Chapter 20
Borrowed Time
ELI
At first, the world was sound.
A low hum, a white noise of different machines blending into a discordant symphony. Then something softer, breath close enough to touch. I floated toward it, through a fog that smelled faintly of disinfectant and something warm that didn’t belong in hospitals.
My head and chest throbbed. Every breath felt borrowed. But when I blinked, and the light finally steadied, I saw him.
Adrian.
He was sitting beside the bed, his fingers threaded through mine, his head bowed. Dark crescents shadowed his eyes, but when I shifted slightly, his head snapped up, and that smile… that smile made the pain worth it.
“Welcome back,” he whispered, voice breaking on the words.
I tried to say his name, but my throat felt raw, dry. I managed a rasp that sounded vaguely like “hey.” It didn’t matter. He understood.
The next few minutes blurred—the nurses rushing in, lights flicking brighter, voices overlapping as they checked monitors and IVs.
The cuff on my arm squeezed the blood from my veins.
Adrian stayed beside me, answering questions, shaking beneath his calm exterior.
Someone said something about vitals and oxygen saturation, but all I could see was his hand, still gripping mine, afraid I might vanish if he let go.
When they finally left, and the door clicked shut, the solitude became enormous. Adrian sat back down, the chair creaking.
I tried to speak again, my voice rough. “How long?”
“Four days,” he said softly. “You woke once yesterday, but they had to sedate you again. Your body needed the rest.”
Four days. It sounded impossible. I turned my head to look at him properly. His eyes were red, bloodshot. Exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix.
Pain sharpened as I shifted, sudden and everywhere at once. It dragged a low sound out of me before I could stop it.
“Why does it hurt so bad?” I rasped, each word scraping. “What… what happened to me?”
Adrian straightened, instinct snapping into place. “You were in a motor vehicle collision. You sustained a moderate traumatic brain injury with cerebral edema, a subdural—”
“In English,” I cut in, sharper than I meant to. The ache in my head beat with its own pulse. “Please. Just—tell me what’s wrong with me.”
He froze for half a second, knocked off script. Then something in his face softened.
“You were in a bad crash,” he said carefully. “You hit your head. Your brain swelled. You’ve got some broken ribs, bruised lungs… and a jagged piece from the crumpled door panel impaled your thigh. You lost a lot of blood.”
Damn, that explained why I felt like death warmed over.
“I almost lost you.” His voice cracked just enough to undo me.
“I heard you,” I managed. My chest ached—not just from the impact, but from the memory clawing its way back. “I dreamed of you.”
He blinked, confused. “How?” He laughed once, brokenly. “Eli, you were gone. Your heart—”
“I know.” My voice shivered. “Remember when you told me about that study in your medical journal? The one about brain activity after death?”
He frowned, brow furrowed. “Yeah. Up to seven minutes.”
“It’s real,” I whispered. “And every single one of my minutes was of you.”
Adrian’s face fell, a mix of disbelief and awe. His hand came up, cupping my cheek with such tenderness that it hurt worse than the fractured ribs.
“I don’t deserve your minutes,” he said quietly. “I’ve missed too many of them.”
My lips curved, weak but warm. “Nah,” I murmured. “Apparently, you were there for all the best ones.”
I closed my eyes for a second as the memories flickered again—hazy, shapeless things that should’ve been gone but weren’t. They came like flashes through fog, too bright and too fast to hold.
The first was a laugh. His laugh. The one that had stopped me in that campus cafè years ago, when I’d spilled my coffee, and he’d said, “I owe you a refill, stranger.”
Then the scene shifted, melting into our first date at that Italian place.
Again, it was his laugh and the heat in his gaze that I remembered most, more than words.
That first night in my dorm room, the air thick with ramen steam and sugary doughnuts.
I remembered the way he’d kissed me—hesitant at first, then certain—and how the desk lamp had painted his skin when we finally made love.
Another flash: moving boxes, laughter echoing through an empty living room. Me cursing the couch that wouldn’t fit through the door; him leaning in the doorway with that smug grin. The smell of fresh paint, the feel of his fingers brushing mine as we hung the first photo. Home.
I saw flashes of black—our wedding. Soft music and twinkling lights. His voice catching when he said my name, when he promised forever. The way he’d pressed his head to mine afterward, whispering, “Don’t ever leave me.”
My chest clenched. Maybe I had. Maybe for a while I did.
But even when my heart had stopped, I’d found him again. Every memory had led back to Adrian. Every light, every sound, every pulse of color—it was all him.
My voice wobbled as I whispered, “I saw everything. The first time we met. Our first kiss. The night we made love. Moving into the house. Our graduations. Our wedding.”
Adrian’s hand tightened around mine, his eyes glassy. “Eli—”
I swallowed hard. “You were there. Every minute. Even when I wasn’t.”
He leaned closer, his forehead pressing to mine, tears slipping free. “You’re my every minute,” he said hoarsely.
I didn’t correct him. I didn’t remind him that he was the one who kept time when I couldn’t. Because he was right. Even through the dark, I’d found my way back by following the sound of his voice.
For the first time since I’d opened my eyes, I let myself breathe. It burned like hellfire, but I didn’t care. He was there. I was here. And for now, that was enough.
The room blurred at the edges again. Sedation tugged at me, soft but relentless. My eyelids grew heavy, but I fought it, trying to memorize the way he looked at me. The mix of exhaustion and devotion and raw relief in his face.
As the darkness pulled me under again, I whispered, “If I fall asleep… stay?”
“Always,” he promised. His fingers tightened around mine.
And this time, when I drifted, it wasn’t into the cold or the stillness—it was into him.
When I woke again, the room was dim. Adrian was still there, sitting in the same chair, his laptop open on the tray table beside my bed.
He looked up the moment I stirred. “Hey,” he mumbled, closing the screen. “You back with me?”
“More or less.” My voice still scraped raw. “Feels like my chest got in a bar fight.”
His smile tilted, faint but real. “You lost.”
“Thanks for the medical insight, Doctor.”
“Anytime.” The small exchange loosened something tight in my chest.
The door opened, and a small group filed in—clipboards, badges, polite smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.
“Good morning, Mr. Hawke,” one of them said. “How are you feeling today?”
I blinked at her, trying to form words. My tongue thickened. My brain lagged several beats behind. “Tired,” I managed, voice catching. “Sore.”
“That’s normal,” she said brightly, already turning to the monitor. A resident started talking about my vitals, something about oxygen saturation, about “improving post-sedation response.” I caught maybe half of it before the rest blurred into static.
They talked around me, over me, using words I’d once understood but couldn’t seem to hold on to now—perfusion, trauma protocol, cerebral edema.
It all melted together until only the rhythm of their voices remained.
I didn’t even realize I was staring at the ceiling until Adrian spoke, low and certain, answering questions on my behalf.
It was the tone I knew from his shifts in the ER—steady, measured, absolute. The doctor’s voice.
Not my husband’s.
I felt his hand brush mine, a small anchor in the fog. I clung to it, letting him speak for both of us.
They finished their assessment, left instructions about scans and medications, and said they’d be back later for rounds. Someone told me to rest. Someone else adjusted a line in my arm. Then they were gone, and the door clicked shut.
The solitude left behind grew bigger than the room itself.
But as the minutes passed, reality crowded in. Words like recovery and rehab and follow-up circled my head like vultures. I’d overheard them mention “neurology consult,” and “PT eval.” There would be scans, appointments, maybe even therapy to learn how to breathe without pain again.
“How long…” I swallowed hard. “How long am I going to be here?”
Adrian hesitated, the way he did when he was switching between doctor and husband. “They’ll keep you another week, maybe two. After that, outpatient rehab, cardiac follow-up, physical therapy. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
We. The word should have comforted me, but instead it made something flutter uncertainly in my chest. “I’ll need to… find someone to drive me, I guess. My parents might—”
He cut in gently. “I already talked to them. They’ll help, but I’m handling your appointments. Cardio next Wednesday, ortho consult Friday, PT evaluation after discharge. I’ll coordinate with the rehab team about home care and equipment.”
I blinked at him. “You’ve… already done all that?”
He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. “Started while you were asleep. It keeps me from falling apart.”
I tried to smile, but my throat burned. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” He said it quietly but firmly, eyes locking with mine. “I almost lost you, Eli. You don’t get to tell me I don’t have to help.”
I wanted to argue, to ask if he was helping because he wanted to or because he felt obligated. But the look on his face stopped me cold. Adrian’s face mirrored his feelings—raw, sleepless, terrified, and still somehow certain.
So instead I said, “Okay.”
He exhaled, shoulders sagging with relief. “Good. Then it’s settled.”
But when he turned to check his notes, I watched him—my husband, my almost-ex-husband—methodically arranging the details of my recovery as if he could rebuild me by sheer force of will. Every phone call, every reminder, every scribbled note felt like proof of something I didn’t know how to name.
I didn’t know if he was saving me or saying goodbye.
He was planning, handling, managing—the same way he always had. But then what? What came next after my discharge, after I’d settled into home?
At what point does he hand me back the signed separation papers? Over dinner one evening? When we’re lying in bed again, pretending we’ve found normal? On our way to therapy?
When was the other shoe going to drop?
My fingers twitched against the sheet, reaching for him—for something solid, something real—but I curled them before they found him.
Because if he kept showing up like this, fixing things, taking care of me like I still mattered, I didn’t know how I’d ever be ready for the moment he decided I didn’t.