Chapter 241: Reid
I’m on the floor outside her room, back to the wall, knees up, the tile cold through pants that don’t feel like mine anymore. The last week hasn’t been a week. It’s been a centrifuge. I don’t know the day; I know the sound of a monitor smoothing out, the taste of burned coffee, the color of the nurses’ shoes that squeak past at three in the morning.
When we first got here with her, it was chaos in a shape. Dozens of scrubs waiting—hands, carts, a rolling grammar of orders I couldn’t parse. They took her straight through: blood, more blood, lines punched into veins that wouldn’t stay open because there wasn’t enough of her left to carry it. Somebody said “prep the OR,” somebody else said “type and cross,” and I remember Jake and me trying to follow like dogs off-leash until a pair of anesthesiologists turned on us with needles and sedatives. It took more than a few sticks to get through the adrenaline; then black.
We woke up together, side by side in a twin room like kids who ran too hard. I had fluids in my arm. Jake’s hands were mummified in bandage. We tried to get out of bed and two nurses blocked the door with their bodies and their eyes and told us to calm down if we wanted anyone to tell us anything, so we did. Barely.
A doctor came. He sat down, because he knew. Hypothermia, he said first. Thirty percent of her blood gone. Hypovolemic shock—he had to explain it to me twice: your volume drops, your heart has nothing to push, the lights go out. She coded on the way in; they brought her back. Transfusions, then surgery. Five broken ribs; one punctured her lung. Broken wrist. Fractured jaw. A deep laceration down her arm. More cuts and bruises than made sense on one body. They needed to put her into a medically induced coma to let anything heal. They didn’t know what the cold and the loss had done upstairs. They wouldn’t know until she could wake and breathe on her own.
They let us see her.
“Awful” isn’t the word. She was still tacky with dried blood in places the washcloths missed. Tube down her throat to breathe for her. Tape pulling at her mouth. Bandages everywhere—ribs, wrist, around her head under her hairline. The purple and yellow and black of it made something inside me go quiet and mean. They said we’d have to wait. That time would tell us who we got back.
For a minute there was a trickle of hope. She was here. The machines were doing their part. Then the week started. Twice she coded blue, the hallway filling with feet and the alarm that rips skin. Twice they brought her back. We refused to leave. Bathroom, five minutes. Food, swallowed in three. That was the deal. A few of the staff took pity and brought us sweatpants and T-shirts from some stash.
They called her parents. They had to fly. They arrived three days ago with eyes that looked like mine felt. That’s why I’m in the hallway now: they’re with her; Jake stepped out to call the team and try to make words into a net big enough to hold what happened.
Her parents want to end it. Those were the words. End her suffering. Pull the plug. The doctor said “withdraw support” like it was a gentle way to say drown. Jake and I begged. We didn’t have anything noble—just please. Please give her a few more days. She took the worst of the Atlantic and came back to us twice; give her time to take this shore.
They agreed. For now.
I stare at the hinge side of her door until it’s all I can see. Every so often a monitor bings, and I count, and I make bargains with a God I don’t know, and I tell her what I told her on the Grayling with her head on my leg: mornings, nights, socks on the floor, everything with your name on it—we’re not done. You hear me? We’re not done.
Footsteps. The handle moves. I stand because if I don’t, I’ll fold. Jake’s voice is somewhere down the hall telling someone the truth in short sentences. Her mother steps out first, eyes rimmed, fingers working a tissue into nothing. Her father puts a hand over mine on the doorframe and squeezes like he’s reminding himself we’re all real.
“Another day,” I say, and it’s not a question.
“Another day,” her father answers.
I sit back down on the floor, the tile as cold as the first night, and settle in to keep watch. If they give us minutes, I’ll turn them into hours. If they give us hours, I’ll turn them into days. If they give us days, I’ll hand them to her like a rope and hold on until she pulls.
Jake drops beside me, back to the same wall, shoulders touching like we’re bracing a door together. He stares across the hall at the seam where paint meets baseboard, then says, “I told them to come.”
The words land heavy. I hate it. I know why he did it, and I still hate it.
“They should be here,” he adds, quieter. “If… if her parents decide…” He doesn’t finish.
I rub a hand over my face. The legal shape of this is a knife I keep swallowing and spitting back up. We’re not her husbands. We don’t get a signature. We don’t get a vote. We get a hallway and a clock and the hope that buys us another round. If her parents decide to withdraw support, there’s nothing Jake and I can do but stand there and keep saying please.
“It’s the right call,” I say, because truth doesn’t care if you like it.
He nods like it hurts. “They'll be here in two days.”
I picture Charlie’s jaw set, Finn white-knuckled on the wheel, Liam staring holes through the dash. It makes the hallway feel smaller; it makes the world feel a little less likely to tip.
The door opens across from us; a nurse angles past with a tray and gives us the soft look they keep for people living in waiting rooms. When the silence re-forms, Jake exhales slowly, like he’s counting to ten on the way out.
“They didn’t… ask,” he says.
“Her parents?”
He nods. “About us. Not really. They saw us and—” his voice thins “—they just knew she mattered to us. That was enough.”
I swallow hard. “Good people.”
“Yeah.” He scrubs his bandaged hands on his joggers. “When they heard it was Nick—” his mouth tightens around the name “—they looked like the floor fell out from under them. Her mom cried. Her dad—” Jake’s eyes go far for a second “—he hugged me, then you, like he was holding onto something solid. When the surgeon said we pulled her from the water, when Cruz got them up to speed… they hugged us again. Thank you, thank you.” He stares at his hands. “I didn’t know what to do with any of that.”
“Take it,” I say. “Put it in your pocket for later.”
He huffs a breath that wants to be a laugh and can’t quite get there. We sit with the machines on the other side of the door ticking out facts we can’t touch. A code cart whispers by on soft wheels. Somewhere someone laughs too brightly. I rest my head back and count the seconds between beeps until my chest unclenches.
“They won’t push today,” Jake says after a while, like he’s repeating it for both of us. “We asked for a few more days. They agreed.”
I nod. “Another day.”
“Another day,” he echoes.
I look at his profile—all edges dulled by exhaustion—and nudge his knee with mine. “When they get here, we’ll take shifts. One of us with her. One with them. Nobody stands alone in this.”
“Yeah.” He lets his head tip sideways until it rests against mine. We breathe together for a count of ten like we’re syncing engines.