9
Lila
By the end of the first week, visiting Jackson had become part of my shift, as routine as charting, washing my hands before touching a patient, or standing inside a trauma bay and keeping my voice level while somebody else’s world came apart.
It was also the part of my day I had begun building everything else around.
I never had to leave the hospital and come back, which made lying to myself easier.
When my shift ended, I signed off, finished the handover, washed my hands one last time, and took the elevator upstairs.
I told myself the visits made sense because I was already there.
I knew the floor and the nurses. I understood enough medicine to recognize that healing could resemble absolute stillness for a long time while the body fought beneath the surface.
It was a neat explanation. Safe. Professional.
It was also bullshit.
The truth was simpler. I couldn’t walk out of the hospital knowing Jackson remained inside without seeing him first, so I stopped fighting the habit almost as soon as it formed.
Night after night, I slipped quietly into his room, nodded to Priest or the tattooed biker if one of them was there, then went straight to the chair beside Jackson’s bed.
Priest sometimes sat across from me, wearing the heavy stillness of a man determined to keep fear hidden beneath his skin.
The tattooed biker usually stayed near the window with a phone in his hand or a laptop open, appearing detached until I noticed he missed absolutely nothing. Most nights, both men were there.
Neither questioned my visits or watched me with the kind of curiosity and pity I would have needed to defend myself against.
They simply let me in.
At first, I didn’t speak. I sat down and took Jackson’s hand carefully, mindful of bruising, tape, wires, and all the damage done to a body that still looked too strong for a hospital bed.
Then I stayed while the machines hummed and the IV dripped, the room holding its breath in the peculiar patient way hospital rooms did when everything depended on time and nothing could be rushed.
I arrived exhausted, my scrub top creased and my feet aching, my hair pulled back badly because vanity had no place at the end of those shifts.
I sat in silence long enough for it to stop feeling awkward and become its own quiet ritual, something I did because there was nothing else left to offer him.
Jackson never squeezed my hand. His eyes remained closed.
Still, I came.
Silence should have been easy for me. I worked amid noise, blood, urgency, and panic, but I also knew what came afterward. I knew how to stand beside families once they ran out of words, and how grief could turn a crowded room utterly still.
This silence was different. It carried history. Seventeen years crowded into the space between Jackson’s unmoving hand and mine, pressing closer with every night I refused to fill it.
After several visits, the quiet stopped feeling peaceful and began to feel like pressure. One more hour with Priest pretending not to watch from across the room and the tattooed biker tracking every change in Jackson’s monitors might have been enough to crack me open in front of both of them.
The night I finally broke, I had worked too long, eaten too little, and spent the final hour of my shift arguing with an intern who seemed to believe panic qualified as a treatment plan. Exhaustion had thinned my defenses by the time I entered Jackson’s room.
Priest sat in his usual place. The tattooed biker leaned against the wall, his expression as unreadable as ever, though I had begun to suspect unreadable and unfeeling were two very different things.
I washed my hands, lowered myself into the chair, and took Jackson’s hand. The room settled around us, and for several minutes I expected to follow the usual ritual, sitting there until leaving felt too much like surrender.
Then I heard myself say, “Jackson was my brother’s best friend.”
Priest looked up. The tattooed man shifted away from the wall, giving the moment his full attention without moving close enough to crowd me.
The monitor chirped, sharp enough to cut through the room but nowhere near an alarm. Jackson’s heart rate climbed by several beats, his breathing changing for one shallow second before settling again.
Then his fingers twitched against mine.
Once.
The tattooed biker stepped closer immediately. I remained frozen, my gaze jumping from the monitor to Jackson’s hand and back to the numbers. Professional instinct took hold before anything else could, tightening my grip by the smallest degree.
“Reflex response,” I said quietly. “Auditory stimulus.”
My voice stayed steady, but tension pulled through every inch of my body around a feeling I wasn’t prepared to name.
The man leaned toward the monitor without touching Jackson or disturbing a single line. “Timing matches.”
I nodded, my thumb resting beneath Jackson’s knuckles.
“If you speak to him again,” he said carefully, “we can see whether it repeats.”
“No.”
The refusal came quietly. Final, rather than defensive.
He studied me for half a second, reading more in my stillness than I had given him in words. Then he straightened and stepped back. “All right.”
I didn’t say Jackson’s name again. I didn’t test the response or push for another sign. I sat beside him while his vitals returned to their steady rhythm, Priest remaining across the room as the tattooed man resumed his place near the wall.
Nobody spoke.
A few minutes later, the door opened and the spell broke cleanly in half.
“Okay,” Evan announced, breezing into the room with coffee in one hand and a paper bag in the other, “either I have wildly misjudged hospital etiquette, or this is officially biker night.”
I closed my eyes. “Evan.”
He took one look at me, and some of the brightness softened around his expression. “You’ve been doing this every night. You need sleep before you start charting on the walls.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are running on caffeine and terrible decisions, and I came to retrieve you before you pass out in a supply closet and traumatize a resident.”
My gaze dropped to Jackson before I could stop it.
Priest spoke from the opposite side of the bed. “I’ll stay.”
I looked at him properly then, at the exhaustion sitting heavily across his features and the quiet understanding beneath it. “Thank you.”
Jackson had never been alone here. Priest knew that wasn’t what I needed to hear. He was giving me permission to leave without making the choice feel like weakness, and I understood enough to accept it.
Evan’s attention shifted toward him. He gave Priest a long, frankly impressed once-over and nodded. “Well, you are aggressively large. I respect it.”
A muffled sound came from near the wall.
Evan turned toward the tattooed biker, and the moment his eyes landed on him, he froze.
“Oh.” Delight lit his entire face. “It’s you. Hunky biker guy. I knew you’d show up again.”
The other man went still in the particular way people did when they sensed Evan approaching them like an unchecked weather system.
I sighed. “Evan.”
“We were never formally introduced,” he said, walking farther into the room as though social boundaries had never restrained him once in his life. He looked directly at the stranger. “And I feel like that’s important, spiritually.”
The tattooed man stared at him for one long second. “Ink.”
A beat passed.
Evan pressed one hand to his chest. “Oh my God. Of course it is.”
Priest huffed beneath his breath, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Ink’s jaw tightened as his gaze cut away, quick and unreadable, though Evan had clearly managed to throw him just enough for it to matter.
“That is,” Evan continued, pressing his hand more dramatically against his chest, “the sexiest possible outcome of that interaction. You cannot walk around looking like that with a name like Ink. That is reckless.”
Ink’s jaw flexed again.
I stood before Evan’s enthusiasm got him killed. “Come on.”
He backed toward the door without an ounce of shame. “We are absolutely circling back to this later.”
I apologized to Priest with my eyes, squeezed Jackson’s hand one last time, then released him and followed Evan into the hallway. The door closed behind us.
For three full seconds, Evan remained quiet.
Then he grabbed my forearm with both hands, his eyes wide. “That,” he whispered, lowering his voice only because we were inside a hospital and certainly not because he believed in restraint, “is going to be my biker.”
A laugh escaped me, tired and startled after the pressure inside Jackson’s room. “Your biker?”
“Yes.” Evan pressed the back of one hand to his forehead and bent into a full-body swoon. “His name is Ink. You heard that, right? Ink.” He lowered his voice into a rough, gravelly imitation that was clearly supposed to be Priest. “He is the one I have the better chance of impregnating than Blue.”
He abandoned the performance and clutched my arm again. “He is my biker romance of a lifetime. I can already see it.”
I slapped him lightly in the chest.
He staggered back, clutching himself as though I had mortally wounded him. “Violence. In a place of healing.”
“You are such a drama queen.”
“And yet, I’m still right.” He recovered instantly. “You love me for it.”
I shook my head and started toward the elevator, knowing he would follow because Evan never allowed a moment to die with dignity when he could decorate it first. He slipped an arm around my shoulders as we walked, its weight familiar and warm.
“I think you should tread lightly,” I told him. “The man is a biker, Evan. Who knows what might happen if you rub him the wrong way?”
His grin turned positively wicked. “I want to rub him, all right.”
I rolled my eyes hard enough to hurt.
He laughed, but some of the playfulness faded when he looked at me again. “Hey.”
I leaned into his side despite myself.
“You’ve been coming up here every night after your shift and sitting beside that hunk for hours,” he said. “You need sleep. Actual sleep. You have dark circles no concealer on earth could cover.”
“That feels rude.”
“It is loving honesty.”
We reached the elevator, and Evan pressed the call button before turning toward me. His expression sharpened. “What have you been telling Jade about where you’ve been every night?”
The question struck harder than I wanted it to.
Guilt must have shown because he read the answer before I spoke. “I’ve been telling her I was with you and Blue, helping Blue through some personal things.”
Evan gasped loudly enough that a nurse looked over from the desk farther down the hall. “Lila.” He pressed a hand to his chest, though less theater lived in the gesture this time. “You lied to your daughter?”
I winced. “Don’t announce it to the hospital.”
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped inside. Evan selected the ground floor, then turned to face me fully.
“You know you’re going to have to tell her about her father soon, right?” His voice had quieted. “You can’t keep this from her. She deserves to know.”
I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes. The exhaustion had worked its way into my bones, the kind that made honesty easier because I had no energy left to dress it into something prettier.
“But he left me, Evan.” My voice came softly.
“He left without saying goodbye, and because of that, he missed her too.” My throat tightened, but I forced the rest through it.
“Part of me feels used. Another part knows that isn’t who Jackson is.
I know he wouldn’t have done that to me without a reason, so there has to be an explanation. ”
The elevator hummed around us.
“But he had seventeen years to give me one,” I continued. “He could have called or written. He could have found some way to reach me and given me the chance to tell him.” I swallowed against the ache rising in my throat. “He didn’t. So does he really deserve to know now?”
Evan slid his arm around my shoulders again, steady and warm.
When the doors opened, we stepped out together and started through the corridor toward the lobby. “Even if he doesn’t deserve to know,” Evan said, “Jade does.” His voice gentled before I could brace against it. “But I won’t push, babe.”
I looked up at him.
“Right now, I want you to go home and sleep. You have tomorrow off, so stay away from this place for one day and take care of yourself.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll call Blue, and we’ll schedule a chaos council.”
Something inside me softened despite everything. I rested my head against his shoulder for a moment as we walked. “Sounds good.”
He kissed the top of my head as though I were both fragile and deeply irritating. “Good, because you look one bad cup of coffee away from fighting God in the parking lot.”
A rough laugh left me, but it was real.
The quieter part of the hospital did nothing for the ache in my chest. Jackson remained upstairs, suspended somewhere between silence and waking, and part of me stayed beside him no matter how far I walked.
But Evan’s arm rested around my shoulders, and going home didn’t feel quite so much like leaving.