Chapter 243: Jake
Morning after I call the team, they take the tube.
Her parents say we can stay, so Reid and I edge into the room and do that giant-men-trying-to-be-small thing—backs to the wall, hands knotted, pretending we don’t dwarf the bed. The doctor’s voice is low and even; the respiratory therapist checks the straps; a nurse tapes fresh gauze to a line and murmurs, “Okay, sweetheart,” to a girl who can’t hear her yet. Antiseptic and coffee and that thin plastic smell of hospital air. The monitor ticks out its bright, merciless syllables.
It’s been a week and change, and she looks more like herself and absolutely not like herself. Her lips are pink again. Her skin isn’t paper anymore, though her freckles look… faded, like someone dusted flour over them. The bruises at jaw and throat and ribs and arms have drained from oil-slick purple to watered blue. The collapsed lung is re-inflated and sealed; the long cut along her arm is stitched into a clean ladder. Her wrist is splinted, her jaw padded. The inside things—the ones you can’t see—make my stomach try to crawl out through my ribs. Hypothermia steals; blood loss steals. The idea that anything took a bite out of that bright, busy brain makes me feel like I’m falling through the floor.
“Ready?” the doctor asks the RT.
“Ready.”
He leans in. “We’re going to take the tube now,” he tells her parents, eyes kind. “She’ll have oxygen right here if she needs it. We’ll know in moments how she’s doing.”
Her mother squeezes her father’s hand. He nods and doesn’t let go.
They suction. They deflate the cuff. The RT says, “Open,” out of habit and the doctor slides the tube free—ugly inches of plastic, tape peeling away from her mouth with a sound I hate. The RT floats a mask above her lips, not touching, waiting. The monitor blinks and the numbers drop.
Eighty.
Her mother gasps, a small broken sound.
Seventy-eight.
The doctor turns his palm up: wait.
Eighty-three.
Eighty-seven.
Ninety.
Ninety-two.
Ninety-four.
Ninety-eight—and holds.
The doctor smiles for real, relief softening his face. “That’s excellent,” he says, squeezing her mother’s hand. “Very, very good sign. I’ll be back in an hour to reassess, but this is the step we wanted.”
I step closer because my knees are about to mutiny. Reid doesn’t blink; he’s watching her chest like he can keep it moving by example. Her mouth parts the tiniest bit, breath feathering out, and I have to look at the wall and count to ten or I’m going to sob. I’ve cried more in seven days than in thirty years. Turns out it’s stored, and once you open the valve it doesn’t care about dignity.
Her father guides her mother aside. “We’ve held the room long enough,” he says, wrecked and kind in the same breath. “Go on.”
We go. I take her right hand—the bandaged one with the big cut buried under gauze. The tape is warm under my fingertip; her knuckles are smooth and familiar in a way that feels impossible. Reid takes her left and folds it into both of his. For a while we just kneel there, two hulks at a shrine, counting the rise and fall like prayer.
“I don’t know what to make of this,” her mother says suddenly.
We both snap our heads up like we’ve been caught. I can feel my face go blank. Reid’s does that winter thing.
She gives a wet little laugh. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s obvious you love her.”
My mouth opens and nothing exits.
“I don’t know what to think about… the arrangement,” she goes on, flicking a look between us that’s equal parts curious and exhausted. “But I love my daughter. I want her loved. And I like the way you look at her. The way you’re here. That’s enough for me today.” She steps in and kisses my cheek, then Reid’s. “Thank you for loving her.”
Her husband nods, a big hand on each of our shoulders—grounding, grateful—and they slip out, closing the door to give us the kind of privacy that feels like a blessing.
Reid keeps hold of her left hand and with his thumb starts tracing slow, sure strokes up and down her ring finger. He stares at that small place like he can will a future into it. “If she makes it,” he says, voice rough from nights without sleep, “I want us to marry her.” A beat. He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t care which of us signs. Doesn’t matter. I want her for life. If she says yes.”
I look at him a long second. Do I want to be the one? Yeah. Do I care more than I care about her breathing in this bed and waking up to us and a thousand dumb mornings? Not one bit.
“Flip a coin?” I try, the ghost of a smile breaking and failing on my mouth.
He huffs. “No coin.” His eyes finally cut to mine. “She decides.”
“She decides,” I echo, and it feels like a vow. “We ask when she’s ready. We make it right. For life.”
We fall quiet again. Machines hum. A cart squeaks past the door. In here, her chest rises, falls. Warm now, not ice. A curl of copper has dried against her forehead in a bright little arc; I tuck it back behind her ear, careful of tape, and it feels like tucking time back into the place it should’ve gone.
“Hey, trouble,” I whisper, leaning in so only she gets it. “You’re breathing on your own. Show-off.”
Reid snorts under his breath, the sound catching on something that might be a laugh. He strokes her finger again. “We found a place that does good rings,” he mutters, like he’s talking to her, not me. “When you’re up, we’ll take you. You can try everything in the case. Make the poor guy cry.”
“You will make the poor guy cry,” I correct, then shake my head and close my hand tighter around hers. “Mornings,” I tell her softly. “Your ridiculous socks all over our floor. You lecturing us about lab protocols at breakfast. The way you smell like vanilla and sea air and make the whole house forget it ever felt empty. We’re not done. You hear me? We’re not done.”
Her breaths stay even. Ninety-eight glows steady on the monitor. Reid doesn’t look away; I don’t either. We kneel there, big and useless and absolutely certain, and I let myself imagine the next step, and the one after that, and the day she opens those green eyes, and the way she’s going to roll them when we tell her about the coin flip we didn’t have.
“Stay,” I whisper, because it’s the only prayer I know. “Stay, and we’ll do the rest.”