I woke up and felt the left side of the bed with my good arm, a cold spot was left from where Emery should be. I bit my lip, where did she go? As I sat up, my head started throbbing again. Light was aggressively pouring in from in between the white binds on the right side of the room. Emery’s bag was still in the corner next to the window. I rubbed my eyes and tried to get a better look at my right shoulder. Spots of red had seeped through the pristine white of the gaze. My arm itself looked fine, but I couldn’t move it without pain shooting through me. My watch was gone, discomfort rolled around in my stomach at the sight of my bare arm. How much did Maribelle and Neo know now? Did Emery tell them? She wouldn’t, right?

I glanced up at the sound of the creaking door. Emery walked in with two bowls of steaming hot food and a big grin on her face. The door shut again with a swift nudge of her foot and she sat down on the other side of the white sheets.

“Good afternoon, Sleepyhead. How are you feeling?” She moved one of the bowls towards me to take, but I winced in pain when I moved to get it. Emery set both bowls on the ground and crawled over to me. She reached around me to the left side of the bed and got her pillow. She used it to prop me up, along with my pillow. “I guess I have to baby you, Wimp.” I looked down, heat was rising up in my cheeks.

Emery picked one of the bowls up and looked at me. She used her free hand and lightly turned my face to look at her.

“You know I’m kidding, right?” I shook my head. I could feel tears start to well up in my eyes, but I had no idea why I was crying. It was stupid to cry. Nothing was wrong with me, I should have just gotten out of bed and helped her get the food. Emery had much better things to do than cater to my selfish needs. She saved lives every day and never complained about it. She watched over an infant that wasn’t hers and rarely accepted help from Maribelle and Darcy. Emery would have been with Jack if it wasn’t for me. She would have been with someone she loved. Darcy wouldn’t have to be watching a baby if it wasn’t for me. I was just being a bother. I tried curling in on myself to hide from Emery, but she kept her hand on my face. “Hey, hey, hey. Ollie, look at me. No one is upset with you, we’re all just worried. I was afraid that I was gonna lose you. I’m sorry that I yelled earlier, I don’t think that you’re actually an idiot. I was just dealing with a lot of conflicting feelings. You don’t have to eat now if you don’t want to, but I would like you to eat something. That can be something we do later. If you just need to rest and sleep, we can just have you rest and sleep.”

I started crying harder. Emery was always so nice, she shouldn’t be so nice. She shouldn’t be so nice to me, she hated me not that long ago. She wouldn’t even look at me, she just felt guilty that I was in pain. Emery was just doing her job, she didn’t care. She had no reason to care. I should have just walked out and left, there were so many other things that she could have done in the time she was wasting on me. I wasted her time. I was a waste of time.

Emery grabbed my hands and brought them away from my body. There was a fading pain on my forearms that I noticed after the tears stopped streaming down my face as hard.

“Ollie, look at me please.” I squinted at Emery. Her hair was wet and done up in a bun. Damp spots were on the shoulders of her grey work shirt. Her eyes searched all over my face. Her hands gripped mine tightly. She unlaced her right hand from my left and wiped some of my tears away. Her hands were clean and warm. “How about we get you freshened up, and then maybe you can talk me into you putting on your binder. I think we need something to do to distract you from whatever is going on up here.” She drummed her fingers against the side of my temple. I smiled and let out a shaky sigh.

“Emery,” My voice was all warbly, but it didn’t hurt to talk as much as it did yesterday. “why are you so nice to me?” She laughed and used both of her hands to cup my face. My right hand placed gently in my lap.

“Because you make me want to be nice. Now, let's see if we can clean you up a bit. I had to make sure that you weren’t going to get infected from anything on you when I was dressing your wounds, but we can wash your hair, and…” Emery stopped and stared at me. I sniffled.

“What?” She smacked herself on the side of the head.

“I just realized that you aren’t wearing your glasses!” I snorted and immediately regretted it. My left hand pressed against my gaze pad as I laughed; the laugh was painful and needed. Emery blushed. “I put them in my bag, but how do you see out of them? They are so cracked. It’s a miracle that they are together enough to stay on your face.” I shrugged.

“I just got used to it. My head used to hurt a lot because of it, but it either stopped hurting or I just got used to the pain.” Emery frowned.

“Well, there has to be someone here who can fix the glass or get you new lenses. It can’t be that hard, right?” I rolled my eyes.

“Oh, yes. It is so easy to get glasses lenses in this day and age. Let me just call up the Mālie optometrist to see if I can schedule an appointment. I’m sure that Nestor can get me in early.” Emery scoffed and got up off of the bed.

“Well, I’m not blind, so I don’t know much about these things.” She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a small case. She brought it back over to me and took the glasses out of the case.

Once the glasses were back on my face, I could see things in better detail. Emery had brought me hot oatmeal to eat, with cinnamon. Just like her mom would make for us every time I came over for something in the morning.

“How am I gonna wash my hair? I don’t think that I can do much without moving my shoulder.” Emery pressed her lips together and scanned the room. Her fingers were drumming against her leg.

“Well, I was gonna do it. I think that they have some buckets and sponges that aren’t in use, you ok with that?” She looked back at me. The light caught her eyes just right, and I could see the creamer swirls in those coffee-colored eyes. Her freckles were faintly scattered across her nose and cheeks, complimenting the darker colors in her eyes. Her lips looked so soft and pink. It wasn’t a bright pink, but subtle. It was like picking a dusty rose on a midsummer’s night. I looked down.

“That’s ok, if you’re fine with it,” Emery laughed.

“Yeah, it’s fine. I'll go get the bucket from the back, you’ll be ok for a little bit?” I nodded, my eyes were still locked on my hands. My left hand was clamped over my right wrist, keeping it from being exposed. “Ok, hold on tight.” Emery got up from the bed and left the door. The door creaked shut behind her.

I sighed. My head rolled back against the pillow and a wave of cinnamon crashed over me. She even smelled nice. If I focused on my cheek, I could still feel her hand resting on it, or maybe it was me just being weird. Why would she want to be nice for me? What about me influenced her? I was just stupid Ollie that bites off more than he can chew. I tried to make the biggest decisions and it consistently backfired in the biggest ways. Emery just felt sorry to be stuck with such a loser.

After wallowing in my own miserable thoughts for a while, the door creaked open again. Emery lugged a full bucket of soapy water in one hand and had a sponge in the other. Some water had gotten on her bandage.

“How’s your wrist?” Emery looked down and shrugged.

“It’s fine, I probably could have handled the situation better.” She laughed a little, but she started to start off into the distance, her eyes were glassy and unfocused.

Emery set the bucket down on the ground, water splashed next to the bowls of cold oatmeal. She dunked the sponge in the sudsy water and asked me to sit up if I could. My body ached in protest, but I managed. She tilted my head down gently and set my glasses on the stand next to my bed.

“Does this hurt?” I shook my head no. Shaking it hurt, but it wasn’t worth it to bring it up. She took the sponge and squeezed it over my head. Warm water ran over me and started to drip back down into the bucket. Small fingers started scrubbing at my scalp. It felt nice.

After Emery was satisfied with how squeaky clean my hair was, she dragged the bucket towards the window and grabbed a towel that was on the cart. She used the towel and made my hair stand up in spikes. She clutched her stomach while laughing at how ridiculous I looked.

“Ollie, I wish you could see yourself. You look like if a librarian tried to go to a punk rock concert!” She kept on wheezing while I scrunched up my face.

“The best librarians go to punk rock concerts. Don’t mind me while I read Pride and Prejudice while listening to Green Day. You’ll be sorry that you missed out on all the fun.” Emery squashed all of the spikes with the towel and fluffed my hair up.

“There, that’s my Ollie.” She was beaming. A hollow feeling started growing in my chest. That’s what her mom would always say when I finally cleaned my glasses. Emery’s smile also fell when the words rolled off of her tongue. “I miss my parents.” Her shoulders drooped down, and she stared at her lap. I brought my left hand over and set it on top of hers.

“I miss them too.”

“I also miss your parents. Your mom would always make the best tzatziki sauce and the warmest pita chips for us to eat after school, and your dad would steal me pens from his desk at university. The NASA outreach pens had terrible puns on them. He would always try to say one whenever he saw me.” I smiled.

“Your parents also had great food and jokes. Your mom’s homemade churros made my mom go crazy. My dad and I had to steal some from her when she wasn’t looking, or we wouldn’t get any. Your dad also had the best stories. I mean, he pulled over some of the weirdest people when he was on duty. I wonder if he ever met Neo or Nestor?” Emery scoffed.

“If my dad met either of them, they wouldn’t be here to help us out. You know how he felt about gangs.” Emery stood up on the bed and put a finger to her lip to imitate her father’s mustache.

“Gangs are the reason that America is falling apart, Mija. You better steer clear of punks in leather jackets, or I’ll make you steer clear!” I snorted at her poor attempt of doing a deep voice.

“Em, what was that?!” She plopped back down on the bed with her legs crossed.

“That was the best acting you have ever seen, Tonto.” I rolled my eyes. Emery reached down and picked up both of the bowls.

“You wanna try and eat now?” I nodded, my left hand grabbed the bowl and set it on my lap. Emery grabbed my glasses and shoved them on my face. I could see the specks of cinnamon in the oatmeal.

“It was probably better when it was hot, but it’s food, right?” Emery shook her head when she put a spoonful in her mouth.

“Eww, my mother would be so disappointed if she knew that I just put that in my mouth. Don’t eat it, Ollie. Imma go get some other food that doesn’t taste like slime. Even in the apocalypse, I still have standards.” Emery grabbed my bowl and set it on the stand alongside hers. I tried standing up to go with her, but she pushed me down lightly. “Nope. Don’t even think about it, Tipo. Imma go get food for both of us, but I don’t trust you to walk. It looks like if you breathe too hard, that you’ll hurt yourself. Also, if someone bumps into you, you might just fall on the floor and writhe in pain. Not on my watch.” I yielded to Emery’s demands and watched her walk out the door with the bowls in her hand.

...