Willow became aware of herself gradually, not by waking but by realizing she was already there. Consciousness did not arrive in a clean moment or with a clear edge. It seeped in, slow and resistant, like warmth returning to a limb that had gone numb. At first there was only pressure, a sense of being held in place, restrained without understanding why, and then the discomfort sharpened just enough to demand attention. Something circled her head tightly, firm but not crushing, and when she attempted to turn even slightly, the movement tugged through her shoulder and stopped her midway. The ache was deep and dull rather than sharp, the kind that warned instead of punished, and instinctively she stayed still, letting her body decide the pace instead of forcing it.
Her breathing came next, shallow and measured, more cautious than painful. Each inhale carried a faint sting at the back of her throat, not enough to hurt but enough to register. The air smelled wrong. Clean in an aggressive way, stripped of anything familiar. Plastic and antiseptic layered together with a thin metallic note that clung to the inside of her nose. Recognition came before thought, before memory aligned itself properly. She did not need to see the room to know where she was. Hospitals announced themselves without negotiation, and once that realization settled, there was no mistaking it for anything else.
Sound reached her slowly, threading itself into awareness rather than breaking through. A steady electronic tone repeated somewhere close, consistent and patient, its rhythm too regular to be natural. It did not demand attention, but it refused to be ignored, echoing against the slow beat inside her chest until the two aligned in a way that felt deliberate. The sound grounded her. It was proof of structure, of monitoring, of something external keeping time while she had not been capable of it herself.
She kept her eyes closed.
Opening them felt like an escalation she was not ready for. The pressure around her head, the weight in her arm, the soreness stretching down one side of her body all suggested that moving too quickly would come with consequences. She focused instead on cataloging sensation, letting her awareness expand without testing its limits. Her right arm remained heavy and distant, encased in something rigid that resisted even the idea of motion. The lack of feedback from it was more unsettling than the pain, as if it had been temporarily removed from her ownership. Her leg ached when she shifted slightly, the soreness blooming along her thigh and hip in a way that suggested impact rather than strain. Memory flickered at the edge of that sensation, but it did not resolve into anything usable.
Voices filtered in through the haze, close enough to feel personal and distant enough to require effort to follow.
"She's stable," a man said, his tone calm and practiced, the cadence of someone accustomed to delivering reassurance without embellishment. "No internal bleeding. The fracture is clean. We're monitoring concussion symptoms, but nothing concerning so far."
Another voice followed, lower, tighter, edged with tension she recognized before she consciously identified it. The sound of it pulled something loose inside her chest.
"Is she waking up yet?"
Miles.
Relief moved through her without permission, immediate and unguarded. The reaction bypassed logic entirely, settling into her body as certainty rather than thought. He was here. Alive. Whatever had happened before this room, before the smell and the pressure and the steady tone near her head, he had survived it too. The knowledge eased something tight in her chest and steadied her more effectively than the IV feeding medication into her arm.
"She's coming around," the doctor replied. "We'll need to ask her a few questions."
Willow stayed where she was, eyes closed, letting the information come to her rather than reaching for it. The doctor continued speaking, explaining that confusion after trauma was common, that awareness could return before clarity, that memory might feel unreliable even when orientation was intact. He spoke without urgency, but the words lodged anyway, settling near something alert and watchful in her mind.
Miles did not respond immediately, but she could hear him breathing, controlled and restrained, the way he sounded when he was holding himself still on purpose. After a moment, he spoke again.
"She was conscious at the scene," he said. "She talked to the paramedics."
"That's a good sign," the doctor replied. "Still, we won't rule anything out yet."
The weight of that statement pressed gently against the room, not alarming but present, and only then did Willow open her eyes.
Light met her slowly, diffused rather than sharp, but still bright enough to make her head throb in response. She blinked once, then again, letting her vision adjust without forcing it. The ceiling resolved in stages, fluorescent panels humming faintly overhead, their light flat and unforgiving. A thin crack near one corner caught her attention, and she found herself tracking it without meaning to, her mind clinging to the imperfection as if it were proof that the world was solid and real.
She shifted her gaze slightly and found Miles beside the bed.
He was closer than anyone else, positioned within arm's reach without touching her. His attention was fixed on her face with an intensity that made her chest tighten. His usual composure had slipped just enough to reveal the strain beneath it. Dark shadows marked the skin beneath his eyes. His tie was loosened, his shirt creased in a way that suggested long hours and little rest. He looked like someone who had been holding himself together for too long without release.
For a brief moment, everything else receded. The pain, the room, the unanswered questions about how she had gotten here all faded behind the certainty of his presence and the realization that he had been afraid.
"Willow," he said quietly, leaning closer. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes," she answered. Her throat felt dry, but the word came out steady enough.
The doctor stepped into her line of sight then, moving closer with a small light. He checked her pupils, asked her name, the date, where she was. Willow answered each question correctly, though the information felt oddly detached from emotion, as if she were retrieving facts rather than grounding herself in them.