Chapter 20
Twenty
Silas
The fluorescent lights are drilling into my skull, and the constant, rhythmic hiss of the PCA pump is the only thing keeping the white-hot agony in my shoulder at a manageable simmer.
It’s been five days since they dug the lead out of my scapula and pinned the bone back together, and my body feels like it’s been run through a wood chipper.
Ava is standing at the foot of the bed with her arms folded, her weight shifted onto her good leg. She’s watching me with a clinical detachment that doesn't mask the passion in her eyes.
I’m currently attempting to sign my discharge paperwork with my left hand. My hand is shaking, a side effect of the blood loss and the cocktails of antibiotics they’ve been pumping into me. The signature I produce looks less like my name and more like a seismic reading.
“This is foolish,” she says. Her voice is clipped, the sound of a doctor watching a patient commit malpractice on themselves.
“Maybe.” Every word feels like I’m pushing a stone uphill.
“Maybe isn’t a good rebuttal.”
“No, it isn’t.”
The nurse steps in, her expression a mix of pity and exasperation. She takes the clipboard the second the pen slips from my numb fingers and retreats. She’s seen enough of this debate to know I’m not staying, and Ava isn't winning.
"You need monitored rest, Silas," Ava continues, ticking points off on her fingers. "Your hematocrit is still low. You need consistent wound care to prevent sepsis. You need medication administered on a schedule, which requires someone qualified to—"
"Axel's qualified," I interject. The effort of speaking makes a fresh wave of nausea roll through me.
"Axel is a field medic."
"A very good one. You said so yourself."
Ava’s eyes narrow, shifting from professional concern to something much sharper. "That round hit the door before it hit you, Silas. It didn't go through clean. It hit your shoulder sideways and shredded everything in its path. You have bone shrapnel sitting right against the nerve roots."
"I'm aware," I rasp.
"Are you? Because you're acting like this is a flesh wound. You’re one bad jolt or one deep-tissue bleed away from permanent nerve damage."
When I don’t reply, she frowns at me. “You’re impossible.”
I ignore the screaming protest on my right side and reach for her with my good arm.
It’s a slow, agonizing reach that makes the room tilt, but I catch her hand, pulling her close until she’s braced against the side of the mattress.
I can feel the heat radiating off her, a sharp contrast to the cold sweat sticking to my borrowed shirt on my back.
"So come with me," I say, my voice dropping to a rough, pained whisper. “Make sure I follow your orders.”
She looks down at me, the tension in her shoulders finally fracturing. I can see her weighing the medical risk against the reality that I’m not letting her out of my sight. "I need to check on my mother first," she says softly.
I lean forward—a move that makes the surgical pins in my shoulder feel like they're being torched—to steal a kiss. I only manage to linger for a second before the pain forces me to pull back, my breath hitching in my throat.
“Deal," I rasp. "Reese is already standing by with the jet. We’ll go visit and be at Jericho by lunchtime.”
A small, weary smile finally touches her lips. "You already planned this. You knew I wouldn't let you leave without me."
"Dad suggested it," I say, sinking back into the pillows as my vision blurs at the edges. The adrenaline of the argument is fading, leaving nothing but the raw ache of the surgery. "I just had the sense to agree with him."
She exhales through her nose—a sigh of genuine, tired exasperation. She looks thoroughly annoyed with me, but she doesn't pull her hand away.
“I suppose I’ll have to get used to this.”
I chuckle. “That’s the plan,” I say.
Ava
I’ve navigated Greenfield too many times to count, but today, the rhythm is off. And the heavy, silent presence of Silas at my shoulder changes the very molecular density of the air.
His eyes might be scanning the "safe" facility with the same tactical intensity, but he’s gray-faced and desperately needs a dose of morphine.
When we find her, my mother is a soft portrait against the harsh winter light of the window. In many ways, she resembles a fine porcelain sculpture that’s been left out in the rain—the details are blurring, but the elegance remains.
"Ava! You've hurt yourself," she says.
The relief of being recognized is almost too much. For a few precious minutes, I’m her daughter again, not a face she can’t place.
"Sit down then," she commands, her voice carrying a ghost of the matriarch she used to be. "Don't stand there on one leg like a flamingo."
I sink into the chair, leaning the crutches against the wall. Silas remains a few feet back, a silent sentinel, until she turns her sharp, fading gaze on him.
"Who's this?"
I hold my breath. My mother’s appraisal was always a gauntlet. Even now, with her mind frayed at the edges, she has an uncanny ability to see through the "suit" to the man beneath.
Silas doesn't hesitate. He moves into her space with a gentleness that catches me off guard.
As he settles into the chair beside her, he shrinks his presence, bowing his head slightly so he isn't looming.
He manages the agonizing weight of his braced right arm so fluidly that she doesn't even see the wince.
"Silas Hightower," he says. His voice is a low, soothing rumble, devoid of the command-center steel I’m used to. "It's good to meet you."
"You're very handsome," she says, her filter long gone.
Silas doesn't flush or give a canned response. He just lets a small quirk of a smile touch his lips. "Thank you, ma'am."
"Are you a doctor?"
"No."
"What do you do?"
He looks at her with a level of respect that makes my throat tight. He’s treating her as if she’s the most important person in the building, not an elderly woman with a failing memory.
"I look after people," he says. “Sometimes I get hurt doing it.”
My mother’s gaze drifts to the frost on the glass, her thumb tracing the edge of her wool blanket. Then, with a sudden, lucid sharpness, she looks back at him.
"Are you looking after her?"
"Yes," Silas says.
There’s no hesitation. No "I'm trying" or "It's my job."
She studies him for a long, silent moment. I can almost see the gears turning, her internal compass measuring the weight of his word. Silas doesn't blink. He sits there, broken and pinned together, offering himself up for her judgment.
Finally, she gives a small, decisive nod. "Good," she says, her voice softening. "She’s an awkward child, so very shy, but she’s a good girl."
I look down at my lap, the sting in my eyes turning into a hot, silent tear I refuse to let fall.
"Yes," Silas says. His voice is barely a whisper, but it’s the steadiest thing in the room. "She is."
I look up, and for a second, Silas isn't looking at my mother. He’s looking at me across the small gap between the chairs. He isn't just humoring a sick woman.
My mother reaches out a trembling hand, and Silas catches it with his left, his large, scarred fingers enveloping hers with a tenderness that shatters the last of my composure completely.
“Is she coming soon? You tell her she needs to be home before the streetlights come on," she says, her voice pitched with that sharp, motherly fretfulness I haven’t heard in twenty years. "She didn't take her sweater, and the radio says it’s going to drop tonight. She’s so forgetful, that girl."
She’s looking right at my face, but her eyes are tracking a bird outside the window, searching for a version of me that—in her head—is still a girl who hasn't arrived yet.
The room is a graveyard of things she doesn't recognize: the framed photos of us at the lake, the sweater I bought her last Christmas, the hand lotion that smells like our garden. I’m just a polite stranger sitting in a plastic-covered chair, a nameless visitor she’s waiting for to leave so the real Ava can walk through the door.
A tear tracks a hot, stinging path down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away. I don't try to correct her or force her back to a "now" that no longer exists for her. I just let the salt burn, finally admitting how much it hurts to be in a room filled with my own childhood pictures.
He doesn't look at me with pity. He turns toward my mother and inclines his head in a sharp, respectful nod—a soldier reporting to a superior officer.
"I’ll make sure you and your daughter have everything you need, ma'am," he says.
The ma'am rings out in the sterile room like a bell. He isn't talking down to her. He’s looking her right in the eye and giving her the one thing the disease can't steal: her dignity.
"That’s a promise," he adds. His voice is a low, vibrating frequency that seems to steady the floor beneath my feet.
Mom gives a slow, dignified nod. She reaches out, her paper-thin fingers hovering near his sleeve, and she smiles. "He has kind eyes, Ava. You stay close to him."
"I know," I whisper, my eyes fixed on the man who just promised to protect us both. "I don’t plan on letting go."
Silas
The altitude doesn't help the throb in my shoulder. Every time the Pilatus hits a pocket of air, the reconstruction plate feels like it’s trying to vibrate out of the bone, a sickening, metallic grind that makes my vision spot.
I keep my breathing shallow, my jaw clamped tight enough to crack a tooth, and my face neutral.
Across the aisle, Ava is staring out the window. She took the seat without being asked, her head angled toward the glass as the Eastern Seaboard gave way to the flat, frozen geometry of the Midwest.
Exhaustion overtakes me, and when I see Ava’s seat recline and her eyes shut, I follow suit.