The door opened. Geneva swallowed a lump in her throat, keeping her eyes downcast. She saw his feet first, and knew then that he was standing in front of her. She felt rather than saw his one-eyed gaze on her face. She did not know what she looked like; she had not had much chance to spy herself within a reflective surface. But with tentative, finger-tip touches she had explored the tender, cracked planes of her face. She knew that she was disfigured now. Her features were no longer symmetrical. One side of her face, where her cheek bone had broken, stuck out strangely, startling and stretched the skin of her face in an odd way. She had been avoiding this, but she supposed it was inevitable. So gritting her teeth, which caused some pain to shoot through her recently reset jaw, she raised her eyes to meet his gaze.
She walked into the room stiffly, taking care to keep her eyes straight ahead. She did not want to look out the familiar window, or see familiar shadows cast against the walls that had once housed them both. Geneva concentrated on the sharp, dark pain in the core of her stomach, and that lent her clarity. She did not want to get lost in memory, did not want to get lost in trying to recapture the way things used to be. She wanted to go back desperately, but she knew that she couldn't. And she knew that she didn't know how to live this new life; she was trapped in this hellacious limbo.
Clearing her throat once more, she found her mouth dry. She turned uncertainly, clasping her hands together and standing close to a corner of the room. "There is something I need to talk to you about. I think you should sit down," she said, her eyes on the corner of the bed.