Chapter 51
FIFTY-ONE
REHAB WING
Nick Vargas didn’t raise his voice. “Feet flat. Hands on the rail. Don’t look down.”
Dante sat at the edge of the bed, muscles trembling—not from pain but from relearning. The dialysis line tugged faintly at his wrist. The abdominal site pulled when he shifted.
Rafi stood close, one hand hovering near Dante’s back without touching. Dante pushed to standing. Everything went white at the edges.
Nick nodded. “Good. That’s it.”
“I can do more,” Dante said through clenched teeth.
“I know,” Nick replied. “That’s why you won’t.”
They walked him three steps. Then sat him back down.
Rafi crouched in front of him. “You didn’t collapse. That’s the win.”
Dante leaned forward, breath shaking. Shannon exhaled for the first time that morning.
PSYCH CONSULTATION SUITE
Dante sat in a reclining medical chair rather than on a couch. His IV pole stood quietly behind him. Nasal oxygen rested in place, a catheter dressing hidden beneath a loose navy-blue scrub shirt.
Dr. Eliza Shen sat opposite him, legs crossed, a notepad resting on her thigh, though she hadn’t written anything yet. The room was warm. Wood floors and no overhead lighting. A window looked out toward the East River. There were no security cameras and no guards visible.
But Dante knew how many steps it would take to reach the door and where each direction in the hall would take him. It wasn’t paranoia. It was conditioning.
Dr. Shen waited. She let silence do what silence was designed to do.
Dante broke it first. “You don’t seem like someone who needs to be convinced I’m not crazy.”
“No,” Shen said calmly. “Because you’re not.”
“Then why the consult?”
“Because you nearly drowned in trauma and didn’t realize you’d surfaced.” She tilted her head. “Now your body’s safe. That doesn’t mean your brain agrees.”
Dante exhaled. “What if I don’t want to talk about the room?”
“Then we don’t talk about it,” she said. “We talk around it. We talk about anything else.”
“And if it slips out?”
“Then we go with it.”
He looked at her, hard. Testing.
She didn’t blink.
Dante finally leaned back, eyelids heavy. “I still hear it,” he admitted. “The scrape of the bucket, the slurp of the water. It’s like… pressure in my teeth.”
“That’s memory,” she said. “It leaks.”
He nodded. “You ever been tortured?”
She didn’t answer that. Instead, she said, “You weren’t broken. You’re here. That means there’s a you left to work with. We build from that.”
He stared at the ceiling. “I wasn’t supposed to make it.”
She wrote nothing, but her voice softened. “You did.”
O‘REILLY’S OFFICE
While Dante was with the psychiatrist, Shannon sat in a chair that felt far too comfortable to be in a medical director’s office.
Jamison O’Reilly closed the patient file and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “Vitals are stabilizing. The catheter site looks clean. Labs this morning were the best yet.”
Shannon didn’t smile. “Don’t do the silver lining thing. I’m here for the real.”
He exhaled. “The real is that if we can keep the line clear, avoid infection, and maintain nutrition, we might get him on a transplant list by month’s end.”
“And psych?”
“Eliza says he’s not resisting. He’s observing her. Processing. He’s functional but… scared and scarred.”
“Not surprising,” Shannon murmured.
Jamie hesitated. “When’s the last time you slept more than four hours?”
She gave him a withering look.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Caregivers crash harder than patients. Don’t pretend you’re immune.”
She didn’t answer that.
Jamie opened a drawer and pulled out a keycard. “Room 1912—private guest suite. Get some air.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Then use it when he’s with his mom, or when he sleeps.”
She took it and didn’t say thank you. But he didn’t need her to.
The door opened, and Shannon looked up. In walked her father and Ian Chase. Both were dressed sharply but looked exhausted.
“What is it?” she asked, voice steady on the surface.
Ian didn’t speak. He nodded to Mike instead.
Shannon’s father stepped closer, taking a seat across from her. His voice was low. “It looks like General Barrett Haines is in this up to his eyeballs.”
She frowned. “No.”
“It’s not confirmed,” Ian added carefully. “But the trail runs clean. From the Academy pipeline to Germany. He was upstream of almost every move we’ve traced.”
“It doesn’t sit right,” she said. “He’s—”
“I know,” Mike said gently. “I know him too.”
Shannon blinked, jaw flexing. Then she whispered, “Dante’s blood type is B positive.”
Mike looked over at her, brows lifting.
“He needs a kidney,” she said. “Jamie started the process.”
Ian inhaled deeply. Mike didn’t look away.
Shannon tried to keep her voice level, but it cracked at the edges. “We beat Krueger. We got out. We stopped two nukes. And now…” She broke.
Her hands came up to cover her face as the sob caught—sharp and sudden. Not just fear, but bone-deep exhaustion. A breaking that had waited weeks to arrive. “I can’t lose him, Dad.”
Mike was already moving, crossing the room in two strides. He crouched in front of her—not as an executive. Not as a major. As her father. He pulled her into his arms without a word and let her cry against his shoulder. No shushing. No fixing. Holding.
She gripped his jacket like she was drowning.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “You don’t have to be the strong one every second.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do if he—”
Mike pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. “Then we’ll find what to do. You hear me? I will tear apart every donor registry in the world. I will carry that kid to a transplant if I have to. But you’re not going to lose him. Not after everything he’s survived.”
Ian looked away, giving the moment its dignity. His closed fist pressed against his heart.
Mike held her like a father should.