Page 113 of Infamous

“Yeah,” he says softly. “But I’m yours.”

My body aches. My chest burns. But the warmth of his hand in mine is enough to make it all worth surviving.

I close my eyes again, and he presses a kiss to my knuckles. It lingers there like a promise.

“Sleep,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”

The beeping slows, steady as a heartbeat.

And before the dark takes me again, I hear him say the thing that breaks me in two:

“I would’ve followed you anywhere, Nadia. Even into the fog. But this time - this time, you found your way back to me on your own.”

65

NADIA

The lights are too bright. That’s the first thing I notice. It swells and contracts like lungs, like it’s mocking the way I can’t seem to catch my own breath.

I blink, and the room ripples.

Every sound scrapes against my skull - the hiss of the oxygen, the shuffle of feet in the hallway, the soft clink of metal trays. The air smells like antiseptic and ghosts.

I’m awake. Alive. And I hate it.

Something claws under my skin - a hot, crawling restlessness that feels like fire and insects all at once. The drugs are still in me. My veins hum. My body shakes. My fingers twitch against the sheets like they’re trying to crawl out of my own skin.

A nurse enters the room, her voice too soft, too careful. “How are we feeling today?”

I don’t answer. Because how do you sayI’m finewhen your bones are screaming?

She checks my vitals, scribbles a note on her clipboard, and leans in with a soft smile. “You’re doing much better today.”

“Where am I?” My voice sounds foreign, dry as sandpaper.

“You’re in the hospital,” she says, turning toward me with a slight frown. “You’ve been here a week. You don’t remember?”

I shake my head. How do I tell her the last thing I remember is a basement, cold metal, and the feeling that I was seconds from dying?

“You were in a car accident,” she says carefully. “The steering column punctured your abdomen.”

That catches me off guard. A car accident? No. I’d remember that.

She offers a polite, uneasy smile. “The doctor will be in soon. He’ll explain… everything.”

Everything. That word settles like lead in my gut.

When the doctor walks in - white coat, calm eyes - I already know it’s bad. Doctors never come in quiet unless they’re about to crush you.

“Ms Reed,” he says, gentle, professional, detached in the way people have to be when they’re about to ruin you. “We repaired the internal damage as best we could. You lost a lot of blood, and there was significant trauma to your lower abdomen.”

I nod, numb. “And?”

He hesitates. That half-second of silence is the blade before it drops.

“I’m a doctor. No need to dress it up - just give it to me like it is.”

“You survived,” he says finally. “But the injury to your uterine lining was extensive. We had to remove a portion to stop the bleeding.”