Emma woke up a little after six that evening.
Her leg was wrapped from thigh to ankle and propped on a stack of pillows. Her mouth was dry. The room was dim. A nurse told her the surgery had gone well, better than expected, and that Dr. Alvarez would come by in the morning.
Then the nurse paused.
"Also," she said, a little shyly, "I think you might want to see this. Everybody on the floor has been watching it."
She held out her phone.
It was Tyler's video. Shaky, filmed through trees and rain. A big young man kneeling next to a small boy on a gravel path. A punch. A turn. A takedown so quiet and controlled it almost looked gentle. And then, for a long, long time, nothing but a nineteen-year-old holding another fighter still on the ground while a child breathed against his leg.
Tyler had captioned it with just one line.
"Remember the guy who got beat by the PE teacher? This is what she taught him."
It had been up for two hours. It already had more views than the first one.
Then she turned her face toward the window so the nurse wouldn't see, and she cried. Quietly. The way she hadn't cried since a folded flag in a small cemetery in Texas.
Not from sadness this time.
Jake came the next afternoon. Noah came with him, a little pale, inhaler in his front pocket, carrying a bunch of grocery-store daffodils in a plastic sleeve.
"These are from the beginner group," Noah announced, setting them on the tray table. "We all chipped in. It was four dollars."
"They're perfect," Emma said.
Jake stood at the foot of the bed, his hands in his hoodie pocket, suddenly shy.
"I saw it," Emma said.
"Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I kind of figured."
"You lost the contract."
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"