Chapter 11
Holding Vigil
ADRIAN
They’d cleaned him up by the time I got there.
That was somehow worse.
The monitors blinked a steady green beat, the ventilator hissed rhythmically, and Eli lay there—still, pale, almost peaceful. Tubes threaded from his mouth and hands, disappearing into machines that hummed and clicked. The beeping should’ve been comforting. It wasn’t. It sounded like mockery.
I sank into the chair beside his bed, elbows braced, fingers laced so tight the joints ached. I stared at the rise and fall of his chest—the forced kind, the one that only ventilators can manage—and tried to remember the feel of his breath against my neck.
The clock on the wall ticked with surgical precision. Every second marked another moment he wasn’t awake. Another moment I couldn’t fix.
“Hey,” I said softly. My voice wobbled. “You’re late for dinner.”
Nothing. Just the sigh of oxygen through plastic tubing.
I pressed a hand over his, careful to avoid the IV lines. His skin was warm. Too warm. A fever heat that whispered of the body fighting back, refusing to surrender.
The guilt came in waves. First quiet, then sharp, then overwhelming.
I saw our last argument clearer than any physical thing in the room. The sound of my voice too loud, the edge of exhaustion in his.
“You don’t take care of yourself,” he accused. “You act like you’re indestructible, but you’re not. One day—”
“One day, what?” I’d shot back. “One day I’ll die of bad habits and stress? Newsflash, Eli, that’s literally all of us.”
He’d gone quiet then, jaw set, eyes dark. “You’re already halfway there.”
And then I’d walked out.
Of course, he’d been right, but it was easier to ignore the truth.
I reached up and brushed his hair from his forehead, just like he used to do for me when I’d fall asleep on the couch after a double shift. The strands clung to my fingers, damp from where a nursing assistant had washed the blood out.
“Remember when we thought forever meant something simple?” I murmured. “You’d cook pasta, I’d burn garlic bread, and somehow we called it domestic bliss.” I let out a choked laugh. “God, we were idiots. Happy idiots.”
My throat closed around my next breath. The machine filled the silence for me, cold and efficient.
I leaned closer, forehead resting against the mattress beside his arm. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For every time I made you feel small. For every night I didn’t come home. For every time I thought saving strangers mattered more than being with you.”
The words poured out like a confession—quiet, desperate, and unfiltered.
“I thought I had time,” I said. “We always think we have time.”
I didn’t notice Mara until she touched my shoulder. Her voice was soft. “You should get some rest.”
I shook my head. “If I sleep, I’ll lose him again.”
She hesitated. “He’s stable. You need to be too.”
But I stayed.
Hours passed that felt like days. Nurses came and went, changing fluids, checking monitors, whispering updates I barely heard. I traced the pulse point on his wrist over and over, needing the reassurance of that faint, stubborn rhythm.
At some point, dawn started to creep through the blinds, brushing the room in muted shades of pink. I realized I hadn’t blinked in too long, hadn’t breathed properly since he arrived here.
“Hey,” I said again, voice frayed to nothing. “If you can hear me… You have to come back. You hear me? You don’t get to leave me here with all this.”
The sunlight touched his cheek. For a second, I thought I saw movement. A twitch. A breath that wasn’t machine-made.
I held mine and waited.
But the room remained still.
And so I stayed, too.
The nurse came back around noon with a sandwich. Turkey on white, no crusts, as if I were five, and she was humoring a child.
“Eat something,” she said gently, setting it beside me.
I nodded but didn’t touch it.
The bread went stale. Hours bled together. The hum of the ventilator became a second pulse inside my skull.
Eventually, I stood. Sat. Stood again. My body couldn’t seem to decide what to do with itself. I ran a hand through my hair until it stood on end, until my scalp burned, until I realized my fingers were shaking.
I paced the length of the room, then back again. Ten steps one way, eleven the other. Each turn scraped something rawer inside me. I’d been trained for crisis—bleeding, screaming, adrenaline. But this—this hush, this waiting—it was unbearable.
I braced my hands on the edge of the counter, head bowed. My reflection in the stainless steel backsplash looked wrecked. Eyes red. Lips cracked. A man unrecognizable even to himself.
My chest clenched. The separation papers wouldn’t stop flashing through my mind, those neatly formatted paragraphs, the polite legalese that tried to make disintegration sound civilized. They replayed on an endless loop, haunting me with their finality.
I almost signed them. Hell, I wanted to sign them, if only to stop the bleeding between us. And the remorse. I’d convinced myself it was mercy. That maybe he’d be happier without me.
But now—watching him lie there, pale and still, machines breathing for him—I realized what I’d nearly done.
I almost lost him.
And the worst part? He’d been alive the whole time. No trauma. No blood. Just the slow, inexorable death of something we’d both once sworn was immortal.
Our marriage hadn’t exploded. It had eroded. Quietly. Gradually. Like the tide wearing down a rock until nothing remained but dust.
And I’d let it happen.
I thought of the way he used to smile when he was teasing me, the way he’d lean on the counter while I cooked, pretending to help. The way his voice softened every time he said my name.
And I thought about the last text I’d sent him—Don’t wait up—and how it read with the finality of a door closing.
My legs gave out. I sank into the chair as my breath gusted out of me, leaving me hollow.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please come back. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything.”
The sandwich sat untouched beside me. The clock ticked.
And I stayed there—blood-stained, exhausted, furious with myself—for ever believing love could survive without tending.