MEI'S POV — EVENING, ONE DAY BEFORE DISCHARGE
It started the way most things between them had always started.
An argument.
Not a loud one....they were in a hospital room with Aria sleeping ten feet away, so the argument happened in the corridor in hushed voices with controlled faces, which was somehow more exhausting than shouting would have been.
It had begun simply enough. Alexander had arrived with Thai food as promised, and Mei had already been there with soup from the place near her apartment, and for a moment the three of them had looked at the collection of food on the small hospital table and Aria had pressed her lips together very hard in the way she did when she was trying not to laugh.
"I'll eat both," Aria had said pleasantly. "I'm recovering. I need the calories."
