Chapter 2 Isaiah #2
She nods, as if she understands men like me. As if she’s seen a hundred of us—hollow-eyed, blood-stained, desperate—haunting these halls like ghosts who haven’t figured out they’re already dead.
“Then I’ll bring water here.”
When she returns with a paper cup, I drink half just to make her stop looking at me like that.
Lukewarm water sliding down my raw throat like a mercy I don’t deserve.
“You waiting for someone?” she asks, settling into the chair beside me like she has all night.
“My brother. Xavier King.”
Recognition flickers across her face like a struck match, there and gone in an instant.
Then pity—the kind that tightens the chest because it always means the news isn’t good enough.
“What?” The word comes out sharp. Demanding. “Tell me.”
“The doctor will explain better. But he’s stable right now.”
Stable.
That cursed non-word.
That medical purgatory where hope and despair shake hands.
Stable just means not dead yet. Just means we’re waiting to see which way he falls.
Before I can demand more, the double doors at the end of the hall swing open with a sharp metallic bang.
“Isaiah?”
A doctor.
Older woman, gray streaks threading through dark hair pulled back in a severe bun.
Scrubs the color of surgical green, badge reading Dr. Patel, Trauma Unit.
Her face is carefully neutral—the kind of blank expression that could mean he’s going to be fine or I’m so sorry in equal measure.
My body goes cold. Numb.
“I need you to follow me,” she says.
I follow her like a condemned man being walked to his last rites.
Hallway after hallway, all of them identical—white walls, gray floors, that smell of iodine and electricity and grief that seems to seep from the paint itself.
My footsteps echo too loud.
My heartbeat echoes louder.
Every door we pass could be the one, every turn could lead to the place where I find out if I still have a brother or if I’m alone in the world for the first time in fifteen years.
Finally, she stops. Places her hand on a door handle. Turns to look at me.
“He’s in here. I need you to prepare yourself.”
She opens the door.
And Xavier is there.
Jesus Christ.
He’s barely recognizable.
The man lying in that bed—surrounded by machines, tangled in wires and tubes, chest rising and falling with mechanical precision—doesn’t look like Xavier King.
Doesn’t look like the man who built an empire from blood and cunning and sheer force of will.
Doesn’t look like the person who saved my life when I was too young to know it needed saving.
His skin is pale, drained of all the warmth that usually makes him look like the sun carved him from gold.
His lips are bloodless.
Bandages wrap his shoulder and side—thick, white, clinical—and beneath them, a faint red bloom is slowly spreading.
His chest rises. Falls. Rises. Falls.
Too shallow. Too uncertain.
I stop in the doorway.
Lungs refusing to work.
Legs refusing to move.
“He lost a significant amount of blood,” Dr. Patel says behind me, her voice gentle but clinical. “The bullet that entered his side nicked arterial tissue. We repaired what we could, but there was considerable hemorrhaging before he arrived. The shock to his system was extreme.”
My vision blurs. I blink, and something wet slides down my cheek.
“He’s going to wake up, right?” My voice splinters like dry wood. “Tell me he’s gonna wake up.”
She looks at the monitor. Then at Xavier. Then at me.
Her eyes soften.
“He can wake up any moment now.”
Can. Not will.
“The worst is over,” she adds, and something in my chest loosens—just a fraction. “He’s through surgery. His vitals have stabilized. The next several hours will tell us more, but he’s fighting. And from what I understand about your brother, he’s not the type to give up.”
She doesn’t know Xavier. Doesn’t know what he’s survived, what he’s built, what he’s done.
But she’s right about one thing—he’s not the type to give up.
Not on anything.
Not on anyone.
Not even on a half-feral kid with blood under his fingernails, ten years ago.
“Can I sit with him?”
“Of course.”
She slips out, shutting the door quietly behind her.
And then it’s just me and Xavier.
The room feels too small for the weight in my chest.
Too bright for the reality of him lying there, barely breathing.
The machines beep their steady rhythm—beep, beep, beep—counting his heartbeats like they’re numbered.
I drag the chair close.
So close my knees bump the metal frame of the bed.
So close I can see the individual threads in the hospital gown, count the wires trailing from his body like puppet strings, watch the slow rise and fall of his chest and try to convince myself it’s enough.
I lower myself into the chair like my bones might shatter.
My hand hovers over his. Hesitates. Trembles.
And then I let my fingers close gently around his palm, feeling the warmth of his skin, the proof of blood still moving through his veins.
He’s here. Alive. Present.
That alone nearly undoes me.
“Hey,” I whisper. My voice sounds like a stranger’s—rough, wrecked. “Hey, X.”
He doesn’t react. Doesn’t squeeze my hand. Doesn’t open his eyes and tell me to stop being dramatic.
A laugh breaks out of me—small, ugly, collapsing into something that sounds like a sob before I swallow it back down.
“You look like shit, man.”
Still nothing. Just the beep of monitors. The hiss of machines.
“You weren’t supposed to get hurt,” I choke out.
“That’s my job. Not yours. It’s always been my job—take the hit, take the bullet, take whatever’s coming so you don’t have to.
You always step in front of bullets meant for me.
Since we were kids. Since Marcus. And now I’m sitting here thinking maybe this time you shouldn’t have. ”
I squeeze his hand, gentle, careful of the wires.
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I admit, the confession cutting deep. “Valentina. She’s why I wasn’t with you. Why I didn’t answer my phone. Why you were alone when they came.”
My voice drops.
“She’s in my head, X. All the time. And I don’t know how to get her out.”
The ventilator hums. The monitors beep. Indifferent to my confession.
“Please don’t die thinking I chose someone else over you. Please don’t leave me with that—with knowing that the one time you needed me, I wasn’t there.”
I lean forward, resting my forehead against the back of his hand, breathing in the antiseptic smell of hospital sheets.
“If you wake up—when you wake up—I swear I’ll fix it. I’ll put her wherever you tell me. Ship her back, hand her over, whatever you want. I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”
My voice drops to barely a breath.
A promise. A prayer.
“Just don’t leave me, X. Please. Don’t let me be alone again.”