Chapter 123

Chapter 123
There is a kind of mercy to the hospital’s maze: every corridor is as anonymous as the last, each alcove and side lounge a safehouse for the embarrassed, the exhausted, the desperate not to be seen. Virginia moves down the cross-hatched hallway with a speed just shy of running. She counts each fluorescent rectangle overhead—seven, eight, nine—before she lets herself turn, slip through an unmarked door, and vanish into a side nook upholstered in the non-color of medical limbo. She presses her back to the wall, breathes through her nose, and waits for Derek to catch up.

He arrives seconds later, the door sighing closed behind him. His hair is a mess—he’s been raking it with his hands since the first update—and the bridge of his nose is lined with two angry creases, as if the whole hospital is balancing on the hinge of his self-control.

“Steven’s with the surgeons,” he says. “They wanted to talk to him alone.” The words come flat, but Derek doesn’t move, just stands at the threshold and looks at her like a man watching his own house burn.

Virginia’s voice comes out softer than she intends. “He’ll make them believe it’s fine. That’s his superpower.”

Derek shrugs. “That’s what scares me.” He steps deeper into the alcove, careful to keep a half-meter between them, as if the air might spark if he gets any closer.

They don’t speak for a minute. The only sound is the hum of the vending machine and the soft, wet punctuation of their own breathing.

Virginia is the first to break. “I’m sorry,” she says. “About earlier. I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Derek’s jaw is working, left to right, like he’s testing its integrity.

“That’s not true,” she says, folding her arms so tight she might disappear. “I always do things wrong. That’s why I’m here instead of there.” She gestures vaguely, taking in all of Europe, or maybe just the last six months.

He leans against the opposite wall, hands deep in the pockets of a jacket too thin for the night. “You’re here because you have a conscience,” he says. “Not everyone does.”

She laughs, but the sound is hollow. “I didn’t even get to tell her goodbye.”

Derek watches her for a long time, then lowers his head. “I’m not good at this,” he says. “Talking. Feeling things.”

Virginia pushes a sleeve up her wrist, then lets it fall back. “Then don’t,” she says. “Let’s just stand here and pretend.”

But she doesn’t want to pretend. Not really. Neither does he, and that’s the problem.

He takes a breath, then starts, “After the army, after I got out—nobody tells you how the world’s supposed to look. Everything’s off-kilter. You go from running missions to picking out produce at the supermarket, and the only thing that makes sense is the part you’re not supposed to talk about.”

She watches him, saying nothing, but her eyes are trained so tight on his face he feels it like a grip on the nape of his neck.

“Cassandra was there,” Derek says, slow and methodical, like he’s reading from a list of defects. “She found me at the gym, or maybe I found her. Doesn’t matter. She had this way of making everything feel more dangerous, more alive, but also like if I didn’t keep moving, she’d eat me alive.” He shifts, restless, nearly paces but stops himself. “We were awful together. It was fun for maybe three weeks. Then it got worse. I think she made it that way on purpose.”

“You never said,” Virginia says.

He nods. “I never told you because I was ashamed,” he admits. His voice doesn’t break, but it frays at the edges, turns rough. “I should’ve known better. I knew what she was, but I let her take everything anyway.”

Virginia processes this in silence, her fingers worrying the hem of her coat. She is trying to remember all the old platitudes about how the past can’t touch the present, about how you can forgive what you understand. But none of them fit. The words she wants are somewhere between comfort and violence, so she says nothing.

Derek’s shoulders relax, just a little, as if confessing has bought him an inch of air. “I keep trying to outrun it. The things I did. The things I let happen.” He glances at her, then away. “Sometimes I think it’s genetic.”

Virginia blinks. “You mean—”

He snorts. “I mean I don’t know how to love someone without fucking it up. That’s what I’m afraid of, with you.”

She lets that sit. It’s true, or true enough, and the echo of it lands in the pit of her stomach.

She moves closer, slowly, as if each step needs to be checked for mines. When she is close enough to see the pale stubble along his jaw, she stops.

“My turn,” she says. “I’m terrified of being a parent. I’m terrified that I’ll be the same kind of mother I had. That I’ll disappear into my own head and forget how to be there for someone else.” She laughs, bitter, shaking her head. “Or that I’ll never even get the chance, because I’ll keep running from what I want until it’s too late.”

He smiles, the corners of his mouth cracking open for the first time since the hospital.

“I’m also terrified,” she adds, voice growing. “That you’ll walk away. Or worse, that you’ll stay and regret it every day.”

He doesn’t answer in words. Instead, he reaches for her hand. For a moment, their fingers hover near each other, afraid to touch, but then they lock together, interlaced, neither of them willing to be the first to let go.

For a second, the hospital fades: the smell of bleach, the distant wail of a code blue, the anxiety lining the walls. All that’s left is the pressure of his thumb on her wrist, the fact of her pulse beneath his skin.

He leans in, his forehead brushing hers. The gesture is gentle, nothing like the violence of their last argument. “We’ll do it together,” he says, and she believes him, because in this small, fluorescent cave, there is nothing left to lose.

They stand that way until a nurse pokes her head in, eyes tired but professionally bright. “You two are the family for Mrs. March?” she asks. “They’re starting the procedure now. You can wait in the lounge, or… here, if you prefer.”

Virginia nods, clears her throat. “We’ll be right there.”

The nurse smiles, then disappears, the door swinging shut with a soft click.

Derek squeezes her hand once, then lets go. “Ready?”

She is not, but she nods anyway. Together, they step out of the alcove and back into the grid of the hospital, the pulse of the world returning to normal speed.

They rejoin Steven at the lounge. He looks at them, sees something different in the way they stand together, but says nothing.

Virginia sits beside her father, takes his hand in hers, and waits.

Derek stands behind them both, arms crossed, but his face is calmer than it has been in years.

The waiting begins again, but this time, the silence is a little less absolute.