The doctor says I'm fine. The doctor is wrong.

I have been sitting up in this hospital bed long enough for the ceiling tiles to become personally offensive. My phone is in a plastic bag labeled PATIENT BELONGINGS, sealed shut like state's evidence, so I cannot check the time. It feels like hours.

August Boone is still in the chair next to my bed, patient and steady, clutching my purse like it might wander off without him. He has not let it down. Beneath the throb in my temple, a polite, unfamiliar voice keeps offering opinions on the situation. Chatter I cannot seem to silence.

The voice, currently, is interested in the nurse in green scrubs. Specifically, the nurse's left hand. Specifically, the way her left hand brushed the sleeve of August's henley when she walked past us a minute ago, on her way to a different patient. The voice, calm as a librarian, says:

Ma'am. We saw that.

I close my eyes. I open them. The voice does not leave.

The voice is sounding suspiciously like someone's grandmother. I do not know whose. I have one grandmother and she is alive in Florida and would never use the word "ma'am" in that tone.

"Pos."

I focus. August is leaning forward in the visitor chair, elbows on his knees, one of his enormous hands wrapped around mine. He has a faint bruise on his left thumb where he caught it on something. His sandy blond hair is doing the thing where half of it is falling forward and the other half is pushed back like he's been running his hands through it for hours, which, given the six-hour purse situation, is statistically likely.

Warm blue eyes. The kind that crinkle at the corners when he's not worried. He is not crinkling at me right now. He is just looking.

"You okay?" he says.

"I'm fine," I say, which is what people say when they are not, in fact, fine, and which makes August do that small thing with his mouth where one corner goes up and the other doesn't.

"Mm-hmm," he says.

The doctor floats in. The doctor's name tag says DR. HASSAN, NEUROLOGY. The doctor is a small, tired-looking woman with the energy of a person who has had to explain things to scared people for fourteen consecutive hours.

"Posy," she says, "can you tell me what day it is?"

"Tuesday."

"Good. Can you tell me where you are?"

"A hospital."

"Good. Can you tell me what happened?"

"A delivery van clipped my Vespa." I check my own face in the reflective metal of the IV pole. "I went over. I hit my head. Apparently I hit my head specifically right here." I tap above my left ear. "Which, I am told, is the temporal lobe. Which, I am told, controls a number of things including but not limited to, quote, intensity of feeling and the management of strong emotional impulses, end quote, which is what the resident said before you got here, and which I have already googled."

"You googled."

"I googled."

Dr. Hassan exhales the exhale of a person whose patient has googled.

"Posy, you have a small temporal-lobe contusion. It is bruising. It will heal. You may experience, in the next several weeks, irritability, mood changes, vivid dreams, intrusive thoughts, occasional auditory phenomena, and a heightened emotional response to people and situations that previously did not provoke a strong response. We will follow up with an MRI in six weeks. If anything alarming happens before then, I want you to call my office."

"Define alarming."

She looks at me. "If you start to feel that you might harm yourself or someone else, you call my office."

I open my mouth.

I close my mouth.

The voice in my head, calm as a tea cozy, says: We needn't bother her with that, dear.

"Got it," I say.

August has not let go of my hand. I notice this not in the moony way I usually notice this kind of thing about him. I notice it the way you notice a pillar holding up a roof you didn't realize was sagging.

Dr. Hassan signs me out. They wheel me down a hall. August walks beside the wheelchair. He has the cat carrier in his other hand. Sergeant Buttercup, my fat tortoiseshell roommate, is glaring at the world from inside it and has not stopped glaring since, presumably, August showed up at my apartment six hours ago, picked her up, and brought her here.

August brought the cat. He actually brought her here. I can almost see the logic of it, a small shape moving through the gray mist of my thoughts, but it is too far out of reach. I let the fact drift, marking the spot where it vanished so I can find it again when the world stops spinning.

In the parking garage, an ER attendant catches up with us. He's young. Tall. He puts a hand on August's elbow.

"Sir, you forgot the discharge sheet."

The voice arrives in a way I did not know voices could arrive.

It does not shout. It does not panic. It comes in the way a kettle whistles, sliding up from the bottom of my chest into my ears, perfectly composed.

Ma'am, there is a knitting needle in your purse, dear. We could do this and be in the car in nine seconds.

A part of my brain, the part that is still mine, is already screaming. It is screaming politely. The other part, the new part, the houseguest part, is calmly reviewing the geometry of the parking garage. Concrete pillar. Three other cars. The young man's hand on August's elbow. The angle.

The exits are clearly marked.

The young man hands August the discharge sheet, then pulls back. He wishes us a good evening and is gone, his footsteps fading down the hall.

I have not moved. My body is sitting in the wheelchair where my body has been put. My body is, technically, fine.

There is, I notice, a knitting needle in my purse.

I do not remember packing a knitting needle.

August signs the discharge sheet on his thigh. He doesn't see my face. He glances down. He sees my hand inside the purse. He sees that the knitting needle in my purse is, apparently, in my fist.

His face goes careful.

He doesn't take the needle. He doesn't yell. He doesn't ask. He sets the discharge sheet on top of the cat carrier, very gently, and crouches down so his face is level with mine, and very, very gently, he closes both his hands around mine, around the needle, around the metal, and he doesn't try to take it. He just holds.

"Pos," he says. "Hi."

Words don't come.

"Hey. Look at me." He waits. He gets his face under mine. "There she is."

The voice in my head has gone quiet. Watching, I think.

"You're okay," he says. "We're going home."

"There's a knitting needle in my purse," I say. My voice comes out small. Younger than I've heard it in years.

"I know."

"I don't remember packing it."

"I know."

"August."

He lets me say it. He waits.

"There's a voice in my head," I tell him.

Nothing in his face moves. His thumb stays steady on the back of my wrist.

"Okay," he says. "We're going home, Pos. We'll figure out the voice. We'll put the needle somewhere safe."

I let him uncurl my fingers from the metal. He puts the needle in his back pocket. He picks me up out of the wheelchair like I am a thing that he was going to pick up anyway, the way you might pick up your own coat. He doesn't make a thing of it. He carries me to his truck while Sergeant Buttercup yowls in her carrier in his other hand and the discharge sheet flutters under his arm.

In the cab, buckled in, I put my forehead against the window and I close my eyes.

The voice, very softly, the way you might apologize for an interruption:

That was unkind of me, dear. Forgive me.

I do not answer her. I cannot answer her. My eyes are closed and my temple is throbbing and August is starting the truck and somewhere inside me, in the part that is not bruised, in the part that is mine, a question is forming.

What is wrong with my brain, and why does it only break around him.