“Ian—” I started.

But Ian had not even turned his head before Myles barked, “Do not approach the patient!”

Ian gave him a look, like, Really? “I’m just going to walk her back to her room.”

“You are not,” Myles declared, crossing over to us. “Take one step toward her and I will throw you out of this building.”

Ian turned to face him dead-on, and at this range we could all see that Ian was a good head taller. “You and what army, you bawfaced prick?”

At that, Myles decided to throw a punch. But Ian somehow blocked it, and then he grabbed Myles’s two wrists to hold them still in the air. “You don’t want to do that,” Ian said calmly. “I’d hate to kill you by accident. For my sake more than yours.”

If the expression on Myles’s face had been a sound, it would have been a whimper. He was in over his head, and he knew it. He knew Ian could crush him—and he also knew he’d just made certain that Ian had little to lose.

Myles opened his palm in a gesture of defeat. “Okay,” he said.

Ian released his grip. They both stepped back.

Then Ian took a few more steps backward, and I realized he was leaving.

He looked around the room, taking it in for the last time.

Then he turned to me, and said, “Maggie!”

Though my eyes, and everybody else’s, were already on him.

Don’t say good-bye, I found myself thinking. Don’t say good-bye.

He looked right at me, gave me a nod, and then said, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Twenty-three

THE NEXT DAY brought a few beginnings—but mostly endings.

It was the day Kitty was leaving for New York, and the day I was leaving the hospital. The plan was for my parents to arrive late morning, and for my dad to drive Kit to the airport while my mom stayed with me to help pack up. As we waited, I tried very hard not to mope.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me alone with them.”

Kit wasn’t having it. “Just in the nick of time,” she said. “It’s a miracle we got through this whole month unscathed.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Though some of us were less scathed than others.

When her suitcase was zipped and sitting by the door, she said, “Now can I please tell you the comforting thing I’ve been wanting to tell you?”

“You can tell me,” I said. “But I won’t promise to find it comforting.”

“I find it comforting,” Kit said. “That’s enough.”

“Spit it out, then.”

“So I saw this TED Talk, and it was this researcher from Harvard—” She paused. “Or was it Stanford? Actually, I think it was MIT. Anyway, a total brainiac—”

“You’ve lost me already. Just know that.”

She pushed on. “He researches mathematical probabilities or something, and in his talk, he mentioned that people have, like, a set point for happiness.”

“How does that relate at all to mathematical probabilities?”

“The point is, he had these great statistics. People who win the lottery, when you check in with them a year later, you’d think they’d be super happy, right?”

She wanted me to say it. “Right,” I said.

“But they’re not happy. They’re just as miserable as they were before.”

I tilted my head. “Were they miserable before?”

“And people,” she went on, “who have terrible things happen to them—loss of a spouse, bankruptcy, disfiguring accidents—”

“That would be me?”

At that, Kitty nodded. “Exactly!” She pointed at me. “He specifically mentioned paraplegics.”

I had not heard myself described that way before, and the word gave me a little start. But I pushed past it. “I still don’t see what this has to do with math.”

“There was a specific study on people who had lost the use of their lower limbs—people in wheelchairs—and those findings totally hold true. One year after the accident, they’re exactly as happy as they were before.”

I stared at her.

“Isn’t that great?”

“That’s what you’ve been waiting to say all this time?”

“Yes! You’re going to be okay. Aren’t you glad to know that?”

“Undecided.”

Then, as she came in for a final hug, she said, “I just need you to remember that, okay?” She squeezed a little tighter. “There are all kinds of happy endings.”

*

NEXT, MY PARENTS showed up at the door—with a top-of-the-line wheelchair with a bow on it. Literally: a bow. Like I’d just turned sixteen and they’d bought me a convertible.

I just stared. “This is the worst best present ever.”

My dad came over for one of his signature hugs. “The titanium was developed by NASA,” he said. “It has razor-thin inverted wheels, like all the basketball players use.”

“Dammit,” I said. “Now I have to join a basketball team.” I thought about Pop-A-Shot with Ian, and wondered if I just might.

My dad wanted to walk me through all its features and do a little demo, but I shut that right down.

“He loves that thing,” my mother said. “Spent all day yesterday scooting around in it.”

My dad rubbed one of his shoulders and confirmed, “Arms are a little sore.”

They were both so excited. My mother loved its compactness—how trim it was. “From just the right angle,” she said, “you can barely tell there’s a chair there at all.”

“So I’ll just look like I’m weirdly floating down the street with my legs bent?”

But she pooh-poohed me. “You know what I mean.”

Everyone was civil. Everyone was elegantly polite. You’d never even know that we’d all just bounced back from being estranged. And then something weird happened: Just before Kit headed to the airport with my dad, she stepped in to hug my mom good-bye.

And my mom just didn’t let go.

How long does a normal hug last? Five seconds? This one went on for five minutes. So long that Kit wound up opening her eyes to look at me like, What the heck?

Nobody said anything, either. We just stood there, in silence, and let it happen.

It was the first hug my mom and Kit had shared in years.

When my mom finally let go, there were tears on her cheeks. She wiped them away and turned to my dad. “She’s going to need something to eat in the airport.”

My dad sensed what was coming. He looked at his watch. “You’re sending me to the sandwich shop?”

This was becoming her signature thing. Sending him for sandwiches. Especially when she wanted to have girl talks.

My dad shook his head. “We don’t have time.”

“We do!” my mother said.

Kit nodded then. “Actually, we have plenty of time.”

My dad looked at my mother like, Really? Then he sighed, set down Kit’s suitcase, and headed out—while Kit and I frowned at each other.

My mother watched him go, and only after he’d boarded the elevator at the end of the hall did she turn around to face us. Her expression was solemn. She took a deep breath and swallowed. Then she closed the door and took a step toward Kit.

“His name,” she said, “was Derin Buruk.”

Kit held her breath. She glanced at me, then back at my mother, who glanced back at the door, as if confirming the coast was clear.

“He was Turkish. An exchange student. Devastatingly handsome. Black hair and green eyes rimmed with black lashes. He showed up on our first day of senior year, and he was all any girl could talk about for months. I didn’t talk about him. I ignored him. I was dating your dad—since ninth grade—and I wasn’t looking for dates, but I couldn’t help but notice him. He had a movie star quality. He was magnetic. And for some reason, he fixated on me. He passed me notes, flirted with me in the hallways, snuck flowers into my locker. I told him over and over to knock it off, but he said he couldn’t. He stared at me constantly in the cafeteria and at football games. He called me almost daily. He professed love—obsessive love—and begged me to break up with your dad and go out with him.”

I looked at my mother’s hands. They were trembling.

“Turkish men are famously persistent,” she went on, “did you know that? They are very determined about love. Your dad—your wonderful dad, the love of my life—he’s not really like that. That steadiness, that easygoing nature—they don’t lend themselves to mad passion. He was kind, he was good-hearted, but he was also a high school boy. He got a lot wrong. He knew next to nothing about romance, or wooing, or how to make a woman flutter. We were the best of friends. But I had never come up against a force like Derin. I had no defenses. I did my best. I pushed him away and pushed him away, but he just kept coming back—harder and stronger. The truth was, I liked it. I liked that he noticed me. I liked that of all the girls in love with him, I was the one he chose. I never understood why he picked me. I still don’t know why.”