I was shivering when I awoke in the recovery room. A nurse came in and placed two more sheets over me and waited till the shakes abated and finally disappeared. She told me that they were waiting for a room to be available and until then, I had to stay in the recovery room where they could monitor my blood pressure and other vitals a bit more.

After she had left, I looked down at my right hand, the back of it encased in a rigid plaster splint that limited movement though I could see the inside of my hand beneath the light covering of bandages. They had set my arm up on a pillow, and I could see the stitches in my palm, its tiny knots all lined up perfectly along the incision. Along the middle of the forearm was another incision, although this one had no stitches to keep it together at all. Small butterfly bandages lined the scar, as if holding them together, and in the semi-darkness, I could see a slight coating of something shiny over the skin. Some glue maybe, I thought.

It took me a few moments, but I got a hold of myself and calmed down. It was only a tendon, I told myself again and again. And Doctor Samuels was the best. It was a mantra I repeated till I found the courage to look at my arm again.

This time, I wanted to touch the incisions, mainly to remind myself that what had just happened - me duking it out in the bathtub with Serena and losing miserably - did happen.

I tried to lift my arm, but it felt heavy. Still I did what I could, relieved when I saw my arm leave the pillow despite a gnawing sensation in my forearm.

When I tried to move the tips of my fingers towards my palm, the splint prevented any movement at all, and the effort was painful. But as my good hand touched the exposed tips of fingers of the bandaged hand, I bit my lip in relief as I felt sensation still there.

Noise outside the door brought me back to the present, and I wondered whether I could paint again, fear to grip me for I knew the answer would allude me till I spoke to Doctor Samuels - or Erik.

The thought of Erik made me realize that I hadn't seen him since I awoke. He'd been there with me from the beginning, I thought, remembering the sound of his voice just before I passed out at the sight of the lacerations in my arm. He'd been there just before I closed my eyes as I went under the anesthetic, trying to answer his question about the titanium plate on my right wrist, holding the carpal bones together. I remembered mumbling something to him then before the anesthetic finally did its work.

Ten minutes later, they wheeled me into a private room, and a woman came in to have me initial a few forms even though all I could manage were scribbles with my left arm. After she left, a nurse assistant named Marina came in, asking if I would like any help.

"Am I spending the night or-"

"No, you're outpatient, dear, and you're going home," she said in her strong Filipino accent. "But since no one's here yet to pick you up, would you like some help getting around? Do you have a ride?"

I stared at her, the meaning of her words suddenly clear to me. My phone was broken, and I had no way to contact anyone. And even if I did input Anna's phone number into my phone last night, I hadn't had it memorized so I could call her and ask for help. If Rosie were alive, she'd have been there to drive me home, I thought. But this time, I was alone.

"No, but I can call someone," I said, dreading having to call David to have him pick me up. "Can I take a shower at least?"

She smiled and nodded her head. "Sure, I can help you with that. You cannot get your arm wet, - and your foot - so we'll have to cover them up with plastic. We may end up doing just a sponge bath, but I'll help you get clean. Let me get you some towels from the linen cabinet outside," she said, leaving the room for a few moments.

Even if Marina had said that I couldn't shower, I probably would have dragged myself into the bathroom if I could. I hated the sight of the dried blood still stuck under the fingernails of my good hand and the smell of it in my hair. There was also the run in the hot summer sun I had just done that morning. I didn't know how I was going to manage it, but I was going to try, modesty be damned, to at least be clean in front of David, who I was sure wasn't going to let an opportunity pass him by to deride me for saying what I said to him the day before.

Marina was kind and patient. After slipping my right arm in a plastic bag designed to keep it dry, she helped me undress and get bathed. I sat most of the time, and I let her do what she had to do. She shampooed my hair, helped me up when I needed to do some of the cleaning by myself - all without a trace of judgment on her face.

I memorized her face, dark and plump, with a ready smile and dimpled cheeks. She was my mother's age, but she looked, at least, ten years younger. While washing my hair, she told me that her son was in medical school in the Philippines and that she was working in the United States to be able to pay for his education. She had another child, too, a daughter still in high school who had dreams of becoming a nurse. Her narrative was interrupted when there was a light knock on the door, and she left me for a few minutes to talk to someone outside, before returning and resuming her story.

Half an hour later, I felt as clean as I could ever be, the sweat from my run completely gone, with no blood stuck in my nails or my hair. She did what she could to clean the foot where Doctor Samuels had taken a tendon, cleaning between my toes with a washcloth till I was giggling from being tickled and drying them. I couldn't do anything about the blood still under the nails of my injured hand, but I was willing to make concessions. At least, I was clean.

It wasn't till I put on two hospital gowns - one from the front and the second one from the back to cover my butt - when I realized that I had nothing to wear but the clothes I had worn while running.

So much for trying to get clean, I thought. Now I had to wear the same clothes I came in with, probably caked with blood. I wondered where my waist pack was, though even if I had it, I had not brought any money with me to buy clothes from the gift shop downstairs.

But any concerns about clothing disappeared when I emerged from the bathroom. One of my red summer dresses was on the bed, along with a set of underwear and a pair of sandals.

"Who brought these in?"

"Your husband did," Marina said. "He's waiting outside to take you home."

"Oh," I said.

I remembered then that I probably still had David listed as my emergency contact from my last visit to the hospital emergency room a year and a half ago. I'd been too out of it to answer any of their questions when I'd been brought in, and so they must have gone with whatever information they found from a previous file. It explained David's appearance at the emergency room.

At least, David had thought of choosing a sleeveless wide necked dress for me to wear. It would make slipping it over my injured arm easier. But the underwear was a different story, I thought, blushing as Marina's eyebrow went up at the sight of me picking up a red lacy thong as if I'd never seen it before. At least the bra matched, I thought, my face burning with embarrassment.

Marina shrugged. "They look nice," she said, not helping with my embarrassment.

"I'll probably need you to help me dress," I said, thinking of a few choice words I was going to tell David when I'd see him. I could only imagine him going through my lingerie drawer, wondering what went through his mind as he held up each piece. But as Marina helped snap the bra behind me, I took a deep breath and exhaled, and told myself to get over it.

I'd been married to the man, for crying out loud, I thought. I even had a baby with him.

The dress slipped over quite easily, not snagging at the splint that protected my arm at all. Ten minutes later, without a drop of conditioner or straightening products, my hair was a frizzy mess that tumbled over my shoulders. I tried to comb my hair with the toiletry set provided by the hospital, but the teeth bent when it met my hair, the long waves frizzy from the dry hospital air. After giving up, I took a deep breath and steeled myself to face David in my sexy little number, praying he wouldn't laugh at me.

"Hi," Erik said as I emerged from the room and I stopped in mid-stride to stare at him. He was no longer wearing the green scrubs and nothing covered his face or hair. I felt like a girl on prom night, with her date waiting for her downstairs - or, at least, that's how most movies showed it. He was blushing as he gazed at me, his white button-down shirt still emphasized his narrow hips and the jeans showed off his long legs.

"Hi," I squeaked, butterflies going crazy deep in my belly.

"You look beautiful."

I shrugged, both relieved and horrified at the realization that it was Erik who had chosen my ensemble after all. "As beautiful as any post-operative patient with a bum arm can look, I guess. They just didn't have any conditioner."

"You still look beautiful to me," he said, coming closer. I could feel the nurses' eyes on us, my discomfort growing with each passing minute but Erik didn't seem to care. "I had to delay your release a little bit until I could get everything ready. I was happy when Marina said you wanted to wash up. It bought me more time."

"More time for what?"

"To get your clothes from your house," Erik replied. "I hope you don't mind. I found your keys in your waist pack, so I let myself into your house."

"I see," I said wryly.

"I'm sorry about the lingerie, by the way," he added, lowering his voice as he drew closer. "It was the first thing I grabbed - I mean, I didn't have time to be picky."

Or practical, I wanted to say, blushing. At least, he didn't find the granny underwear.

"As long as I'm not wearing the clothes I came in here with, Erik, I'm not complaining. Thank you so much for thinking about it, though. This is one of my favorite dresses - and it goes over my arm quite easily."

He pushed a wheelchair towards me. "Best to get you home then. I can't have you walking out of here, so you'll have to sit down till we get down to the lobby. It's hospital policy."

As I sat down in the wheelchair, I accidentally bumped my arm against the armrest as I eased myself down. The pain hit me so unexpectedly as if someone had wrenched the incision open. I must have turned white as sheet for Marina was suddenly in front of me, grabbing hold of my arms and easing me down on the wheelchair. A few minutes later, after taking my blood pressure, they gave me some pills for the pain and waited till the pain abated.

So much for that romantic interlude, I thought, the harsh reality hitting me. My right arm was useless, and I could not do anything with it, not even help me get up from chairs or worse, hold a brush to paint.

Erik didn't speak as he wheeled me downstairs, the hospital orderly walking alongside us to guide us through the corridors and hallways till we reached the lobby where a valet brought him his Land Rover. The pain medication left me loopy, and as I waited for the nausea to pass completely, Erik helped me into the Land Rover, buckled my seat belt for me and then got on the driver side.

The sudden change in mood forced dark thoughts to fill my mind, but as much as I hated how it deflated whatever happiness I had felt when I saw Erik, I knew that I could no longer avoid them. Cabo, I said to myself. My thoughts returned to Cabo, and what Serena said happened there - why she had tried to kill herself.

My mind a jumble of thoughts and emotions, too many to hold on to at one time though only one kept surfacing again and again, demanding my full attention. If the pain medication did this to me, I didn't want it. I needed to be clear.

I was also suddenly so tired deep in my bones as if beaten down by everything that had just happened in the last few hours. But maybe it was all hitting me then, I thought, the realization that I could have died, and the question as to why Erik never bothered to tell me about Cabo - or the baby.

But then, if I started demanding every bit of information about Erik's life from him - and honestly, he'd been more open to me than I ever was to him - wouldn't it mean that I, too, had to return the favor? Didn't Erik have a right to know about why I was so scared of David? Why it had taken me so long to finally stand up to him, little by little?

"What's going to happen with the exhibit? Is it too late to go?" I asked. Wasn't today supposed to be my big day?

"It's already six, Sam, and you're not going anywhere. Dr. Samuels allowed me to take you home as long as I keep an eye on you, but I wouldn't worry about the exhibit right now."

"Where's Michael?" I asked as Erik drove into his garage. He switched off the engine and pressed the remote to shut the garage door behind us. I felt so lost, the questions pouring out one after the other. I wondered if it was one of the effects of the anesthesia. "Wasn't David at the emergency room? Who called him?"

"You had him listed as your emergency contact in your old chart when you were last in the hospital a year and a half ago," Erik replied. "As for Michael, I told David to drop him off at the house."

"My house?"

"No, Sam," Erik chuckled, touching my hand. "Mine. I gave him the option to check out my house so he knows where Michael will be staying. Where you will be staying while you're recovering. It will take awhile, so I hope you don't mind. I've taken time off from work-"

"What about your patients?"

"My patients will live. I've got two other doctors working full time, and we have a boat load of interns from the university," he said, pushing a frizzy lock of hair from my face. He pushed open the car door and was about to step out when I finally said out loud the one question that had been nagging at me since I awoke.

"Erik, why did you never tell me about the baby?"

Erik paused, sat back down and shut the door. He looked at me, confusion written all over his face.

"What baby?"