January 12, 2022—Seattle, Washington—Six Months Later #4
He didn’t cry—not fully—but the sting was instant, burning behind his eyes before he could even speak.
Adrian stirred, blinking awake slowly as if surfacing from deep water. Logan turned toward him, eyes glassy, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Alon’s a match,” he said, voice catching.
Adrian didn’t answer right away—he just stared at Logan, then toward the ceiling, then back. A smile broke across his face, tired but real. It lived in his whole body.
He asked for his phone.
When Alon answered, Adrian’s voice was barely more than a breath. “You’re a match,” he said, raw with disbelief. “Toda, achi.” Thank you, my brother.
As Adrian and Alon talked on the phone, Hebrew came naturally. It was a language that Logan could now navigate and understand without needing translation.
He didn’t speak Hebrew well—not yet—but he understood enough. Enough to follow and listen. Enough to be part of this moment and all the in-between moments of Adrian’s life, the side of his that always eluded Logan because of the language barrier that had become smaller and smaller.
They had spent so many hours in these hospital rooms, long, half-lit afternoons where the beeping monitors played background music to grammar drills and pronunciation corrections.
Logan would stumble over vowels, raise his eyebrows for clarification, scribble notes in the margins of whatever notebook he could find.
“Let me get this straight,” Logan had muttered one evening, brow furrowed as he squinted at his notes. “The table is masculine… but the door is feminine?”
Adrian snorted. “Correct.”
“But it’s a door.”
“Still feminine.”
“But both are just—objects! How would I even know which object is which?”
Adrian shrugged dramatically. “Ahh… I guess you’ll just have to memorize them?”
“So all of the objects are either feminine or masculine, and this is entirely random. Great,” Logan muttered. He studied the page again, frowning like it had personally insulted him. Then, hesitantly: “So… ha delet hagadola niftach?” The large door was opened.
Adrian winced like he’d been slapped with a wet grammar book. “Almost. But no. It’s actually ha delet hagdola niftacha. The verb needs to be feminine too.”
“I quit,” Logan announced, dropping his pen with a theatrical sigh.
Adrian laughed, eyes lighting up as he looked at him. “I love you struggling with Hebrew.”
Logan groaned. “I’m so glad my misery brings you joy.”
“Do you know how hard it is to translate everything in my head constantly?” Adrian shot back, still grinning. “Now you get it!”
But even in the teasing, there was warmth.
Adrian always softened when Logan got it right—when he landed a word, even clumsily.
When the verb agreed with the noun, or the feminine adjective, fell into place by accident.
There was something quietly sacred in those moments.
Logan cared enough to try. “I am so proud of you,” Adrian said. “So proud to have you in my life.”
Sometimes Logan would practice under his breath while Adrian dozed, his voice barely a whisper, the syllables strange and sharp in his mouth. Other times, he’d murmur short phrases when nurses walked past, trying them out like test flights. Little things. A verb here, a greeting there.
And then one day, as the afternoon light spilled across the floor in long, golden strips, Logan looked at Adrian and said, soft but certain:
“Ani ohev otcha.” I love you. The words caught in the air between them, real and unshakable.
And he even pronounced otcha right. The you.
The singular masculine form. One of six (or more!) ways to say it, depending on gender, number, person, context—a linguistic maze he’d been quietly navigating for weeks. But this time, he got it right.
Now, as Adrian spoke to Alon, Logan nodded along, catching the flow of their exchange. When Adrian paused, Logan leaned in and added a few slow, careful words of his own.
Adrian watched him in awe. Logan’s wickedly smart brain had managed to catch the language in just a handful of months, he was able to understand Hebrew very well and was even starting to speak.
When the call ended, Adrian let the phone rest on his chest, fingers curled lightly around it. “He’s coming here,” he said. “Didn’t want to do it from Israel.”
Logan nodded. Of course, he was.
They hadn’t seen each other in over a year. And depending on how this went… it could be the last.
Logan didn’t wait for Alon to bring up logistics. He told him he’d buy the ticket before the question even landed.
When Alon mentioned he wanted to check if the army could help with the cost, Logan cut in. “There’s no time for bureaucracy,” he said, firm but calm. “As soon as Dr. Tierney gives us a date, you get the leave and you’re on a plane. I’ll handle the rest.”
Adrian shifted slightly, wincing as the IV pulled at his skin. “The recovery’s going to knock him out,” he said quietly, more to himself than to Logan. “He’ll be behind when he gets back. His team…”
Logan reached for his hand again, fingers wrapping around his gently.
“Then he’ll be behind,” he said. “That’s what brothers do.”