turns vise-like. Agatha welcomes the hurt.
“No,” she exhales sharply, starting to shake her head before wincing at the motion and stopping herself. Rio looks back up at Agatha with the same expression that she’d worn while on her knees, weeping on the floor of the house that had once been their home. “Stay. Please.”
And because Agatha’s an idiot, a glutton for punishment, as defenseless as she’s ever been with Rio looking at her like that, she does.
When Alice shows up to the dimly lit room not even ten minutes later, Agatha immediately realizes she’s been had. For years.
“You knew?” Agatha hisses from her place in the chair she’d pulled close to the bed, mindful to keep her volume low since Rio’s already started dozing off again. The subtext is clear. You knew my estranged wife moved less than half an hour away and said nothing?!
Alice shrugs, unrepentant.
“You never wanted talk about her. So we didn’t.” Point, Alice. There’s no arguing her way around that particular truth, no matter how it stings. Alice tilts her chin towards Rio and crosses her arms. “How is she?”
Agatha’s gaze falls back down to the bruising along the side of Rio’s face, the cut along her forehead. The knowledge of all the hidden hurts beneath her mottled skin, damage down to the bone and beyond, burns as Agatha forces herself to regurgitate the doctor’s words and give Alice a proper answer.
“Pretty banged up, but she’ll live. Lots of bruising all around but she hit her head the hardest.” Agatha blinks and swallows hard around the suddenly forming lump in her throat. “There’s some slight swelling in her brain and—and small skull fractures.” Her voice cracks and falters beneath the crushing weight of her fear. The human brain is so fragile. So small. Three pounds of tissue containing the entire sum of a person’s existence. Had there been just a little more pressure, a harder impact—then what? Would Agatha be here still, in a dimly lit room, waiting for Rio to wake up again? Or would they have walked her down to that cold, awful room down below and shown her another body that once held part of her heart? Agatha might’ve have dropped dead herself, if that had been the case. The look on Alice’s face tells her that she’s taken too long to continue, that she’s given herself away. Again. Agatha pushes on with a sigh. “They want to monitor her for a few days to make sure it doesn’t turn into anything more serious. But since she’s been conscious, she’s been mostly coherent, so they’re not too concerned.”
“You’ve talked to her?”
“She knows I’m here. She asked me to stay and then she started drifting again.”
“And you think that’s a good idea?”
The flash of anger that rises in Agatha’s chest is ruinous, corrosive. A living rupture in the finely woven tapestry of control she’s spent the better part of five years clinging to. It snarls and bays for blood. Her voice drops to a deadly whisper.
“Excuse me?”
Alice doesn’t flinch.
“I mean, she’s gonna wake up soon. For real. She’s hurt and confused and she’s going to need help when she gets out of this place. If you’re still here, she’s not going to be willing to accept that help from anyone unless it’s you. So.” Alice stops and stares Agatha down for a long moment. Eyes narrowed, jaw clenched tight—a protector to the core of her being. Agatha might be proud if she wasn’t so pissed off. “Are you still going to be here?”
“Of course I’m going to be here! Rio and I, we’re—she’s—I’m—“ Agatha cuts herself off with a wordless growl. She casts around in her mind, seizes her hesitation by the throat, snaps its neck, and casts its body to the wayside. Decision made. Dice rolled. Game over. Agatha’s next words spill out of her hotly, a furious truth she sheds like blood. “She’s still my wife.”
“Good,” Alice says, like she was never expecting to entertain any other possible answer. “You should start acting like it.”
The next time Rio wakes up, Agatha’s still sitting in the stupidly uncomfortable chair beside her bed, nibbling on a jalapeño bagel and seriously contemplating going back to her car for the foldable camping chair she keeps in the trunk.
“Hey,” she rasps out, and Agatha nearly jumps out of her skin at the sudden sound. She drops the bagel back into the foil wrapper sitting on her lap and looks up to meet Rio’s achingly soft gaze. “You’re still here.”
“You asked me to stay, remember?”
“Yeah. I do.”
For a small stretch of time that seems to encompass eternity, neither of them speak. Rio just stares at Agatha with those ridiculous eyes—big and brown and beautiful as ever, the same eyes she’d given their son, the son that Agatha had carried for them, carried and loved and lost forever—and Agatha can’t bring herself to look away.
“Have you changed your mind?” Agatha finally asks, once the pain in her chest has risen to debilitating levels. She’s always hurting. Grief is her constant companion, a miserable creature that’s taken up residence somewhere within the ruins of her battered heart. But the hurt is never quite so sharp nor so sweet as when she’s with Rio.
“Have you?” Rio replies, and the question is layered, a double-edged blade. It hangs in the air like a shroud.
Have you changed your mind about being here, with me?
Have you changed your mind about never wanting to see my face again?
Have you changed your mind about us?
Agatha doesn’t know how to respond.
Fate, luckily, decides to intervene.
The sound of gentle knocking shatters the burgeoning stalemate between them, followed by the sight of the door swinging open to allow Dr. Lehane into the room. She waves as she enters, appearing considerably more rumpled and tired than before, with fresh creases along her white coat and scrubs and even darker circles ringing her eyes. Still, she manages to radiate an aura of unshakable self-possession that Agatha envies. She smiles as she approaches, polite and professional but still sincere, and stops near the foot of the bed.
“Miss Vidal, it’s good to see you awake again. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got T-boned into a tree,” Rio says jokingly, an undercurrent of laughter running through her tone.
There’s no reason for Agatha to be upset by it, but she is. The flippancy of Rio’s reply presses down on her, wraps a noose around her neck and pulls tight. Rio could’ve died tonight. Rio could’ve died and Agatha would’ve been left all alone, in the dark, in the cold, picking out floral arrangements at the funeral parlor and having to decide what to do with the bo—
“It’s not funny.” Dimly, distantly, Agatha realizes that she’s gotten to her feet. That her entire face feels hot and her cheeks are wet and she’s shaking like a leaf from head to toe. Both Rio and Faith are gaping at her with their mouths open in matching O’s. “It’s not. Don’t–don’t joke about that. Please.”
Rio’s expression shifts, all traces of humor and levity falling away in an instant.
“I’m sorry.” Rio sits up, grimacing slightly as she moves. Agatha’s change in position has brought her close enough for Rio to touch with little effort, and she does, reaching out for Agatha’s clammy hand and squeezing it with her own. “I’m sorry, my love. Forgive me.”
Solemnly, Faith adds, “I apologize, Agatha.”
All Agatha can do is nod numbly as she sits back down and sinks into silence. She doesn’t pull her hand away and Rio doesn’t let go either.
Conversation eludes Agatha after that. Her focus is totally shot, thoughts stuck cycling through an endless loop of what if’s, each one worse than the last.
What if no one had called Agatha about the accident, and she’d never known that Rio had been injured in the first place?
What if the accident had been worse, and Rio’s injuries were more severe than they are now?
What if the other driver had hit her car differently, and Rio had never made it to the hospital at all?
Agatha feels faint at the thought.
She leans forward, bending over the edge of Rio’s bed until her cheek brushes their clasped hands, and tries very hard to keep breathing evenly.
Faith’s voice filters into her awareness slowly, indistinct and echoing, as if coming from a far greater distance than a few feet.
“Agatha, are you alright?”
Rio’s voice—precious, dear, beloved Rio—follows, calm and authoritative.
“I think we just need a moment, doc. Can you come back later?”
Faith’s reply, whatever it must be, is said too softly for Agatha’s muffled ears to catch. She can tell that Faith listens, knows that she’s left the room, when Rio’s other hand begins to gently card through her hair. It’s not something that Rio would’ve done in front of her, an intimacy that belongs to the two of them alone.
Agatha returns to herself in pieces.
When, at last, Agatha can finally bring herself to sit up and meet Rio’s tender, searching gaze, honey-brown eyes brimming with a kind of care that Agatha hasn’t allowed herself to acknowledge in years, she shatters all over again. The love that shines in Rio’s eyes leaves her stricken, wounded. It carves her open and bleeds her dry of any remaining resolve against the truth she’s worked so hard to deny, deny, deny, regardless of what it cost her.
“I love you,” Agatha says, wondering if she should get down on her knees and say it again and again, recite it prayer-like to repent for her myriad sins.
The warmth of Rio’s smile settles over her like sunlight, a benediction.
“I know.”