“How is she?” Elliott asked as Aaron stepped through the back door, joining him on a large wraparound porch that consumed most of the outside of the house.

“Not good,” Aaron admitted, shaking his head. “She’ll be all right in a few days, though.” While he would like to say this was just optimism, unfortunately, he’d seen his fiancée go through enough deaths to know about how long it would take her to begin to recover. “How are you?” he asked, turning to face his friend.

“I’m… okay,” Elliott said slowly, with a nod. “It’s a bit surreal for me, too. I mean, I don’t remember exactly what it was...