It’s not that she never talked about it. What she kept in there. One time, she said it was her grandma’s lasagne recipe, family secret. Another time, it was her mother’s little book of internet passwords, and I knew enough of her mother by then that I kind of believed it. Her mother relied on her because she was a keeper. I knew it. Still, every time I heard that click, I couldn’t help imagining that drawer in her chest. That compartment sliding out. Sometimes I pictured skin, other times it was slippery as liver. How was it we’d been together two whole years and I still didn’t know?

I’d seen the outside, of course. The faint line that curved round those two ribs on her left side. ‘Oh that?’ she’d said, the first time I saw it. ‘I just came that way. But it’s useful, you know. Practical.’ A bunch of us had been out to Tamarama. We’d spent the day going from the beach to the esky and back again. We were both pretty drunk, and crusted all over with dots of white salt. Nothing mattered. That was the only reason I was brave enough to kiss her.

It’s funny. How people can go from feeling so lucky, so blessed by the whole damn universe, to standing outside a bathroom door like a creep, listening for a click. It would have been easier if she was cheating. I would’ve known what to do then. How to act. But somehow it had become a game between us. In bed, when she was on top, I would slide my hands up her waist, all slow, and as soon as I got close she would catch my wrists and move my hands and—

Well. She knew. That’s all I’m saying. She teased me, sure, but she also wasn’t going to show me what she had. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t the only thing I cared about. I had work and a busted ACL to sort out and my dipshit brother in and out of dad’s bank account. Life was life. But I just kept thinking, if she was serious…

Blah blah. Fill in the blanks. I mean, there I was, some dumbfuck trying to decide whether to propose, and I couldn’t even work out if she really loved me. But I figured if she was the one, it’d keep. Marriage wasn’t something to rush. Then Lenny told me his girlfriend had stuck a Michael Hill catalogue on the fridge, circled a diamond ring and written that one!!! as a joke. And Dan told me, drunkenly, that Evie left him because she was done waiting. And I thought, yeah, if she was serious, I’d know about it.

It was her mum who called me. I wasn’t listed as next of kin on anything, so the hospital had called her and hours later, when she finally remembered her daughter’s drifter of a boyfriend, she called me. I was furious when I got there. Not real anger, just fear and worry all knotted tight. All I knew was that she’d been hit by a Hilux on the way to work. Sent flying. And the whole day, while I’d been drinking my silly little coffee and updating my spreadsheets and tippy-tapping at my keyboard, she’d been in surgery, getting cut open and bolted back together. Goddamn, that waiting room. Her mother swallowing and swallowing.

When a nurse finally came and told us she was out of surgery, the fuckheads still wouldn’t let me in, only family. It was only when she woke up and started asking for me that they decided I was allowed. I was wired on instant coffee by then. Dry-eyed and jumpy. I gripped my laptop bag tight as I stepped past the curtain, but then all my jumpiness fell away. One leg in a cast. The rest of her streaked with yellow antiseptic. Grazes and plasters and bruises fat as horns of fungus. She was puffy and blooming all over. Exploded from the inside out.

Her hand was so cold. It all came out then. I told her not to talk, that I loved her so much, that she was the strongest person I’d ever met. Other things too, because the relief was a rising flood and nothing mattered. Nothing at all. Her mother sat on the other side of the bed, watching my whole performance. ‘She can’t hear you,’ she said. ‘They just gave her more of that stuff, you know. She’s out again.’ Then she primly rearranged herself on her plastic chair and smoothed her hands over her ribs.

Suspicion flared. I knew there wasn’t anything under that oatmeal sweater. We’re talking about the kind of mother who called her daughter three times a week, who always needed something. There was no way she was a keeper. There was nothing in her ribs and I knew it. But I was already thinking about the surgeon. The bright lights. Those gloved hands in my girl’s chest. And I felt it. Deep inside my own sternum. That pressure. A fist I couldn’t breathe around.

I was still crouched by the bed waiting for the dizziness to pass when the surgeon came in. She barely looked at me, just spoke to her mother. I was nothing, after all. I only wanted to marry her but had been too chickenshit to ask. The surgeon told her mother about the plates and screws; what they’d cut out of her, what they’d stitched closed. ‘She’s very lucky,’ she said, and held out a small ziplock bag. ‘I wasn’t sure if any of this was important. But just in case.’

I stood up too quickly. My girl’s hand thumped softly back against the sheets. ‘That’s mine,’ I said. ‘She kept things for me too. That’s… I mean… I’m pretty sure. Look, maybe I can just check?’

Her mother gaped. The surgeon hesitated too, that little bag in her outstretched hand. And I almost had it. I was almost there, but then a pained moan came from the bed. A twitch of fingertips. And in that split second, while I was deciding where I needed to be, the surgeon decided about me. About the both of us. She slipped the bag back into her pocket and stepped to the bed. She spoke quietly. Flashed a torch. Nodded. Then she was gone and all I was left with was the look in my girl’s bruised, slitted eyes, like she’d heard every single word.