clothes and hair were messy; she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. I realized what her presence in my apartment, crossing a continent to stand by my door, meant. I saw that all my fears had been unfounded. I knew that I’d been chasing after the wind.

“Veronica, I love you.”

With her first step into my room, I noticed the glimmer on her right hand. My eyes became fixed on it. It was the engagement ring I was going to give her, the ring I left exposed on my coffee table. My embarrassment was gone in an instant, though, when I realized what her wearing it had implied.

“I love you, too.”

I didn’t know exactly why. I didn’t care why. I was happy. Perhaps just being alive was enough, I thought.

Vair moved her hand behind her. “Oh, sorry… you didn’t wanna do some formal proposing thing, did you?”

My smile grew. “Sometimes things don’t happen the way we plan them, sometimes they happen better.”

I started to rise from the pillow, only to be thrown back by a wave of nausea. Vair stepped back from my bed, and I noticed a gray-haired man standing in the doorway.

“Good, you’re awake,” he said.

“How long?” I asked the doctor, realizing how weak I was.

“Ten days.”

“I decided that you were probably at PaciTek on Monday,” Vair said as the doctor began scanning me, “but nobody wanted to confirm or do anything, the bureaucrats—”

“It’s okay,” I said. The doctor chucked.

“A cold won’t do you any favors right now, Mister Dauphin.” He closed the window. Vair left to look for a dry blanket.

“Am I gonna be all right?” I asked him, quietly.

“You’re very fortunate, it’s just common fatigue of the pontine tegmentum. Now that you’re awake, you should be