Chapter Twenty Falling Hard
Chapter twenty
Falling Hard
Dead.
Literally, undeniably, dead .
No heartbeat. No breath. Cardiac arrest. Reece had flatlined.
And yet… he could hear something.
Distant. Low. Pulsing through the dark in a slow roll of waves against a shoreline. Steady. Rhythmic. Oddly soothing. A voice. Someone was speaking . No… reading.
A story.
One he knew.
To him?
No. Couldn’t be. It was his own voice. The words moved across something buried deep inside him. The syllables were warm and measured. Familiar. Threaded with a soft sadness.
He smiled. Or maybe imagined he did. Could the dead smile? Could they hear? Could they feel a story hug them like this?
Maybe this was purgatory.
The waiting room between what was and whatever came next was his own voice, reading from a dog-eared book he used to keep under his bed and bring out when the real nightmares beyond his door had smashed through.
When he wanted to escape but the only place he could flee to was a storybook stolen from the school library and never returned.
It sounded like him. This voice. This narrator . His cadence. His inflection.
Except…
There was something else layered beneath. Not quite his. A tremor. A catch at the edges of certain words. A pause too long before turning a page. A breath, sharp and quiet, as if someone was holding back more than tears.
That wasn’t him.
Suddenly the warmth inside him cracked open, letting in a rush of feeling so sharp it stole the breath he thought he’d had ripped from him and given up.
The Clever Fox and the Hollow Tree . That was the book.
That was what was being read to him. Right now.
Here. Wherever he was. The same worn paperback Reece used to read aloud to Ethan when they were little and hiding under blankets after their dad had taken things too far.
The story Reece used to soften the world, to rewrite it, even for a few minutes, as a place where clever foxes always got away.
“…but the fox was clever. Cleverer than they thought. And when the hunters came, he was already gone…”
His fingers moved .
Then curled.
A full clench .
How…?
How was he doing that?
He shouldn’t be able to. Shouldn’t feel anything.
He was supposed to be a shell. A broken body lying in a wreck. Nothing but flesh and memory, caught somewhere between the past and whatever came after. A mind adrift, floating through flashes of a life lived hard.
The regrets would come first. The triumphs, too, but dulled by shadow. Faces, moments, choices. The good. The bad. The unforgivable .
He braced for it. For the reel to spin. And memories to flood him.
Fists slamming into him in a childhood too loud with rage.
The blur of moments when he hit back. Not because he thought he’d win, he rarely did, but because one day, finally, he could .
He’d learned to fight. Trained his body to be tough and hard as armour.
But by then, the monster was already gone.
He’d built a new one in himself instead.
The man who didn’t flinch. Didn’t fall. Who walked into burning buildings as if flames couldn’t touch him so he could prove he was invincible. Unbreakable .
Liar.
A jolt of fire shot up his arm, white-hot and merciless.
Pain. Real sharp, dragging him under and yanking him back all at once.
This wasn’t a dream. Nor a memory.
This was the price of being alive .
And somehow, impossibly, he was paying it.
He was here . In the pain. In the pulse. In the wreckage of a body that should have let go but hadn’t.
Yet that voice kept reading .
Gentle. Frayed. Familiar .
Reece latched onto it. Clung as if hanging off a ledge. A cliff edge. “Eyes on me.”
God, Trent.
He forced focus. Gritted through the fog. Pulled harder towards the voice. Away from the memory. Away from the lie. Then—
“Reece?”
His name broke through the blur, hitting him square in the chest and shaking something loose inside him.
He stirred. The world didn’t open all at once, though.
It peeled back in layers. First sound. Beeping, soft shuffling, a sniff someone tried to hide.
Then light. Harsh, cold, clinical. Then the ache.
Not an ache.
Agony .
His ribs burned. His throat felt scoured out with wire. Even his skin hurt. Tight, hot, stinging. But beneath all of that, under the suffocating weight of his own battered body, he felt something else.
Fingers. His own. Curled. Clenched.
He’d come back.
And the first thing he saw, when he pried his lashes apart and blinked into the burn of sterile light, was… himself. A mirror image. Neater. Sharper around the edges. But the same tired eyes. The same clenched jaw trying not to fall apart.
“Hey.” Ethan dropped the battered paperback on his lap then leant forward. “Hey. You’re awake. You’re here.”
Reece couldn’t answer.
He managed a blink. But he locked eyes with Ethan as if it was the only thing tethering him to the world. Because it was .
“Jesus, brother…” Ethan pressed his forehead to Reece’s, gripping his hand tighter than he probably should, considering the needle inserted into his vein to give him God only knew what. “You scared the fucking life out of me.”
He pulled back. Wiped his face. Then adjusted a few things around Reece. But Reece couldn’t move. Couldn’t reach. Couldn’t feel his legs properly. His body was lead-heavy, weighed down by pain, sedation, and something thick over his face. An oxygen mask.
His throat was raw. Dry. Scraped clean by the tube that had once sat there.
His chest throbbed in deep, shuddering pulses with every breath, each inhale a battle against the tightness and the broken bones beneath his skin.
Then came the beeping. A sudden acceleration in the monitor.
An alarm. Not panicked, but sharp enough to draw attention.
Moments later, the curtain parted, and ICU staff flooded the space.
A nurse approached first, checking the monitors, and leant in to speak over the hum. “Reece, you’re in the ICU.”
Yeah. He’d figured that.
“You’ve been unconscious for a few days. You were intubated and placed in an induced coma. You’re breathing on your own now, but we’ve kept you on high-flow oxygen to help with recovery.”
He tried to nod. Failed. So he blinked.
A doctor followed in behind. “He’s responsive. Pupils equal, tracking well. Let’s check the chest.”
The nurse shifted his gown, and Reece hissed as cool air kissed his burned forearms and bruised chest. The doctor pressed his fingers carefully along his sternum, then tracked along his ribs, each touch sending daggers of pain radiating outward .
He flinched hard. Couldn’t help it.
The doctor paused, met the nurse’s eyes. “Still very tender. Not unexpected after CPR. He’s got at least three fractures.”
Reece’s breath caught. CPR.
It hit him all at once. Why every breath felt as if he was being cracked open. Why his chest throbbed as if someone had tried to restart him.
Because someone had.
His heart had stopped.
Who had brought him back?
“Fractures are holding stable. No signs of pneumothorax,” the doctor said to the nurse.
“We’ll repeat the chest x-ray later, but for now, keep the fluids and oxygen going.
Pain relief’s due in twenty.” He turned to Ethan.
“You can stay, but we need to monitor closely. He’s likely disoriented, and the pain’s going to be severe when the adrenaline fades. ”
Ethan nodded.
The team moved back, leaving space and the hum of machines and rasp of oxygen.
Reece’s eyes fluttered closed, then opened again.
He lifted his hand. Painfully. Inch by inch. Until he found Ethan’s.
Ethan looked down, startled. “Hey. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Reece blinked, then drew in a breath through the mask, ragged and weak.
Then, in a voice muffled by plastic and pain, he croaked, “I’m the fox. I’m cleverer…”
Ethan laughed through a sob.
“You absolute twat,” he whispered, cupping the side of Reece’s head. “You’re still in there. ”
And Reece, barely conscious, barely whole, managed the smallest tug of his mouth. Not a smile, but close enough to count.
* * * *
Trent stared out the passenger window at nothing.
The rig hummed beneath him, a low idle, ready to move again. Liv sat behind the wheel, finishing her post-call notes as the world moved on when it should’ve stopped.
His body might have been on shift. His mind wasn’t.
He hadn’t really slept since the fire.
Not since he’d driven his fists into Reece’s chest, counting compressions through smoke and static and the deafening rush of his own blood, screaming the only words that mattered.
Come back. Come back. Come the fuck back.
Reece had. But only just.
And then came the silence. The ventilator. The induced coma to see if it had all been for nothing.
Trent kept moving.
Because stopping meant drowning.
He worked. He visited. When he wasn’t being dragged back out on shift, he was by Reece’s bedside.
Every free hour. Every spare breath. He’d met Reece’s brother.
He’d needed his permission to even be there as Reece’s next of kin.
It had been awkward, sure. Two strangers orbiting the same broken world.
But they’d figured it out. Ethan allowed him to be bedside.
And they took turns sitting vigil. Reading that book.
The one Ethan swore Reece would remember. Said it might stir something.
So Trent had read.
Had cleaned him .
Helped change his dressings when the nurse allowed it. Had fallen asleep once, head cradled on folded arms at the edge of Reece’s bed, until Ethan shook him gently awake.
He should’ve taken more time. Should’ve asked for another week off. But he couldn’t. He needed to be moving. Needed the noise to drown the fear still crawling under his skin.
He hadn’t reached for a pill.
Not once.
Because somewhere in the middle of all that waiting, he’d realised the only medicine he needed was Reece .
“Trent?”
The radio crackled.
He snatched it. “Lawson receiving.”
A pause. Then a calm voice. “Hi, Trent. This is Jo on the ICU ward. Thought you’d want to know. Reece Morgan regained consciousness about ten minutes ago. He’s stable. Responsive.”
Trent tightened his grip on the radio as if it might vanish otherwise.
Liv hit the sirens. “Seatbelt on. Hold tight.”
She peeled the ambulance out of the car park with a scream of tyres and a blast of blue light cutting straight through Trent’s skull. It wasn’t a long drive. Thank fuck they were nearby and five minutes later, they skidded into the hospital bay and Trent threw himself out of the cab.
“Go,” Liv shouted. “I’ll cover despatch!”
He sprinted through corridors, past A&E, through the first bank of automatic doors, badge swinging from his chest. He took the stairs two at a time, adrenaline and desperation fuelling his ascent.
Swipe. Push. Slam.
He barged through the back entrance to ICU with his ID, lungs on fire, heart thundering, sweat prickling beneath his shirt.
Nurses turned as he passed, but didn’t stop him.
They knew him now, and he reached the right wing, boots hitting linoleum harder with every step and fell into the cubicle, crashing into the edge of the privacy screen, shoulder slamming into it before he caught himself.
Ethan looked up, startled. “Jesus—”
But there he was. Reece. Eyes open.
Alive .
Trent froze, breath stuttering, chest tight enough to crack. Body locked, caught between flight and collapse.
Ethan stood. Closed the book. Then stepped back, allowing Trent to have the space. Trent swallowed, taking in the sight of Reece. Awake. Pale skin. Oxygen mask. Bandaged arms. And the quiet strength it took to be awake.
“I’ll get us some coffee.” Ethan tapped Reece’s leg gently, then Trent’s shoulder on the way past, before slipping out.
Trent shifted towards the chair Ethan had left behind.
It was still warm. And Trent picked up the book to sit, suddenly feeling heavy.
He stared at the cover without seeing it.
Now that Reece was awake, Trent didn’t know where to put himself.
What to say. What to be. When Reece had been unconscious, it had been simple: show up. Sit vigil. Read. Clean. Hope.
Now?
Now Reece could see him. And that terrified him more than anything.
They weren’t together. Not really. A thousand unspoken things burned in the silence between them, but no name for it. No right, really, to be here at all. Who was he to sit beside Reece in this moment? When he was at his weakest, his most broken?
Reece lifted a shaky hand to his face, hooking a finger under the oxygen mask, and dragged it down. He licked his lips before rasping, “Was it you? ”
Trent looked up. Met his gaze.
Reece stroked his fingers across the bruises blooming down his chest above the bandaging and understanding crashed into him. Trent swallowed hard.
“Yeah.” He drew in a breath. “Yeah, that was me.”
He blinked fast, chest tightening. Now’s not the time to fall apart.
“There’s no way to bring someone back without doing a little damage.” He gave a brittle half-smile. “Sorry about the ribs.”
Reece let out a breath through his nose and he drifted his eyes shut for a moment. Trent almost looked away, unsure if that was the end.
Then Reece reached across the mattress, a few tentative taps towards Trent.
An invitation.
“Thank you,” he whispered, hoarse and worn.
Trent took his hand.
Held it like it was the most fragile thing ever given to him.
“I’d do it again.” He rubbed his thumbs across the back of Reece’s hand. “Didn’t give up. Even when they told me to. They would have pronounced you dead right there if I stopped. Knew they would. Wasn’t having that.” He glanced up, sniffed. “I wasn’t giving you up without a fight.”
Reece dropped back into the pillow. Smiled. “My hero.”
Trent looked away.
“Eyes on me, sweetheart.”