I blinked. “What?”
“They’re moody bastards all the time,” she explained. “Really mean.”
“Oh.”
“We can’t help who we fall for, Gabi, but when they show us their true colors, we can choose to listen and let go.”
There it was. The pep talk. The you should end it with him spiel. Donna was right, of course. I should end it. He’d hurt me too many times for me to keep forgiving him.
And yet?
And yet I was madly in love with him. I saw a future with him. I saw the man I knew he could be if he continued to work hard. After everything he’d been through and all the changes he’d been making, wasn’t it perfectly normal for him to have slip-ups?
What mattered was how he handled them afterward.
Right?
Or was I signing myself up for a life of misery by constantly giving him more slack?
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered.
Donna inched her chair closer. “You don’t have to decide right now. Let’s focus on your health and making sure you’re okay. Then we can add more to your plate when you’re ready. But for now, we’re going to be present here, at the hospital.”
“Okay,” I said shakily.
Over the next half hour, doctors continued to check in on me. I was moved to my own room for observation for twelve hours. While there, a nurse applied a salve to my burnt hands and wrapped them. It felt like heaven. Several healthcare workers commended me for my actions and said they’d already heard about the young woman in the yellow Lambo who’d leapt into the fray and saved lives. They called me a hero.
I didn’t feel like one.
I felt like a sucker.
Donna left and came back with lunch, claiming it wasn’t right to leave me to eat shitty hospital food. She helped out by calling my family and filling them in on what had happened, leading with the fact that I would be okay. When I was told by a nurse that I’d be discharged tonight around nine o’clock, Donna called my brother and arranged for him to come pick me up.
With six hours left to kill, Donna wished me goodbye. The nurses wanted me to get some rest, and I couldn’t deny that I was exhausted.
“I’ll come check on you tomorrow,” she promised. “Text me if you need anything. I’ll bring that soup and sandwich you like from that new deli, okay?”
I smiled through fresh tears. “That would be great, Donna. Thank you so much for being here for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She smiled. “Don’t waste a single thought thinking about it because I’ll always be here for you, Gabi. Always.”
With a friend like Donna in my corner, I knew I could face whatever storm waited around the corner for me.