But nothing was easy when they got into the room, not once Nora saw Jonah for the first time: the angry purple bruises on one side of his face; the hard, overly large line of his recently repaired leg beneath a thin blanket; the elaborate, mechanical-looking splint and sling keeping his hand perfectly set until his next surgery. She went stiff and she stayed that way, even though she was working to seem calm—greeting Jonah with a big smile and an apology, promising to bring him anything he needed from his apartment, gently arranging the pillows behind his head and looking over the equipment that surrounded him as though she needed to memorize it.

“Nora,” Will said, because Jonah had just sent him a look that he could’ve sworn meant, Help me out, Beanpole. “You want to take this seat here?”

She shook her head, taking out her phone. “Let me make this list,” she said. “I assume you’ll want your tablet and charger, and . . .”

Will knew what this was, had seen it a hundred times. When you weren’t used to being around it all the time, seeing someone like this—banged-up, groggy, the particular sort of pale and weak the hospital made a person look—it was more than simply stressful. It was panic holding you in a loose grip, its fingers forever poised to tighten right around your middle and take the breath right out of you. Some people cried, some people pressed a call button until they found somebody to yell at, and some people, like Nora, tried to take total control.

But it didn’t matter so much that Will had seen it before; he hated seeing it on Nora, and he felt panic start to get a hold on him, too, tentative and cruelly teasing. While they waited, he felt useless, impractical, unsure, and unlike with Marian and Emily last night, Nora kept her distance from him in front of Jonah, standing beside his bed and barely looking Will’s way.

He felt, suddenly, like he entirely didn’t belong.

When the doctor finally came in, Will was suffused with relief: finally, some way he could be useful. Dr. Terano was clearly a great surgeon, delivering information clearly and succinctly, confident in Jonah’s odds for a full recovery but straightforward about the challenges ahead. On a sheet of scrap paper he’d snagged from the patient whiteboard behind him, he scribbled notes in his usual way, phrases he hoped would make sense to him later.

When the doctor said the name of a facility he was familiar with, he lifted his head, his brow furrowing. “Is that the only option for rehab?”