Chapter 18
Pauline
The helicopter blades were still spinning when I unbuckled my seatbelt with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
Every second in the air stretched into something elastic, my grandmother’s necklace cutting off circulation to my fingers because I’d wrapped it too tight and couldn’t make myself loosen my grip.
The silver locket pressed into my palm—warm from my skin, containing a photo from when my family was whole, from before everything broke.
I’d worn it every day since I was eight years old.
Since the night a police officer knocked on our door and my grandmother had to explain that my parents weren’t coming home.
She’d given me this necklace the morning of their funeral. Told me they’d always be with me. That I’d never be alone.
I couldn’t lose her too.
Jack’s hand found my elbow as we stepped onto the hospital roof, steadying me when my legs didn’t quite remember how to work. I didn’t pull away. Couldn’t. He was the only thing keeping me vertical.
We moved through the hospital in a blur. Jack handled everything—spoke to people at desks, navigated hallways I couldn’t process, seemed to know which turns to take while I followed like something tethered and drowning.
The fluorescent lights felt like assault weapons.
The smell of antiseptic and industrial cleaning solution made my stomach turn over.
People rushed past us with clipboards and grim purpose, and I wanted to grab them by their scrubs and scream at them to slow down, be gentler, understand that somewhere in this building my entire world was ending.
But my voice wasn’t working. Nothing was working except the part of my brain that kept calculating how much time I had left.
A doctor appeared. Young. Tired.
He used words I recognized individually but couldn’t string together into meaning. Blood clot. Hemorrhagic. Critical but stable.
Those words made no sense together—critical meant dying, stable meant safe, and she couldn’t be both. She had to be one or the other and I needed him to tell me which one because I couldn’t breathe until I knew.
The doctor kept talking. Something about vitals and monitoring and the next few hours being crucial. I watched his mouth move and understood that he was trying to prepare me for something I would never be prepared for.
“Can I see her?” My voice came out wrong. Too high. Too thin.
“She’s being moved to ICU now. Someone will come get you when—”
I didn’t hear the rest. My knees buckled.
Jack caught me before I hit the floor. His arms locked around me and suddenly I was sobbing into his chest—it came from my bones. My sadness didn’t care about dignity or who was watching—only that I felt like I was breaking and couldn't stop it.
“I wasn’t here,” I gasped into his shirt. “She was alone and I wasn’t here and what if she—what if she thought—”
“She knows.” Jack’s voice was steady. Certain. “She knows you love her. She’s always known.”
“I should have stayed. Last night I should have called—”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have felt it. I should have—” My knees gave out again. Jack held me up, like he’d stand there holding me for however long it took.
I’d watched him do this when Claudette was sick. Watched him hold it together when his sister was dying, watched him function through the worst months of his life with that iron control he wore like armor. I’d thought he was cold then. Unreachable. Too controlled to feel anything.
I understood now. He’d been terrified. He’d just been terrified quietly, keeping it locked down so Claudette wouldn’t see, so his family wouldn’t fall apart, so someone could make decisions and handle logistics and keep the world spinning when everything else was chaos.
He was doing it again now. For me.
A nurse appeared with a wheelchair I didn’t remember asking for. Jack helped me into it with hands that were gentle but efficient, and I let him because my legs had stopped working and all I could do was sit there shaking while he dealt with everything I couldn’t.
Aunt Callista joined us. One look at me and she said, “You should go home.” Her voice wasn’t unkind. Just practical. “Get some rest. You can come back in the morning when—”
“No.”
“Pauline, sweetheart, you can’t—”
“I’m not leaving.” My voice trembled, but it was final. “I’m not leaving her alone.”
Aunt Callista looked at Jack like he was supposed to back her up, to be the voice of reason that convinced me to be sensible.
He didn’t.
“I’ll make sure she eats,” he said. “And rests. But she’s not leaving.”
Something in my chest unknotted. Just slightly. Just enough to breathe.
Aunt Callista studied him for a long moment, then nodded once and let it go.
They let me in to see her an hour later.
The ICU was all machines and monitors and too-bright lights that made everything look harsh and unreal.
My grandmother lay in the bed looking smaller than I’d ever seen her—diminished in a way that made panic climb my throat because she’d never been small, never been anything except this force that raised me and loved me and made me believe I could survive anything.
Her eyes were closed. Tubes and wires connected her to machines I didn’t understand. A monitor beeped steadily, and I focused on that sound because it meant her heart was still beating, she was still here, I hadn’t lost her yet.
I pulled a chair close to the bed. Took her hand. It felt fragile. Too light. Like she was already halfway gone.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when it happened, but I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t open her eyes. Just lay there breathing with the help of machines, and I sat there holding her hand and trying not to think about what happened if those machines stopped.
Jack appeared with water I didn’t want and a sandwich I couldn’t eat. He set them on the table beside me without comment, then settled into the chair against the wall like he was planning to stay.
“You don’t have to stay right here. We don’t know when she’ll wake—” I started.
“I’m staying, Pauline.” He met my eyes. “I’m not leaving you alone with this. Don’t argue. We’ll focus on your grandmother.”
I turned back to the bed. Squeezed my grandmother’s hand. “Okay.”
Dawn came eventually—grey light filtering through blinds that didn’t quite close. The hospital began its morning routine—shift changes, breakfast trays, doctors making rounds.
But it was the sound of monitors screaming that tore me awake from where I sat on the bedside chair.
Alarms. Loud, piercing, the kind that meant something terrible was happening. Nurses rushed in from everywhere, and someone was pushing me back, moving me away from the bed while they swarmed around my grandmother.
“What’s happening?” My voice came out strangled. “What’s—”
“We need you to wait outside.” A nurse—kind eyes, firm hands—guided me toward the door. “Just for a few minutes. Let us work.”
“No. I need to—”
“Pauline.” Jack’s hands on my shoulders. His voice in my ear. “Come on. Let them work.”
He pulled me into the hallway. The door closed between us and whatever was happening in that room, and I stood there with my back against the wall, watching through the window as strangers worked to save the woman who’d saved me first.
I couldn’t see details—just shapes, movement, the organized chaos of a medical emergency. My grandmother somewhere in the center of it, small and still while machines beeped and monitors flashed and people did things with hands that moved too fast to follow.
Jack stood beside me. Didn’t try to offer comfort because there wasn’t any comfort to offer.
Time stretched. Minutes felt like hours. I counted heartbeats because I couldn’t count anything else.
Then the alarms stopped.
The frantic movement slowed. Normalized. The nurses stepped back from the bed one by one, their body language shifting from crisis to something that looked almost like relief.
A doctor emerged. The same one from this morning. She looked tired but not devastated, which had to mean something good.
“She’s stable,” the doctor said.
That word again. Stable. I was starting to hate it.
“What happened?” My voice sounded foreign. Too scared.
“Another small stroke. We were able to intervene quickly, prevent further damage. But…” The doctor paused.
Seeming to choose her words carefully. “These recurring events indicate significant instability. We’ll be monitoring her closely, but you should prepare yourself for the possibility that she may not recover from this. ”
Prepare yourself.
As if there was any way to prepare for this. As if you could ready yourself for the moment the person who raised you stops existing.
I nodded like I understood. Like those words made sense. As if anything made sense.
The doctor left. Jack’s arm came around my shoulders, and I leaned into him because standing suddenly felt like too much effort.
“She’s still here,” he said quietly. “That’s what matters right now. She’s still here.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to focus on the fact that she’d survived this latest crisis, that the machines were still beeping steadily, that I hadn’t lost her yet.
But yet was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
They let me back in after another hour. My grandmother looked the same—small, fragile, still hooked up to machines that breathed for her and monitored her and kept her tethered to this world.
I took my place in the chair beside her bed. Took her hand. It felt even more delicate than before—like she was becoming translucent, fading.
“You scared me,” I told her. Keeping my voice light even though nothing about this was light. “That’s twice now. Let’s not go for three, okay?”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t move. Just lay there breathing with mechanical assistance, and I sat there holding her hand.
Jack brought me breakfast I didn’t eat. Insisted I drink water. He put a blanket around me when I started shivering even though the room wasn’t cold.
Night came again. Time was losing meaning—everything blurring together into this endless loop of waiting and watching and trying not to think about what came after.
I must have dozed off at some point because I woke to voices. Quiet. Coming from beside the bed.
Jack was sitting in my chair. He’d moved it closer to my grandmother, and he was holding her hand, talking to her in a low.
“—told me once that love was a verb,” he was saying.
“That you could say you loved someone all day long but it didn’t mean anything if you didn’t show up.
If you didn’t do the work.” He paused. “You showed up for Pauline her entire life. Never once made her feel like she was a burden or an obligation. You just loved her. Every single day.”
I stayed still. Didn’t want to interrupt whatever this was.
“I’m going to do the same thing,” Jack continued, his voice softening. “I’m going to show up for her. Every day. For the rest of my life if she’ll let me. Because you were right—she’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I was an idiot for letting her go the first time.”
My throat closed up. I could see my grandmother’s face from here—still slack from the stroke, eyes closed—but something about her expression looked peaceful. Content.
“So you don’t have to worry,” Jack said. “I’ve got her. I promise. I’ve got her.”
My grandmother’s eyes opened. Not fully. Just slightly. But enough. My heart lurched to my throat.
Her mouth tried to move. The stroke had stolen her words, but her working hand squeezed Jack’s, then reached—shaky, weak—toward me.
I was out of my chair before conscious thought, taking her hand, leaning close.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “We’re both here.”
My grandmother’s gaze moved between us. Back and forth. Her eyes were clear despite everything—still bright, still knowing, still her.
Her hands pulled—weak but insistent—bringing our hands together, Jack’s and mine, pressing them together with fingers that trembled but held on.
The blessing was wordless. She couldn’t speak, but she didn’t need to. Everything was in her eyes—love and approval and peace and goodbye all tangled together.
“Grandma—” My voice broke.
She squeezed our joined hands once more. Her eyes said what her mouth couldn’t: take care of each other.
I leaned down and kissed her forehead. Her skin was cool. Papery. Fragile in a way that made my chest ache.
“I love you,” I whispered against her skin. “I love you so much.”
Her eyes fluttered closed. A small smile touched her mouth—content, peaceful, like she’d been waiting to see this exact moment before she could rest.