CHAPTER fifty-eight #11
I squeeze gently, terrified I might break her if I'm too rough.
One of the nurses—the one with the soft voice and warm eyes—looks at me and shakes her head a little.
"You should stay here for now and wait. It might take a while."
My chest caves in on itself.
"Is she going to be okay?" I whisper. It comes out strangled. Like I'm asking the air, the walls, anyone who might have an answer.
"If we move fast, yes," the nurse replies. She's calm, but not calm enough to settle anything inside me.
I swallow hard. My throat burns.
I lift Sam's hand to my lips and press a kiss to her knuckles—slow, lingering, desperate.
"Angel... I'll be right here, okay? I'm not going anywhere. You're gonna be okay. I promise."
She nods, but even that small movement pulls a grimace of pain across her face. It guts me.
I brush her damp hair back from her forehead—my hand shakes—and kiss her there too.
"I'll be here when you get back," I whisper.
And then the nurses push her bed out of the room, turning the corner until she disappears.
The second she's gone, the room feels too big. Too silent. Too cold.
The waiting is torture.
The minutes stretch, thin and warped, like someone's pulling time apart with their bare hands. I can't sit still. I pace from the bed to the window, then back, then to the doorway like I might somehow see them coming sooner if I stare hard enough.
Then I sit.
Then I'm up again.
My nerves feel raw, exposed, like someone scraped them down with sandpaper. Every time I close my eyes, I see Sam bent over, clutching her stomach, choking on sobs while I stood there helpless—fucking useless—holding a basin and whispering apologies she couldn't even hear.
"Please be okay," I mutter into my hands. My voice cracks. "Please, please... God, just let her be okay."
It feels like something is carving into my chest from the inside. A slow, brutal twist. I can't get the image of her vomiting, retching so violently her whole body shook, out of my head. I don't think I ever will.
Lord, don't let this be something worse.
Don't let there be a perforation, or obstruction, or something surgical. Please don't let them tell us she needs an operation. Please don't let anything delay her chemo.
Because she needs to start induction as soon as humanly possible. Every day matters. Every hour. Delays can give the cancer more time to spread, to strengthen, to take more of her away.
I press my palms to my eyes, trying to stay grounded, but my thoughts spiral hard.
What if the CT shows something bad?
What if the infection is worse than they thought?
What if this is the start of another hell we can't pull her out of?
My breathing stutters.
I swear it feels like my ribs might crack from the pressure building inside me. Helplessness is a physical thing—heavy, choking, merciless. And it sits in my chest like a loaded weight.
I would trade places with her in a heartbeat.
I would take every fever, every cramp, every stab of pain if it meant she didn't have to go through this again.
But all I can do is wait here like a useless bystander while my little sister is wheeled into a machine to find out how much more she has to suffer.
I scrub my hands over my face and whisper one more time into the stale hospital air:
"Please... just let her be okay. I can't lose her. I can't."
CHAPTER fifty-eight
CAROLINE
The room is dim when I step inside — just the soft glow above Sam's hospital bed and the steady rhythm of the monitor.
Zach is exactly where I left him: sitting in the chair pulled right up to the bedside, hunched forward, his hand wrapped around hers like he's terrified she'll slip away if he lets go.
But the moment he glances up at me, my heart drops straight through the floor.
His eyes...
God.
They're swollen, red at the edges, like he's been fighting tears for hours or barely done crying them. His whole face looks pulled tight with grief and exhaustion. He looks older and younger at the same time — like a man carrying the weight of the world in a boy's breaking heart.
Something inside me freezes.
I set my small luggage and the fruit basket down as quietly as I can, but my voice still shakes when I whisper, "Zach... what happened?"
He doesn't answer right away.
He just stares at me — and that alone is enough to send alarm bells screaming in my chest.
When I left two hours ago to grab clothes and essentials, he was fine — worried, yes, but coping the best he could. This?
This is a different kind of devastation.
He moves slowly, leaned over Sam, brushing his thumb over her hand one last time before he stands. He bends forward, pressing a trembling kiss to her forehead. Then he walks toward me, step by step, like the air has thickened around him.
His expression... It wrecks me.
Sad, anxious, hollowed-out in a way I've never seen on him — not even after losses, not after injuries. This is deeper. Something inside him is splintering.
My arms open on instinct.
And he collapses into them with the weight of a man who has been holding up a collapsing sky for too long. His arms wrap around my waist, crushing me against him, and he buries his face into my shoulder like he needs me to breathe.
"Oh, baby..." The words scrape out of me, raw, because the moment he breaks, I feel myself crack too.
I feel his breathing stutter.
Then a muffled sound — a soft, shattered sob — slips out of him, and it absolutely destroys me.
I wrap my arms around him tighter, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of his head. His hair is soft under my palm. I stroke it slowly, gently, grounding him, trying to tell him everything I can't form into words yet.
"I'm here," I whisper against his temple. "I've got you. You don't have to hold it together right now. Just let it out, Zach. I'm right here."
He trembles — actually trembles — in my arms.
This is the first time he's allowed himself to break since he found out about Sam's relapse.
He's been forcing himself to stay strong, to be the buffer between everyone's fear, to be the one holding the line. But the truth is written all over him now:
He is exhausted.
He is scared.
And he is drowning under the weight of loving someone who's fighting for her life.
Ever since the diagnosis, he's refused to leave Sam's side.
He barely sleeps — when he does, it's upright in that hospital chair. He picks at food. His face has thinned out, jaw sharper, cheekbones more prominent. His shoulders slump more each day.
Worry has been eating him alive.
Guilt, too — that useless, vicious guilt that he won't let go of.
He still believes he should've noticed something. The bruising. The fatigue. The signs. He keeps blaming himself, convinced he failed her somehow, that if he'd paid more attention, maybe... maybe...
But none of this is his fault.
None of it.
He just can't forgive himself.
I tighten my arms around him, pressing him closer, holding him like I can shield him from his own self-destruction.
His breath hitches again, and he fists his hands in the back of my shirt — not rough, just desperate.
"You can fall apart with me," I murmur, brushing my thumb along the nape of his neck.
"You're the one who told me I'm your strength—so let me be that strength now. Lean on me. Break on me if you have to. I'll hold your hand through every second of this, and I swear I'm not leaving your side. Not for anything. Not for anyone."
The second the words leave my mouth, something inside him cracks open completely, like a dam giving way to years of pressure.
His breath stutters—once, twice—and then he just... breaks.
His shoulders shake violently beneath my palms, his fingers digging half-moons into my back. A soft, strangled sound escapes him as he clings harder, his whole body trembling against mine like he's standing in the middle of a storm with nothing to hold on to—except me.
And I wrap my arms around him tighter, matching his desperation with my own.
For a long moment, he just holds on.
Like he needs the proof I'm real.
Like if he loosens his grip even a fraction, he'll crumble into pieces too small to gather back up.
Like letting go of me would be the same as letting go of hope.
So I hold him tighter.
Because the truth is... I'd been waiting for this moment.
I knew his strength wouldn't hold forever. You can only carry a collapsing universe on your shoulders for so long before gravity finally wins.
And I'd prayed—quietly, selfishly—that when he did break, I'd be here to catch him.
So he wouldn't have to fall alone.
Thank God I am.
Thank God that when his heart finally buckled under the weight of all that fear and pain, it buckled into me—not empty air, not cold tile, me.
Thank God I get to be the arms holding him up while the rest of his world comes crashing down.
I press my cheek to his temple, breathe him in, and hold him as tight as he needs.
Because right now, loving him feels like the only thing keeping us both standing.
Eventually, after what feels like forever standing there in the middle of the room with his face buried in my shoulder, Zach's breathing starts to settle. Not fully — not even close — but enough that when I guide him toward the small sofa pushed against the wall, he lets me.
He doesn't let go of me even for a second.
We sit down together, my back against the armrest, his head dropping onto my shoulder like gravity finally won. His arm stays looped around my waist, holding on in this quiet, desperate way that says he's still not okay — he's just trying to exist through the next breath.
For a long moment, we don't speak.
He just leans into me, exhausted. Wrung out. Eyes red and hollow in a way that punches straight through me.
"Tell me what happened,"
He doesn't answer right away. Just exhales — long, uneven — like the words are heavy in his chest.
Then he tells me everything.
Sam waking up doubled over in pain.
The vomiting.
The way she couldn't catch a breath.
The panic.