Chapter Twenty-One
Julien
Three weeks.
It had been three weeks since I’d surrendered to the universe, or at least, since I’d stopped actively fighting it. Baby steps. Very small, very controlled baby steps that wouldn’t give Hayden any more ammunition to have me committed to the psychiatric ward.
I was still me. Still precise. Still punctual... mostly. Still organized.
I just... smiled more now.
Wore sneakers occasionally.
Texted my wife during meetings.
Let her rearrange her crystals, which were now somehow our crystals because they lived in our apartment and I’d stopped trying to hide them when colleagues visited.
Small concessions to chaos.
Manageable chaos.
The kind of chaos that made me happy instead of homicidal.
But something felt... off.
I couldn’t explain it—which was infuriating because I was a neurosurgeon and I explained things for a living. I dealt in observable phenomena, measurable outcomes, quantifiable data.
Not feelings.
Not vague senses of unease that had no logical basis.
And yet... for the past two days, I felt it. A tension in the air. A sense that reality was bracing itself for something. Like the moment before a storm breaks, when the pressure drops and the air goes still and every animal instinct you have screams, “Take cover.”
It made absolutely no sense.
But then again, I’d married a woman who believed the universe had a plan, so perhaps my definition of “sense” had been permanently compromised.
I pushed the thought aside as I stripped off my surgical gown and gloves.
The craniotomy had gone perfectly. Textbook, even. A meningioma resection that had taken four hours but resulted in complete tumor removal with no complications. The patient would wake up with a headache and some temporary weakness, but she would wake up. She would recover. She would live.
That was what mattered.
That was what I was good at.
“Beautiful work, Dr. Darcy,” Sarah, the charge nurse, said as she updated the surgical board. “Dr. Morrison is going to be thrilled with those margins.”
“The margins were adequate,” I said, because I didn’t do false modesty, but I also didn’t gloat. “The tumor was well-encapsulated. Any competent surgeon could have—”
“Any competent surgeon would have taken six hours and left residual tissue,” Sarah interrupted. “You did it in four with clean margins. Take the compliment.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “You’re in a good mood lately. It’s... unsettling.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“But nice,” she added quickly. “Different, but nice.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment as well.”
“You should.” She finished her notes and looked up. “Your wife called earlier, by the way. Asked if you were still in surgery.”
My heart did something stupid and unscientific in my chest.
“What did you tell her?”
“That you were in the OR and would call her back when you were done.” Sarah’s smile widened. “She said to tell you that your aura looked ‘particularly vibrant’ this morning and that she’s proud of you.”
I felt my face heat.
“She can’t see my aura through the phone.”
“I told her that. She said the universe doesn’t need phones to communicate.”
“Of course she did.”
Sarah laughed. “She’s delightful. Completely insane, but delightful.”
“That’s... accurate.”
I pulled out my phone to text Athena, but before I could type anything, I saw Hayden and Gabriel walking toward me down the corridor.
Both smiling.
That should have been my first warning.
Hayden never smiled unless he was about to say something that would make me regret every life choice that had led to this moment. And Gabriel only smiled like that when he was trying to soften bad news.
But I was still riding the high of a successful surgery, still thinking about Athena’s message about my “vibrant aura,” still feeling that strange sense of unease that I couldn’t quite shake.
So I smiled back.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “Perfect timing. I just finished a meningioma resection. Clean margins, no complications, patient’s vitals are stable. Dr. Morrison is going to be very pleased with the—”
“Julien,” Hayden interrupted.
I stopped.
Hayden never interrupted. Hayden let me finish my sentences, no matter how long they took, because he found my precision “endearing”—his word—and “obsessive”—also his word.
“What?” I asked.
“We need to talk to you,” Gabriel said gently.
The unease I had been feeling all day suddenly crystallized into something sharp and cold in my chest.
“About what?”
“About Athena,” Hayden said.
My world tilted slightly.
“What about Athena?”
“She was brought into the ER about twenty minutes ago,” Gabriel said, his voice careful. Too careful. It was the voice he used with families when he was about to deliver bad news.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Nathan, Quinton, and Fitz are working on her now,” Hayden added. “We just got word from—”
“Working on her?” I repeated. “What do you mean, working on her?”
“Julien—”
“What happened?” My voice was too loud. Too sharp. Several nurses turned to look. “What happened to her?”
“We don’t have all the details yet,” Gabriel said. “But she was brought in by ambulance—”
“Ambulance?”
“—and they’re stabilizing her now. Nathan said—”
I didn’t hear the rest. I was already moving.
“Julien, wait!” Hayden called after me.
I didn’t wait. I didn’t stop. I didn’t think.
I just ran.
Down the corridor, past the nurses’ station, past the surgical wing, toward the elevators. My mind was racing, trying to process, trying to understand.
Athena is in the ER. My wife is in the ER. Nathan, Quinton, and Fitz are working on her.
Working on her.
That meant trauma. That meant something serious. That meant…
No.
No, no, no.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
We’d just… we’d just figured everything out. We just surrendered to each other. We just started being happy.
The universe couldn’t—“The universe is going to test you.”
Athena’s voice, from a week ago, when she had been unusually quiet. When she held me a little tighter. When she looked at me with something that might have been worry.
“The universe tests everyone, Julien. Especially when they’re happy.”
I’d dismissed it as more spiritual nonsense.
I’d been wrong.
The elevator was taking too long.
I turned and ran for the stairs instead, taking them two at a time, my heart pounding, my breath coming in sharp gasps that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the cold terror spreading through my chest.
She’s fine.
She has to be fine.
She’s Athena. She’s chaos incarnate. She’s indestructible.
But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true.
She was human. Fragile. Mortal.
Just like everyone else. Just like every patient I’d ever lost.
No!
I burst through the stairwell door on the ground floor and ran toward the ER, my surgical scrubs still on, my hands still smelling of antiseptic, my mind still trying to process what Hayden had said.
Twenty minutes ago.
She was brought in twenty minutes ago.
Why hadn’t anyone told me sooner?
Why didn’t I feel it?
I rounded the corner and saw the ER entrance ahead. Saw Nathan standing outside one of the trauma bays, his expression grim. Saw Quinton next to him, talking rapidly into a phone. Saw Fitz through the window, his hands moving with practiced efficiency over someone on the gurney.
Someone with dark hair.
Someone small.
Someone…
Athena.
I ran faster.