I felt the transition in your hospital room. So many years of estranged connection, so many dreams, and hopes and revisions playing over and over. With you without you. Now you lie there status-post surgical repair of the shattered leg and knee from the assault at the art opening-martial arts event. Tied to a bed, braced within a brace, laced with IVs. I see you now, my ex, with new open eyes.

Our dear friend is with us in the room, making jokes and small talk, encouraging laughter when you emerge from the anesthetized unconscious state to the one you are in now. Blurred, slurred, thickened by drugs and intravenous fluids in your veins. I watch. I watch. I watch you awaken to us—two women who love you. One, me, your ex. The other, your old friend who says she’s good in emergencies.

The transition came over me like a shear, clear epiphany. I was no longer in love with you. Sure we are connected, heart-to-heart, by a thin but unbreakable string. But the yearning compulsive draw has shifted. I look at you now not with eyes of an ex-lover but with those of a server of service— an attendant, healer, supporter—shaped by smells, sights, sounds of an inpatient room. Nurses, janitors, medical assistants at your service. And me, ever present. Not longing any longer, but with the shape of a woman matured by times past and heart break. Ever present with the soul of a healer now. For you, dear one, fractured one. You will heal just like me.

Hospitals seem to bring out the best in me. I am glad of that. The doom is gone, dude, and I am free. There is a filter for our love, through fractured leg, knee, and pins, plates and screws. I move on.