Chapter 28 Sol
I come back in pieces.
Disjointed. Unmoored.
Steady beeping too measured to be the engine, too shrill to be the call of a sea bird. And there’s light—white and horrific. Pain that’s everywhere and nowhere at once. A cold, bruised ache sitting under my skin as if I’ve fallen from a high beam and been put back together wrong.
My ribs hurt.
My chest.
My head from the stitches pulling tight in my scalp.
Oscar.
His name lands heavy and I see him in the ocean. Feel his hand slipping from mine, his eyes rolling as the freezing water took advantage of the glitch in his blood sugar.
Like an idiot, I try to sit up. The world lists with savage force and my stomach lurches with it. Nausea obliterates me. I clamp my eyes shut and groan, forcing it down, knowing I can’t be sick everywhere because I’m not on the boat. I’m not at sea. And this is a different storm.
Jack.
Warmth nudges the deep cold infesting my bones.
A thought that skids sideways before I can cling on and I scramble after it, which is another mistake.
Mental gymnastics are beyond me and Oscar and Jack are so blurred together my stomach heaves again.
Acid climbs my throat and I turn my head too fast to escape it.
The room spins like I’m riding a brutal swell.
The kind that sinks boats.
The Sirona—
“Shh. Sol. It’s okay.”
Jack.
The low rumble of his voice wraps around me, holding me close. With another wretched groan, I force my eyes open and there he is.
Chair dragged close.
Elbows on the mattress, both hands wrapped around one of mine as if he’s been anchoring me to the bed by sheer will alone.
Relief hits me.
I’m dizzy all over again.
“Oscar…”
“He’s all right.” Jack frees one of his hands to hold my face. “Hypothermia hit him different, but he’s pulled through.”
Pulled through.
My stomach reacts before my brain does and an emotion I can’t decipher drains from me so fast my vision flickers. Nausea rises stronger than before and I rip out of Jack’s hold, my whole body heaving.
Somehow, I don’t puke. And Jack catches me before I get too far away from him. Hand on my throat, the other steady on my shoulder. Like he’d planned for this, and I hate it. The mess of it all. The thoughts I can’t line up. The seconds, minutes, and hours that slip through my fingers.
I lose time.
I lose myself.
And throughout it all, one thought stays: this is what it’s like for him all the time.
I thought I knew. But as the world spins and spins and every nerve in my body screams in protest, I realise I had no idea.
Sometime later, I open my eyes and Jack is still there, holding me, watching me, guarding me.
It feels as though other people are there too, but I only see him.
And his eyes…they don’t leave me, not even as someone shifts behind him.
When they step around him and do something that makes a machine beep.
I have every ounce of his colossal Gallagher focus.
And he has mine, for what it’s worth as the pain fades a little and memories slide back in.
Patchy, but clear enough that my stomach flips again, and this time it isn’t the bellyful of sea water rinsing through me.
It’s hurt and guilt and the weight of a ten-ton truth I dropped on Jack before this happened.
“You’re angry.” It scrapes out of me from the pits of hell. “Aren’t you?”
A pause stretches thin as Jack stares me down.
Then he speaks and what’s left of my world splinters into a thousand pieces. “Yes.”
Yes. That’s it. All we have. And it isn’t him lacking, it’s me. I think I faint. And I know I get sick. Next thing I know I’m in a different place and I have Mal for company instead.
We’re in a room.
There’s no window which I know must be killing him, but he’s watching me with the same solid warmth his brother did, and even though I already miss Jack I’m so grateful he’s here I’d cry if I had the energy.
As it is, I can barely sit up, even with his help.
“Jack’s fine.” Mal holds a cup of water to my mouth for me to drink. “He’s getting some sleep.”
“Where?”
Somehow, I know he hasn’t gone home.
“Would you deck me if I told you I don’t fucking know? I left him with Folk.”
Something settles in me at that. Folk’s good people. My heart knows he’ll take as much care of Jack as Jack will allow.
He’s angry.
Jack, not Folk.
Deep, rolling sickness washes over me, but though it feels like drowning all over again, I force it down and try to focus on Mal.
“How’s Oscar?”
“Sleeping it off three rooms that way.” Mal jabs a finger in the air.
It should probably mean something, but I don’t get it, and he softens as he sees that.
“He’s had a rough time. Being diabetic made everything that happened to you a thousand times worse for him.
But he got through it and he’s going to be okay. Matis and River are looking after him.”
“Jack—”
“He’s solid,” Mal interrupts with only a trace of impatience. “And if he’s not, he’s in the right place, eh?”
Can’t argue with that. Literally. Figuratively. Whatever. I drift for a while before I remember to ask about Skylar.
“Working downstairs.” Mal’s face tells me all I need to know about how he feels about that. “It’s only a half shift, but he’s been with Oscar since you came in, so I’m hoping he’ll go home after.”
“He’s not going to leave without you.”
“I know, and I’m not leaving without Jack, and he won’t leave without you, so…”
“Hmm.” I’m so tired my tongue feels too big for my mouth. My head is thick and heavy and I wonder if I’m going to be sick again, even though I barely remember the first time…times? Gods, I have no idea. “Are you okay?”
Mal gives me a dry look. “Aye, Sol. Everyone’s fucking fine except you.”
And Oscar. But I’m out of energy. I pass out for a bit and when I’m awake next, Mal’s not in the mood to talk.
Truth be told, I don’t mind the company of a proper Gallagher mood. Makes me miss Jack more, but the sense of normalcy keeps me warm. I feel like I’m drowning all over again when Mal tells me he’s leaving to go check on Oscar, Jack, and Skylar—if he can get close enough.
I let him go without comment. Pretend to be mostly asleep. But my eyes snap open the second he’s gone and despite the bone-aching fatigue tying me to the bed, I’m wide awake—like I have a fever, though I know I’m too cold for that.
The room feels huge without him.
Bright. Loud.
Monitors tick and beep beside me, reminding me of a time when sounds like that felt like a clock running down, and it gets to me. I long for the sea and look for it in the ceiling above me. Rippling white that seems to shift and tilt like a rising swell under the hull of the Sirona—
Static plugs my ears. A flashback I have no hope of stopping slams into me and I see everything I’ve pushed aside for however long it’s taken me not to die in this bed. The angle of her. The sick tilt. The moment she couldn’t right herself and the waves took her under.
Gone in one roll.
My throat closes. I swallow hard, but nausea flares anyway. Pain in every nerve and bone as I feel Oscar slipping from my grip, hear the murderous rain that turned everything black.
The beeping beside me gets faster.
Air doesn’t sit right in my lungs and I rip the oxygen tubes from my nose as the Sirona sinks a thousand times in my aching head.
A nurse pops up, mid-conversation with someone behind her. Then she sees me and stops. “You all right there, duck?”
I nod, but she sees the lie and comes closer, glancing at the screens.
“Heartrate’s a bit tachy there. Running away with you, eh?”
She pats my hand and tells me to breathe. I try—but it’s impossible. Breathing is involuntary. How can I choose not to do it?
“Sol?”
Skylar. His voice cuts through everything and he claims my focus with a solid grip on my shoulder.
“Easy,” he murmurs in the same tone he uses on Jack when he’s trying to bring him back from a seizure. “You’re not in the water anymore.”
“I watched her sink.”
The Sirona.
“I know, but you didn’t go down with her, and that matters. To all of us. And don’t even start blaming yourself for any of it. That storm was an act of god.”
“You don’t believe in any gods.”
I hear myself speak. My voice doesn’t sound like mine, but I latch onto it anyway. Follow the trail back to the bed I feel like I’m levitating above and let Skylar’s pewter-grey eyes take me hostage.
“There you are.” He slides his palm down my bare arm and takes my hand, like a nurse to a patient. Because that’s what he is in this place. An overtired, overworked, underpaid nurse who’s too busy looking after everyone else to bother with himself.
That feels normal too. “You haven’t been home either, have you?”
Skylar shakes his head, frowning at the stitched wound in my scalp. “Later. And I’m bullying Jack into coming with me, so you need to get a grip.”
“Nice.”
“I mean it with love.”
“I know.” A rattly sigh escapes me and Skylar whips the stethoscope from around his neck and presses it to my chest.
It’s cold.
And weird.
“Get off me.”
Skylar does no such thing until he’s good and ready, and it’s hard to tell from his face if he’s happy with what he hears or I really have expired right here in this beeping, windowless box. “They’re going to need some blood from you in a bit. I can do it while I’m here.”
“You want my blood, Skylar?”
“Yeah, I’m going to drink it.” He waves a mug I haven’t noticed him retrieve. “How about you drink this?”
“What is it?”
“Dishwater tea. Hot and sweet.”
I don’t drink tea. But the appeal of holding a hot vessel in my hands is strong. So I take it and inspect the outside more than the contents. “You don’t drink tea or coffee. So why do you have a mug with your name on at work?”
“So people can keep bringing me shit I don’t want. Fun, isn’t it?”
Not really. I sip the tea and it’s hideous, but the hot, sweet liquid slides down my scratchy throat like a dream and I drink the lot before I know what’s happened.
And Skylar’s not done. He waves a Tupperware container at me. “You should eat.”
No chance.
But Skylar has a trump card. A second plastic tub and bamboo fork. If I eat, so will he, and I love him too much to refuse.
I pop the lid and take in the home-prepped meal that looks suspiciously good. “Who made this?”
“Not me.”
“Shocker. Not Mally either, and Jack doesn’t cook fish.”
“River and Rubi do. Oscar taught them.”
It finally makes sense and I decide I don’t care who cooked the cod-topped chorizo-spiked potatoes in the tub. I eat them. So does Skylar, and the world feels like a different place when we’re done.
Skylar takes the tubs away. I wonder if he’s gone back to work. Or to a bathroom to purge our shared dinner. Because I know no amount of love and life will ever quiet that beast entirely.
But he’s back before I can get in my feelings about it and follows through on his offer to draw my blood.
Doesn’t say what it’s for and I don’t ask.
I let the food I’ve eaten settle me and I drift for a while.
Let my thoughts skate around, landing wherever they want.
I should check on Oscar. On Sev. On my parents, even.
But there’s a haze in the space responsibility usually occupies and I don’t fight it all that hard.
I speak when Skylar speaks. Comply with everything he asks. Eventually, I sleep, and when I wake up, finally, finally, it’s morning and Jack is here.
He leans over the bed, fixing things I didn’t know were out of place. Little things that ease discomfort I wasn’t aware of. He takes the hand Skylar held most of the night in a tighter, warmer grip and brushes his lips to my bruised cheek. “I missed you.”
The gravelled confession is my final undoing. I cry and he holds me. He gives me his breath when I can’t make my lungs work. And when it’s over, he doesn’t let go. Just waits for me to find some words of my own. Words that spew out of me before I can stop them. “Jackie, I’m sorry. I love you.”
“Sol, you don’t have to—”
“No. I need to tell you. I need you to understand, even if you’re still angry after.”
“I do understand. And I’m still fucking fuming. But it doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
Jack lowers the bed rail and perches on the mattress, never letting me go. “It isn’t you I’m angry with. It’s the world, fate, whatever. I love you, Sol. I’m in love with you, and nothing and no one can ever change that.”