Chapter 17
What We Keep Safe
ADRIAN
They came for him just after lunch.
The transport team rolled in with their MRI-compatible ventilator and the portable monitors, filling the room with motion and quiet urgency.
They checked tubes, taped lines, and switched leads to the non-magnetic kind.
I’d done this a hundred times for other patients. This was the first time my hands shook.
I stood back, trying not to get in the way. The nurse confirmed sedation. The respiratory therapist disconnected the standard vent, connected the MRI-safe tubing, and watched for any drop in oxygen. The hum of the machine changed pitch to a lower, mechanical vibration that sounded foreign.
“He’ll be fine, Dr. Hawke,” the tech said gently. “We do this all the time.”
I nodded, though my throat wouldn’t let me answer. I’d said those same words to other families. I knew how useless they sounded.
When they wheeled him out, the hiss of the ventilator followed, a steady sigh of borrowed breath.
I trailed a few steps behind, down the hall that had never looked so long.
I’d walked this corridor a thousand times as a physician, always brisk, detached, efficient.
But now the lighting felt harsh, the air sterile, the floor too white.
From this side of the glass, the hospital was merciless. It smelled of bleach and fear.
They parked him outside the MRI suite while they prepped the room.
The air inside was cold, the magnet’s distant hum thrumming through the walls like a slow pulse.
The team lifted Eli onto the narrow table, tucking sheets around his body as though he might feel the chill.
His skin looked pale under the harsh lights, lips parted around the tube, lashes still against his cheeks.
A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead.
I smoothed it back before I could stop myself.
“Okay,” the tech called. “We’re ready.”
I stayed outside the door, behind the safety glass, watching as they slid him into the bore of the magnet. The machine started its slow, rhythmic pounding, each thud a heartbeat I couldn’t trust. I pressed a palm against the cool glass.
Please, I thought. Just give me something good. Anything.
Minutes stretched into forever. Every alarm, every faint shift in the monitor sent adrenaline racing through my chest. I tried to focus on the data—oxygen saturation steady, end-tidal CO? normal—but all I saw was the slight rise and fall of his chest, that fragile motion holding the world together.
The waiting was worse than any code I’d ever run. The MRI suite doors closed behind him twenty minutes ago, leaving me to pace the hallway like a ghost.
“You hate hospitals,” I whispered. “I know. Just hang on, baby.”
And then, like a crack in the dam, memory flooded in.
It had been late spring five years ago. A Saturday that smelled of rain and honeysuckle.
Eli had been out on his bike, the one he’d insisted on fixing up himself, claiming it was ‘vintage’ and not ‘a death trap,’ which was what I’d called it every time the chain slipped.
God forbid he allowed me to buy him a nice, sturdy mountain bike with solid tires and no rust.
When I heard the crash outside, I sprinted down the driveway to find him sprawled in the gravel, jeans ripped, blood trickling down his forearm.
“Jesus, Eli,” I gasped, crouching down beside him. “You couldn’t just buy a new one?”
He winced, laughing through the pain. “You always say that like money’s the solution to every problem.”
“Well, it would’ve solved this one,” I shot back, but my hands were already steadying him, doctor mode flicking on. “Can you move your wrist?”
He could. Barely. But his elbow was bleeding enough to need stitches.
He refused the ER, of course. “You’ve got supplies. You’re practically a walking hospital.”
“Supplies, yes. Patience, no.”
He grinned at me with that infuriating, disarming smirk. “Then you’d better hurry before I bleed out.”
I’d helped him into the kitchen, the scent of coffee still lingering from breakfast. After laying out gauze and thread, I cleaned his wound while he sat on the counter, bare-chested, legs swinging, watching me with a kind of quiet trust that made my pulse skip.
“Hold still,” I warned.
“You’re the one shaking,” he teased.
“I’m not—”
He reached out, resting his good hand against my jaw. “You are.” His voice softened. “It’s okay, Adrian. You’re allowed to care.”
Something in me fused right then. The mix of worry and want, of wanting to yell at him for being reckless and kiss him for still being here.
When I pulled the needle through, he hissed but didn’t flinch. “You’re good at this,” he murmured.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had practice on dumber patients.”
“None as handsome, though.”
I rolled my eyes, but I could feel the heat rising in my face. “You’re impossible.”
“Admit it,” he said, his grin softening into something tender. “You like it.”
When I tied the last knot, he leaned forward, brushing his nose against mine. “Thank you, Doctor.”
I remember the flip of my stomach, which I’d chalked up to worry and relief, but thinking back now, I knew it was just Eli. He always had that effect on me.
“Don’t make a habit of it.”
“I’ll try,” he whispered, but his smile said otherwise.
I was rinsing blood from my hands when I felt his gaze on my back.
“You’re staring,” I said without turning.
“Can you blame me?” His voice was soft, edged with something that wasn’t quite teasing anymore.
I turned, towel dangling from my hand, and found him watching me, eyes soft, lips parted, as if I’d performed a miracle instead of simply stitching him up. The space between us tightened until the air felt too thick to breathe.
“You should rest,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended.
He smiled. “You always say that when you don’t know what else to do.”
I started to protest, but then he leaned forward, hand slipping into my hair, pulling me closer until the towel fell to the floor. His lips brushed mine, tentative at first, testing. Then firmer. Hungrier.
The kiss tasted of toothpaste and coffee and something I’d missed long before I realized it was gone.
When I cupped his jaw, he sighed into my mouth, leaning into my touch as if it was the only thing holding him upright. “You don’t have to fix everything, Adrian,” he murmured. “You just have to be here.”
That undid me more than the kiss. Because that was the one thing I’d never been able to give him enough of—my presence.
He pulled me into his chest, and I melted against him, the heat of his bare skin against my shirt, the steady thump of his heart against my ribs. He kissed me again, deeper this time, his tongue tracing the corner of my mouth before sliding against mine.
“Still shaking,” he whispered.
“Shut up,” I muttered, but I was smiling against his lips.
“I like it,” he said. “Means you feel something.”
And I did. God, I did. Fear, want, love—it all tangled into one unbearable ache that only he could soothe.
When I finally pulled back, forehead resting against his, I whispered, “You scared the hell out of me.”
He smiled faintly. “Guess we’re even, then.”
The hum of the MRI machine dragged me back. I pressed my hand to the cold wall and shut my eyes, feeling disoriented. The same sterile hallway that had once been my kingdom was now a coffin.
I’d always thought I understood this side of medicine. But I’d never stood here as the one waiting—counting breaths, counting prayers. The ache in my chest was sharp enough to sting.
“I’d give anything,” I murmured, “for you to sit on our counter again and tell me I’m shaking.”
Even years later, that memory gutted me. I thought I’d been the protector, the strong one—the doctor, the savior. But it was never me holding us together.
It was him. Always him.
Eli, with his stubbornness and warmth and ability to make chaos feel like home.
Eli, who could stop my shaking with a touch.
And now here I was, trying to hold together a world that only existed when he was in it. I thought of that day in our kitchen. The tremor in my hands. His voice saying, You don’t have to hold everything together for me.
“I’m still holding on, Eli,” I murmured, throat thick. “But I don’t know how to do this without you.”
I sat there, in the space between then and now, between medicine and memory, waiting for someone to tell me how to keep what was left of him safe.
The nurse glanced up at me through the window. “We’re almost done.”
I nodded again, but my vision blurred. My reflection stared back from the glass—eyes rimmed red, scruff thickening to a beard, a man who knew too much about what could go wrong.
When the table finally slid out, I had to grip the doorframe to keep from collapsing. I told myself to breathe, to stay clinical, to wait for the report. But inside, every second balanced on a wire stretched between hope and despair.
“He’s going to be fine,” I whispered. “He has to be.”
They wheeled Eli back to his room, and I followed, heart hammering, eyes locked on the rhythm of his chest. It took nearly twenty minutes to transfer leads and tubing and get him situated. One attending lingered at the foot of the bed, clipboard tucked under an arm.
“The swelling has lessened,” she said, and I nodded, swallowing hard.
“Now what?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Now… we wait and see,” she replied softly.
The words hung in the air, almost cruel in their simplicity.
I wanted them to mean more, to guarantee something.
To tell me that when I blinked, Eli would open his eyes and smile like he always did, the way he had in our kitchen, laughing through tears, shaking his head at my overblown panic. But hope didn’t come with guarantees.
I watched him, tracing the curve of his jaw, the slope of his shoulders beneath the sheets. I wanted to believe “wait and see” meant wait and heal. But I’d said those words before. I knew how easily they turned into waiting and losing.
I squeezed his hand lightly and whispered into the quiet: “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you. Not now. Not ever.”
For the first time in days, I let myself hope, even if it was fragile, a candle flickering against the darkness.