The clinic is tucked away in the Swiss mountains, its pristine white buildings framed by green hills and snowcapped peaks. You have to admit that it’s beautiful from the outside, serene even, but as soon as you step through the doors, that atmosphere shifts. Everything inside feels too still, the walls too white, too sterile.

And then, you see Lottie.

At first glance, you don’t recognize her. Her hair has been cut shorter, brushing just past her jawline, and she’s gained some weight since the wilderness starvation. She looks less hollow, less outside of her own body than she did when she stepped off that plane.

“Hey,” she says, her voice steadier than you expected for somebody who’d returned to Wiskayok mute

“Hey,” you echo softly.

You hesitate, unsure if it’s okay to hug her, or if that would be too much, but before you can secondguess yourself further, Lottie steps forward and wraps her arms around you. “I missed you,” she murmurs against your shoulder.

“I missed you too,” you whisper back, holding her tighter.

The crash changed everything: It stole pieces of her, pieces of you, pieces of what the two of you had. You spent 19 months not knowing if she was alive or dead, clinging to hope when the rest of the world had let her go. And then, against all odds, she came back.

But the Lottie who came home wasn’t the same. She was quiet, guarded, haunted in ways none of the doctors could explain. When her parents told you they were sending her away, it felt like losing her all over again. You didn’t fight them, even though it broke you. Instead, you wrote her letters, pouring everything you had into them, refusing to let her forget how much she meant to you.

Now, standing here with her in your arms, it feels like, for the first time in so long, some of the weight has finally lifted.