She lowers herself into the chair at my bedside, wincing all the way down.

“You feel okay?” I ask her.

She gives me one of her most disdainful stares.

“Just kidding,” I say, hands up. “Honestly, I don’t even care.”

“You’re the one in a hospital bed,” she says. “Can we maybe talk for a sec about how I thought you were out getting laid and instead you were playing tag with a wild animal? What the fuck, Aurora?”

“I’m getting Aurora’d? How am I in trouble?”

“Why would you get out of the car?”

So it begins.

“Scarlett,” I say, mirroring her cold stare. It’s easy since we share a face.

She sighs, her head falling forward as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “What would I have done if I lost you? If you were killed by a bear?”

She doesn’t know that’s the wrong question. What would she have done if I had been killed by a monster?

It was a necessary lie. Had I told anyone the truth about what happened in the woods last night, that I was attacked by a massive fanged mystery beast, I’d likely be carted off to a mental institution. No one would believe me. I can’t blame them. I barely believe it myself, and I was there. I know what I saw, and still . . .

It’s a particular form of torture that I wish I were alone in, though I know I’m not. For some reason I can never fully trust my own experience. I’m always treating myself like an unreliable witness. I offer no empathy, only an endless cycle of interrogation.

Did I really see it? Or did I make up a fantastical creature to dissociate from reality? Wouldn’t that make sense?

“Rory,” Scarlett says.

“I was coming home from the bar and I hit something. I worried it was a dog. Some sweet golden retriever wearing a red bandanna and, like, a collar with tags that say, ‘I’m loved.’ I got out to check, and I guess maybe actually I hit the bear, or pissed it off somehow. Here we are.”

“You’ve been back here for two weeks,” she says. “Two weeks.”

“I know,” I say. “It could sense it. Bear was like ‘Sweetie, go back to Manhattan.’ ”

“I’d understand,” she says, tapping her nails on the arm of the chair. “If you want to go back. It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Hey. No,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere. This doesn’t change anything. I’m here.”

“I woke up to the cops at the door. I don’t ever want to wake up to a knock like that again.”

I can’t freak out because she’s freaking out. One of us has to be calm. It’s a rule.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Honestly, would rather be here. Rather be the one in the hospital bed than sitting beside it.”

She stares at me for what feels like forty-five minutes.

“What?” I ask finally.

“You can’t shrug this off,” she says.