“You’re doing better than you think.” She smiled as she checked the tape that held the needle in my arm.

“Better?” The throbbing made my anger boil. “The morning of the marathon, I ran five miles, just because. Now, standing with a gait belt around my waist and a walker in front of me is the biggest accomplishment of the day.”

Staying by my side, she moved her hands to her hips. “Baby steps—that’s what I tell all my patients. Healing is a long process. You’ll get there.”

“Will I?” My teeth ground together as a wave of electrical heat surged through me, my jaw so tight that it was giving me the wildest headache. “Will I be running five miles a day?” My voice was rising, and I couldn’t control it. “And waterskiing off the back of my boat and going skiing down the slopes this winter?”

Not a single goddamn person in this hospital could answer those questions when I asked them. No one knew what my mobility would be or what my pain would be like, going forward.

She gently patted my shoulder. “Remember, slow and steady.”

Slow was a word that only pissed me off.

Before I glanced away, I studied her eyes, something I did whenever someone came into my room. I knew I was looking for brown, a voice like a blanket, but I remembered nothing else.

“Hey,” I said as she turned to leave, and I waited for her to face me again. “Do you know the nurse who helped me when I came in? She had brown eyes …” I searched my brain for more, digging through each corridor, coming up blank.

She narrowed her old, wrinkly lids, blinking her blue eyes several times. “Dear, we’ve been staffed to the hilt, all hands on deck. We had to call in nurses from hospitals outside the city just to cover all the emergencies that had come in. I’m afraid there’s no telling whom it could have been.”

I nodded, and as she left, I looked toward the window. Although two of the panes were covered in blinds, one was open. The view was of another wing, dark brick and mirrored glass that shimmered under the sunlight. Nothing like the sights of Dubai that I should have been staring at right now. But anything beat the white walls or the television that had only shown the bombing on replay.

I couldn’t put myself through watching it again.

Aside from the beeping, my room was silent. Within the next hour, that would all change once my assistant arrived to discuss the matters that needed my immediate attention, and then my parents would be by along with Joe once he was able to escape work. Their faces would be filled with pity as they stared at me in this bed.

That was almost as torturous as this injury.