Home Entertainment Game Technology Six months after a bullet left me paralyzed, my fiancée secretly ordered the staff to stop my afternoon therapy because she believed helping me was pointless, but the exhausted aide earning twenty-five dollars an hour refused to treat me like a lost cause. I had spent my life surrounded by men terrified of my name, yet it took one brutally honest woman washing my back to make me realize the person wearing my engagement ring had already abandoned me.352

Tessa was crying openly now.

“You were face-down in the rain.”

I couldn't speak.

“I called 911.”

My mouth went dry.

“The dispatcher told me not to move you unless you stopped breathing. You kept trying to push yourself up.”

The room blurred.

“I told you to stop.”

That voice.

Six months buried under morphine and trauma.

Not a paramedic.

Hers.

“You said…”

I could barely form the words.

Tessa nodded.

“Yes.”

I heard it again.

Stay with me, sir.

Don't move.

Help is coming.

“You held my hand.”

Tessa covered her mouth.

“Yes.”

Mara began crying too.

My chest hurt.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because when I took the caregiver assignment months later, I wanted you to be the man I'd hated.”

Her voice broke.

“I didn't want saving you to mean anything.”

I stared at her.

She continued through tears.

“I thought if you were cruel, I'd have proof I was right about you. I thought I'd get the documents and leave.”