I’m not sure what to say. I’m used to being the one in the bed. When Cora and Glenn visited me in the burn unit, I watched from my immobile perch as they suited up in booties and scrubs and hairnets so they wouldn’t bring the infectious dangers of the outside world into my little reality. I’d lie there like a caged zoo animal.

Now I’m the one tapping on the glass.

“Piper?”

A small sound escapes her lips, but her eyes only flicker slightly.

“You don’t have to talk. I just want to say I’m sorry. I wasn’t there when you needed me.” I choke down the lump in my throat.

Beeping fills the otherwise silent space.

Then I feed her all the same battle language people used to give me. I hated it then, and I hate myself for saying it now, but it’s all I have—the hope that my words will reach her.

“I need you to fight. I need you to wake up so I can tell you something amazing. I found my new normal.” I flip her hand over and lay the gold phoenix in her limp palm. “It’s you. You and Cora and Glenn, and I almost missed it, searching for someone I used to be. I couldn’t see the beauty all around me.”

I close her fingers over the bird.

“But I see it now, Pipe. I see you. You’re not In. Valid. Not to me. So you have to get better so I can tell you that I’m sorry. I should have been there. But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re part of my story, and I’m part of yours.”

The antiseptic smell and beeping transports me back to the unit. I used to think Cora had a martyrdom complex, the way she’d stay through the night curled up on the chair, surviving off cafeteria Jell-O.

Did Cora feel the way I do holding Piper’s hand? Like there’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.

Then I do the one thing I know how to do: I sing softly, words about dreams and bluebirds and troubles melting like lemon drops.

Before I leave, I scribble a note on a cafeteria napkin.

You've got lots of flying left to do on this side of the rainbow.

PS If you try to die on me again, I'll kill you myself.

Piper’s dad stops me on my way out to offer a supremely awkward apology for when I saw him in all his drunken splendor at his house.

“I haven’t always been like that,” he says, as if I’ve asked for an explanation. “Sometimes it feels like the accident happened to all of us. You know?”