Chapter 2 #2
I pressed my fists to my eyes.
Caleb sat in the chair beside me. “Have you heard anything?”
“They took out his spleen.”
“Oh.”
“They said people can live without it.”
“They can.”
“There are fractures. Pelvis, arm. They’re worried about his brain.”
Caleb looked toward the door. “Did they say how worried?”
“No.”
“That’s probably because they don’t know yet.”
“I need them to know.”
“I know.”
A television mounted in the waiting room showed footage of the accident.
I saw the van before I understood what I was seeing.
Its rear wheels hung above a ravine, caught against broken guardrail posts. The front half was crushed beneath a tangle of bent steel pipe. Firefighters in red helmets moved around it. A helicopter stood on the closed road.
The news banner called it a miraculous rescue.
Caleb stepped in front of the screen.
“Turn that off,” he snapped at the receptionist.
She reached for the remote.
I could not stop looking at the place where the driver’s side should have been.
“Noah was in there,” I said.
Caleb crouched in front of me. “Don’t.”
“He was inside that.”
“He got out.”
“They cut him out.”
“And they got him to the hospital.”
I had kissed him that morning.
I could feel the shape of his mouth if I concentrated.
I had watched him drive into the rain and thought about insurance paperwork, inventory, the vessel scheduled for haul-out on Thursday.
I had not followed him.
I had not called sooner.
“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Caleb said.
I hadn’t realized I was speaking aloud.
“I sent him that way.”
“You sent him away from the flood.”
“If I’d let him take the highway—”
“Then maybe something else happens. Or nothing happens. You don’t know.”
“I told him to take Breaker.”
Caleb gripped the back of my neck. “The truck lost its load. You didn’t put it there.”
A surgeon came in at two fifteen.
Dr. Saira Bell was small, composed, and still wearing a surgical cap patterned with yellow birds.
I stood so quickly my chair struck the wall.
“Noah is out of surgery,” she said.
My knees weakened.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
Dr. Bell motioned for us to sit, but I couldn’t.
“We repaired the internal bleeding and stabilized his pelvic fractures. His arm will need further treatment, but that is not urgent. The neurosurgical procedure relieved the pressure caused by the bleeding around his brain.”
“So he’s safe.”
“He is stable.”
“That means safe.”
“It means his condition is not worsening at this moment.”
The correction was gentle and devastating.
“What happens now?”
“We’ll move him to intensive care. He is being kept sedated and supported by a ventilator. The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are important. We’ll monitor swelling, blood flow, and neurological response.”
“Will he wake up?”
“We expect to reduce the sedation when it is appropriate.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her eyes held mine. “We do not yet know what his recovery will look like.”
Caleb shifted beside me.
Dr. Bell continued. “Head injuries can affect movement, speech, personality, memory, and cognition. Some changes are temporary. Some are not. It is too early to determine the extent.”
“He knows me.”
No one answered.
“He’ll know me when he wakes up.”
Dr. Bell folded her hands. “I hope so.”
Hope sounded small in that room.
“Can I see him?”
“Briefly, before he’s transferred.”
They made me wash my hands.
I scrubbed grease from beneath my nails while a nurse explained tubes and machines I would see. She told me not to be alarmed by swelling. Not to touch the dressings. Not to interfere with the lines.
I nodded to everything.
Nothing prepared me.
Noah lay beneath white blankets in a narrow recovery bay, surrounded by equipment. A rigid brace framed his neck. Bandages covered the left side of his head. His face was bruised, swollen, and marked with shallow cuts.
The ventilator breathed for him.
His left arm was immobilized. His skin looked colorless beneath the harsh light.
I stopped at the curtain.
The nurse waited.
I forced myself forward.
Noah never slept quietly. He kicked free of blankets. He muttered. He reached across the mattress until he found me.
This stillness belonged to someone else.
I stood on his uninjured side and touched two fingers to his wrist. His skin was warm.
That small warmth broke something inside me.
“Hey,” I whispered.
The machine exhaled.
“It’s Reid.”
No response.
“I’m here.”
My eyes flooded. I bent over his hand, careful of the tape and intravenous line.
“You don’t have to do anything right now. You hear me? Just stay.”
The nurse touched my shoulder. “He may be able to hear you.”
I swallowed a sob.
“You were supposed to call me,” I told him. “I’m going to be impossible about that when you wake up.”
The ventilator sighed again.
I pressed my mouth to his knuckles.
“I love you.”
Two minutes later, they wheeled him away.
Caleb caught me when I came back into the waiting room.
I did not remember falling against him. I only remembered his jacket clenched in my hands and the humiliation of the sounds leaving my throat.
He held on until I could stand.
Owen arrived carrying food none of us ate. He sat across from me, elbows on his knees, and watched the floor.
At four, the intensive care unit allowed me in.
At six, they told me visiting hours were over.
At six ten, I was still beside Noah’s bed.
At seven, a nurse named Tessa brought me a blanket and said nothing when I curled into the chair.
I learned the language of the monitors.
One sound meant his blood pressure cuff was cycling.
Another meant an infusion was nearly empty.
The ventilator had a rhythm I came to resent because it sounded too much like breathing without being his.
I watched the numbers until they blurred.
Caleb and Owen went home eventually. Leah called from an airport. Marlowe had been taken to Caleb’s house. The yard was secure. No one needed anything from me.
I talked to Noah through the night.
I told him about the Halvorsen trawler and the corroded junction box. I told him the insurance adjuster had rescheduled. I told him Marlowe had probably stolen Caleb’s dinner by now.
I did not tell him I was afraid.
By the second afternoon, the doctors reduced his sedation.
He did not wake.
They said this could be normal.
By the third morning, he moved his fingers.
I was holding his hand when it happened.
The motion was so slight I thought I had imagined it.
“Noah?”
His fingers shifted again.
I stood, knocking the blanket to the floor.
“Tessa.”
She came quickly, checked his monitors, and called for the physician.
Noah’s eyelids trembled.
“Come on,” I whispered. “You’re all right. Take your time.”
One eye opened a fraction.
It was unfocused and dark with exhaustion.
My breath broke into a laugh that became a sob.
“There you are.”
His eye closed again.
The doctors told me not to read too much into it.
I read everything into it.