Chapter 36 #3
Her hand rested lightly over the blanket covering the child’s arm. Warm. Too warm. Always too warm. The ventilator breathed for her. Whoosh… click… whoosh…
Each cycle pulled Eira’s attention back to the screen. Numbers. Waveforms. The mechanical proof Véronique was still here.
Six years old. She was too small for all of it.
Across the room, she registered movement without looking directly.
The Tevenne nurses had collapsed wherever space allowed.
Cots lined the recovery wall, blankets thrown over bodies that had simply stopped when they could no longer go.
Shoes still on. Hands still marked from hours of work.
They would get up again. But for now, they were still.
Eira envied that for half a second. Soon, it was gone. Her focus returned to the ventilator. To the rise and fall. To the thin margin between holding and losing.
Outside, the storm hit the building again, thunder rolling through the structure, wind forcing itself through every seam. Somewhere beyond that darkness was Ford.
The thought tried to push in. She shut it down. He was alive. There was no other version she’d allow. The door opened, and Eira looked up.
Marino stepped in first, rain still clinging to his jacket. Behind him came Davis, then Garcia, and finally Adrian Rourke. They carried the storm in with them. Wet. Tired. Still moving.
Eira’s eyes went straight to Rourke.
He read the question before she asked it. “We got Hunt down for a few hours.”
Relief moved through her, small but real. “He fight it?”
Rourke gave a faint nod. “Of course he did.”
Eira looked back at Véronique. Good. At least one of us stopped.
Rourke stepped closer, his gaze flicking briefly to the ventilator, the numbers, then to the girl. “Any change?”
Eira shook her head. “No.”
The word stayed between them. The ventilator continued its steady rhythm. Whoosh… click… whoosh… And Eira sat there, hand still resting on the blanket, holding on to the only thing she could control.
Davis moved toward the neonatal units and checked the twins’ monitors. “They’re holding.”
“Better than expected,” Eira replied. “You saved them.”
Garcia shook his head. “We got them out; Ford delivered them.”
Rourke leaned against the wall near the door, arms folded, his eyes lingering briefly on the ventilator. Whoosh… click… Finally, he looked at her. “You know why he stayed.” It wasn’t a question.
The storm rattled the windows again, a deep gust pushing rain against the glass hard enough to make the frames tremble. Eira’s eyes drifted toward Véronique, then to the twins sleeping beneath the warming lamps. She looked back at Rourke. “Yes, I do.”
Marino studied her face. “Why?”
Eira leaned back slightly in the chair. “Because there was still a patient.”
Rourke shook his head faintly. “That’s part of it.”
Eira insisted, “That’s the only reason Ford would accept.”
Davis folded his arms. “But it wasn’t the only reason he gave.”
Eira’s brow furrowed.
Marino spoke carefully, “Back on the ridge… when the water was coming up through the buildings… I asked him the same thing. He didn’t have to stay. But that’s who he is.”
Rourke added, “And then he said something else.” He met her eyes. “That’s who you are. You hold the line.”
The words hung in the room. The ventilator breathed again. Whoosh… click…
Eira exhaled slowly. She looked toward the window where the storm pressed against the island. “That’s why he stayed.”
Marino tilted his head slightly. “Because you would have?”
Eira shook her head. “No.” She looked back at them. “Because he knew I would understand.”
“There’s something else,” Marino said.
Eira raised an eyebrow.
Marino glanced briefly at Garcia, Davis and Rourke before returning to her. “In a calm moment… back on Tevenne… Ford talked about you.” The words landed in the room like something fragile.
Eira’s hand tightened slightly on the blanket. “What did he say?”
Davis answered this time, “We were moving patients uphill. Water already halfway across the courtyard.” He rubbed the back of his neck, remembering. “The storm was blowing sideways.”
Rourke let out a breath. “And he’s yelling orders at everyone like the building isn’t about to float away.”
Marino nodded. “But then there was a pause.”
“First, he told us we did the best we could do.” He looked directly at Eira. “He said, ‘If anything happens to me…’”
Eira’s chest tightened.
“‘…tell Eira she did the best she could do and more. She shouldn’t be ashamed of anything.’”
Silence settled in the room except for the ventilator. Whoosh… click…
Rourke added, “He said you blamed yourself for the loss of a patient.”
Eira looked down.
Davis continued, “And he said you shouldn’t have.”
Marino folded his arms. “He said the only thing you ever did wrong…” he gave a faint smile, “…was loving a man like him. A man built to hold the line.”
Eira closed her eyes. Outside, the wind hammered the clinic again. Inside the room, the machines kept breathing. When she opened her eyes again, the strength was back. “Thank you.”
There was nothing left for her to do for him. No call she could make. No boat that could move. No way across open water. Ford Cox was on Tevenne. And she was here.
The distance felt wrong in a way she could not fix.
She pushed up, stepped into the corridor, and stopped. It was too still. Things were too quiet inside her own head.
“Eira?” Adrian Rourke stood a few feet away, watching her.
“I need to move.”
He nodded once. No questions. “I’ll go with you.”
THE ORPHANAGE
The upper floor of the orphanage had been turned into a split ward. Two sides: fever
and no fever. The divide was clean in theory but not in reality.
The first room they entered held the younger ones. Mattresses lined the floor. Coloring books and crayons were everywhere along with cars and blocks. Some children slept. Others lay awake, watching the door the second it opened.
Eira felt it immediately. Their eyes filled with hope, fear or recognition.
A small girl pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Doctor Eira?” Her voice was thin but steady.
Eira stepped forward before she could stop herself. “I’m here.”
The girl looked past her. “Where’s Ford?” Her brows scrunched looking at Adrian.