Since I Was Already Here

Callie's POV

"Theo?" I said. My throat was so dry that his name came out like a scratch. "What are you doing here?"

He let go of my hand only long enough to pour water into a paper cup. He held the straw to my lips, and I drank slowly. Every swallow hurt, but the cold water felt like the best thing I had ever tasted.

"You're at St. Agnes Hospital," he said quietly. "You've been asleep for two days, Callie. Your right leg is broken in two places. You have three cracked ribs and a cut on your head that needed fourteen stitches. The doctors were worried about bleeding inside your stomach, so they kept you asleep after the surgery." He swallowed hard. "They said you were lucky. Another ten minutes in that car and you wouldn't be here."

Two days. I tried to take it in, but my mind kept going back to the same picture. Mason's back as he walked away. Kendra in his arms. The sound of his car driving off.

"How did I get out?" I asked.

Theo looked down at his bandaged hands. For a while he didn't answer.

"I was at the Grand Marlowe that night," he said finally. "There was a charity dinner on the top floor, and I was leaving early. I heard the crash from the parking lot. By the time I got to the corner, there was already a crowd. And then I saw Mason's car pull up."

He stopped. His jaw went tight.

"Go on," I said.

"I saw him pull a woman out of the driver's side. I didn't know who she was. I thought maybe he was just helping a stranger, because that's what anybody would do. Then he put her in his car and drove away, and I walked closer, and I saw a blue dress through the window." His voice dropped. "I saw your face, Callie. You were hanging there with blood all over you, and you weren't moving. And he was already gone."

My eyes burned. I turned my face toward the window so he wouldn't see.

"The firemen weren't there yet," Theo said. "The car was leaking gas, and people kept yelling at me to stay back. I couldn't stay back. I got the door open, and I cut you out of the seat belt with a knife from my glove box, and I pulled your leg free. Two minutes after we got clear, the engine caught fire."

I looked at his hands again. The white bandages. The small spots of red coming through.

"You did that for me," I said.

"Of course I did."

He said it like it was simple, like there was never a choice. I didn't know what to do with that. In five years of marriage, nobody had ever done anything for me without being asked first.

"Where is Mason?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

Theo didn't lie to me. I would remember that later that he never once tried to make it softer than it was.

"He's on the fourth floor," he said. "With her. She was checked in the same night. She had a few cuts and a sprained wrist, and the doctors are watching her because of the pregnancy." He breathed out slowly. "I called him the first night, after they took you into surgery. I told him you were here. I told him you might not wake up."

"What did he say?"

Theo was quiet for so long that I turned to look at him.

"Theo," I said. "Please. What did he say?"

"He said Kendra was scared and couldn't be left alone," Theo said. "He said you were strong and you'd be fine. And he said that since I was already here, I could stay with you."

The words hit me harder than the truck did.

Since I was already here, I could stay with you. Like I was a coat he left at a party and asked a friend to hold. Two days. His wife had been asleep two floors under him for two whole days with a broken body and stitches in her head, and he hadn't come down once.

"I'm sorry," Theo said. "I wanted to drag him down here myself. I almost did."

"Don't," I said. "Don't be sorry. It's not your fault."

"I know it's not my fault," he said. "But I'm still sorry, because you deserved better than this. You always did."

I looked at him then, really looked at him, maybe for the first time. Theo had always been there in the background of my marriage. The best man at our wedding. The friend who came to dinner on Sundays and always helped me carry the plates to the kitchen while Mason stayed on his phone. The one who remembered my birthday when Mason forgot and who always said it was a gift from both of them.

I had never thought about why.

"You should go home," I said. "You look terrible. You haven't even changed your shirt."

He looked down at the dried blood on it like he was seeing it for the first time. Then he gave me a small, tired smile.

"I'm not leaving until you can walk out of here," he said. "So you can stop trying."

Before I could argue, the nurse came in to check my machines. She was an older woman with kind eyes, and when she saw I was awake, she smiled wide.

"Well, look at that," she said. "Your husband hasn't left that chair since you came out of surgery. He's going to be so happy."

Theo opened his mouth, but I spoke first.

"He's not my husband," I said.

The nurse looked confused, and Theo looked at me with something I couldn't read. Nobody said anything after that. The nurse checked my drip, wrote on her chart, and left quietly.

When she was gone, Theo reached over and picked up the TV remote from the table. "Do you want something to watch?" he asked. "It might help you not think for a while."

I nodded. Anything was better than the quiet.

He turned it on. It was the morning news. And there, right in the middle of the screen, was Mason.

He was standing outside this hospital in a dark suit, with cameras all around him. Next to him, holding his arm, was Kendra. Her wrist was in a little white sling, and she was smiling up at him with soft, wet eyes.

The words at the bottom of the screen said: Hale Ventures CEO Saves Pregnant Girlfriend from Deadly Crash.

"I would give my life for her," Mason said to the cameras. "For both of them."

There was no mention of the other woman in that car. No mention of his wife.

To the whole world, I wasn't even there.