Jake's face filled the incoming-call preview while Nina remained seated beside my leg. Answering would give him the exact image campus gossip wanted, though rejecting it would only produce seventeen messages. I showed Nina the waiting screen before choosing how to handle either problem.
"Your friend looks frightened," she said, glancing from his preview toward her position on the mattress.
"His imagination lacks adult supervision," I replied, holding the phone where she could reach the decline button, "your choice."
"Answer it," Nina said, staying in place as she folded one leg beneath herself, "I want to see whether his head explodes."
The call connected with Jake silent for nearly three seconds, which qualified as a medical event. Ruby appeared behind him, saw the same frame, then covered her face with one hand. Nina smiled while I reconsidered every request that had kept her inside the room.
"You called back quickly," I said, angling the phone away from my gown before Jake recovered.
"I forgot to ask when visiting hours start," he replied, staring toward Nina's knee beside mine, "but apparently the visit is progressing."
"She moved because you displaced the chair," I told him, giving the explanation before it became secrecy.
"I moved the chair," Nina added, leaning toward the microphone while amusement sharpened, "then I sat here because I wanted to."
Jake looked toward Ruby for immediate statistical assistance, receiving no useful answer. Nina had told the literal truth without allowing him to turn it into proof of romance. I watched her handle the question, then realized I had not asked what she wanted other people to know.
"Evening visiting begins at five," I said, checking the schedule before Jake could return to the subject, "bring the notes from methods if you come."
"I can do that," he replied, adjusting his glasses as embarrassment replaced speculation, "Ruby is coming because she trusts neither of us."
"Correct," Ruby called from outside the frame before he ended the video.
Nina stayed on the mattress after the screen went dark, though she shifted farther from my injured side. The movement left several inches between us without making the choice look defensive. My phone continued receiving links while both of us avoided opening them.
"We should decide something first," I said, turning the device face down beside my hip.
"Whether I am allowed on the bed?" she asked, looking at the space beneath her before she met my eyes.
"You already decided that," I replied, resisting the pleasure of making it sound more intimate, "I mean what we tell people."
Nina's expression settled carefully as the public problem replaced our private teasing entirely. She moved back to the chair when I asked her to bring it closer, choosing a position where we faced each other. Neither seating arrangement felt emotionally neutral after witnessing Jake's immediate reaction to us.
"What do you want them to think?" she asked, setting her phone across one knee while she waited.
The tempting answer involved a flattering relationship neither of us had actually discussed. Strangers imagining Nina as my girlfriend would give me social credit without requiring me to risk asking her. It would also turn her care into a prize I could collect after being injured.
"I want them to stop inventing things," I said, knowing the wish was useless before I finished it.
"Campus media does not honor requests for reality," Nina replied, opening the first public post after I nodded.
The accident video began with the car already sliding, cutting away every ordinary second before it. My body crossed the frame, caught Nina, then disappeared behind the vehicle when it hit. Somebody had slowed the impact twice, adding music beneath a caption about true love arriving without warning.
Nina stopped the video before the replay, pressing her thumb against the dark screen. Her face had gone still in the controlled way she used around guilt. I took the silent phone from her only after she willingly offered it.
"That is not what happened," she said, looking toward the bandage beneath my gown rather than the screen.
"The impact happened," I replied, setting the device beside mine, "but the caption belongs to somebody selling detergent."
"Comments think we were secretly dating," Nina said, pulling both sleeves over her hands as she leaned back, "several people remember us leaving class together."
"We never left together," I replied, searching my memory before I found the reason, "we used the same door."
"Apparently architecture confirms intimacy," she said, recovering enough humor to lift one side of her mouth.
The next post included photographs from the ambulance, catching Nina with my hand between hers. Another caption called her my girlfriend, while several comments argued she had ignored me until the accident. The cruelest version said guilt had finally made a popular woman notice an invisible man.
I wanted to dismiss the insult before Nina could see it, though hiding the screen would treat her as fragile. She read the comment after asking for the phone, letting anger reach her considerably faster than guilt this time.
"They do not know anything about you," Nina said, typing before she stopped herself, "or me."
"What were you going to write?" I asked, watching the unsent reply remain beneath her thumb.
"That I knew you before the car," she said, deleting the sentence instead of posting it, "but then somebody asks how well."
"We knew each other by sight," I replied, keeping the truth available even if it sounded small.
"I stayed because I wanted to," she added, placing the phone down with more force than necessary.
"Both things can be the answer," I said, meeting her eyes when she looked toward me.
The sentence did not label attraction, debt, or a future neither of us had chosen. It gave the public only what belonged to them: we shared a lecture, I saw the danger, plus Nina chose to remain afterward. Everything else could remain private inside our messages until we chose differently.
"No fake girlfriend joke," Nina said, reading my face as she tested the boundary, "even if it would end half the questions."
"I would enjoy it too much," I admitted, refusing to disguise the reason as pure principle, "then you would spend the week correcting what I gained from it."
Nina looked surprised before satisfaction replaced it, having expected me to agree only because honesty sounded respectable. I wanted the lie in ways that mattered, making the boundary more deliberate once I named that desire.
"Simple truth," she said, unlocking her phone before opening the student-paper account, "classmates by sight, accident, voluntary hospital visit."
"No medical details," I added, considering the drain pouch beneath the blanket, "especially anything involving assisted walking."
"I was planning a diagram," Nina replied, typing the short statement while I checked each line.
We posted identical written versions from our separate accounts without adding photographs. Nina disabled replies on hers, while I discovered my neglected profile had gained eight hundred followers overnight. The System remained absent because privacy was not a performance deserving points.
The statement slowed nothing immediately, but it gave Jake something accurate to repeat. I sent the full version to him before opening our private messages again. His response arrived with an apology for making the bed into a joke.
{Jake: I was surprised, then I made it your problem. Sorry.}
I read the message to Nina before answering, checking whether she wanted anything added. She asked me not to explain where she sat or why, keeping that detail between us even though nothing had happened.
{Kofi: Apology accepted. Repeat the statement if anyone asks. Do not improve it.}
{Jake: Understood. Ruby has removed my improving privileges.}
Nina laughed, then returned to the comments with less tension around her mouth. She blocked two accounts that had posted her ambulance photograph without permission. I reported the video carrying romantic music after the original student removed it voluntarily.
"You know this will start again when we return," she said, setting both phones aside while the hospital room became quiet.
"Then we repeat the truth," I replied, though picturing the lecture hall tightened something below my ribs.
"People may ask whether I am staying from pity," Nina said, watching me carefully after she named the fear.
"Does that question bother you?" I asked, preventing my own answer from arriving first.
"Yes," she admitted, pulling the visitor sticker away from her jacket before smoothing it across her phone case, "because guilt was involved, but they use pity to make every choice after that meaningless."
"Your choice remains yours," I said, leaving attraction out because adding it would bend the answer toward what I wanted.
Nina nodded, fixing the sticker against the clear case until the edges stayed flat. She had turned one temporary hospital marker into something she planned to carry. I noticed the careful choice without asking her to explain what it meant.
Jake arrived shortly after five with Ruby, two notebooks, plus a bag of food approved by Ava. He stopped at the doorway instead of entering automatically, surprising me after the video call. Ruby waited beside him while I adjusted the gown beneath the blanket.
"Come in," I said, pointing Jake toward the chair after Nina moved her bag.
"I brought methods notes," he replied, placing them near my phone before looking directly at Nina, "I am sorry about the joke."
"Thank you," she said, accepting the apology without making him suffer for entertainment, "the simple statement is all we are sharing."
"Classmates, accident, you chose to stay," Jake recited, receiving a nod from Ruby behind him.
The visit changed after that because he stopped treating Nina as a surprising object inside my room. Ruby asked about my recovery, Nina complained about student media ethics, plus Jake explained the essay feedback Professor Lail had already posted. Their conversation continued naturally even when I briefly lacked enough breath to contribute.
For years, groups had made me feel responsible for filling every silence or earning my seat. This small group allowed me to listen quietly without disappearing from the conversation. Jake passed me the notebook after marking the exact pages I had missed, proving he had expected my return before I did.
"You did not have to prepare all this," I said, turning through the careful headings while his handwriting deteriorated near the formulas.
"I know," he replied, shifting the food bag before he met my eyes, "I wanted to."
The answer matched Nina's correction from the previous morning, though Jake delivered it without knowing. My instinct to reduce his effort would turn friendship into an accident again. I closed the notebook, keeping my response small enough to be real.
"Thank you," I said, holding his gaze until he accepted the words.
Ruby smiled without praising either of us, then pulled Jake toward the second chair. Nina returned to the bed edge after asking, giving everyone enough room around the tray. The four of us discussed the accident statement until visiting hours neared their end.
"He needs sleep," Ruby said, collecting the food containers while Jake checked the clock, "so we should leave before a nurse removes us."
"Tomorrow?" Jake asked, holding the methods notebook until I pointed toward the cabinet.
"After four," I replied, letting the invitation exist without claiming his entire day.
"I will bring the lecture recording," he promised, placing the notebook safely inside.
Nina walked them toward the elevators, returning after several minutes with the visitor sticker still inside her phone case. She sat in the chair rather than on the bed, though the choice no longer felt like retreat. Our new privacy boundary had survived its first curious witnesses without argument.
"I have a question without debt attached," Nina said, folding her jacket across her lap while she watched me.
"That introduction creates concern," I replied, shifting higher against the pillow before she continued.
"Coffee after discharge," she said, allowing no joke to soften the invitation, "somewhere without nurses, family, or a car pointed at either of us."
I stared long enough for her confidence to move behind one raised eyebrow. The invitation sounded simple, but it was the first plan belonging to a future where I had left the hospital. Nina waited without trying to persuade me or soften the possible refusal.
"You do not owe me a yes," she added, placing the boundary beside the offer, "I am asking because I want to."