Chapter 5 Kieran
Kieran
“But our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we.” Edgar Allan Poe
It’s the sharp tang of antiseptic, the cold sterility of the air, the persistent beeping of monitors tracking the thin line between life and death that rings through the hospital walls.
The sound drills into my skull, each droning pulse a metronome of agony.
The all too familiar sounds are a memory of what I’ve already lost and now serve as a countdown of how long she’s been trapped in this place.
The fluorescent lights overhead hum faintly, buzzing against the hushed voices and distant footsteps. Every time I walk the halls of this hospital, it feels too bright, too clinical, too wrong.
She doesn’t belong here.
I move quickly, my heartbeat a violent, erratic drum in my ears. My breath comes in short, uneven bursts. I can’t get enough air into my lungs, not until I see her.
My shoes scuff against the pristine white floors as I turn the corner, nearly barreling straight into a doctor in a white coat. He takes a step back, startled, but I don’t stop. I don’t apologize.
“Professor McKnight…”
I barely hear him. My eyes lock onto the bed, where Claire, Gabe, and Vincent stand in a tight semicircle.
Claire’s hands are clasped over her mouth, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.
Gabe has an arm around her shoulders, his face pale and drawn.
Vincent is the only one who notices me first, his gaze meeting mine for half a second before flicking back to the bed.
My breath stalls.
The air in the room feels thick. My chest is filled with a sense of dread at what I might discover. Instead, when I look at her, I feel the slightest sliver of hope. A feeling I haven’t felt in days.
The tubes, those goddamn tubes that were shoved down her throat, are gone. The ones that have been keeping her alive, that left her looking like a fragile, broken thing instead of the fierce, stubborn woman I knew, were now replaced with the tiniest plastic cannula in her nose.
She is still lying in the bed before me, unconscious, her face is pale but peaceful. I can see the steady rise and fall of her chest beneath the hospital blanket, something I’ve been terrified I would never see again.
“She’s stable,” the doctor begins to explain, but stops when he hears soft sobs.
I look over to see that Claire is crying.
Stable. A fucking fragile word if I’ve ever heard one.
“She’s breathing on her own,” she chokes out, gripping Deirdre’s hand like she can keep her tethered to this world with sheer force of will.
I feel my legs lock, my breath coming in short, unsteady bursts. My hands curl into fists, nails biting into my palms. The tension that has been coiled inside me for seven days, twisting like a noose around my ribs, is suddenly unbearable.
The doctor continues, his voice cold and professional, but I can barely process what he’s saying.
“We weaned her off the sedation. She’s still unconscious, but this is a good sign.
We’ll be monitoring her progression closely, making sure her cranial pressure remains within normal limits.
The risk of a secondary brain bleed is still a concern, but she has shown great improvement in the last twenty-four hours. ”
I barely hear the rest of what he says. My pulse is roaring in my ears.
I take a slow, cautious step forward, barely aware of the others watching me, my entire world narrowing to the space between me and the bed. My fingers twitch at my sides. I want to touch her, to feel for myself that she is here, still with me.
My breath shudders, and I grip the edge of the hospital bed to keep myself upright. The world tilts, and a tidal wave of emotion washes over me so fast, so violently, I can’t contain it. My body begins to involuntarily shake.
“How long has she…” I start to ask Claire, but that’s when I hear it. Through the steady beeping of the monitors, through the rhythmic hiss of oxygen flowing through the nasal cannula at her nose, I hear the tiniest sound.
“Kieran…”
The whisper is hoarse, fragile. But it’s unmistakable.
A gasp rips from my throat. My head snaps up, my eyes locking onto hers.
Deirdre’s eyelids flutter. Her gaze is hazy and unfocused, but she is looking at me.
I stagger forward, knees nearly buckling.
She is here.
I stumble. My knees give out before I can stop them, and I barely catch myself as I sink to the floor beside her bed. My hands shake as they reach for hers, my fingers tangling with hers where the obnoxious IV tubing snakes beneath her delicate arm. She’s so warm.
She’s alive.
I press my lips to her knuckles, to the fragile bones beneath her skin, to the evidence of life pulsing just beneath the surface. A ragged sob breaks from my throat, painful and unbidden, ripping me open from the inside out.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be the strong one. The one who holds it together. But here I am, falling apart. Crumbling beneath the sheer force of relief, of gratitude, of all the fear I’ve swallowed whole for the past seven days.
Her fingers twitch in my grasp. A weak, barely-there motion. But then she does it again, as if she’s trying to comfort me.
“Kieran,” she repeats my name, her voice raspy, barely audible. But it’s enough.
I lift my head. Her eyelids are heavy, her gaze clouded with exhaustion, but she’s looking at me.
Seeing me.
Her fingers brush against my cheek, the touch is feather-light but devastating.
“Don’t cry,” she murmurs, like she’s trying to soothe me when she’s the one lying in a hospital bed, weak, frail, and barely holding on.
I let out a broken laugh, my breath hitching as I squeeze my eyes shut.
God, I love her.
Behind me, Claire sniffs quietly.
“We should step outside,” she whispers, her voice thick with emotion. I hear the shuffle of movement as she shoos Gabe and Vincent toward the door.
The doctor steps forward, clearing his throat. “She’s just woken up; the nurse needs to assess her vitals.”
I barely lift my head, my body still trembling. “Just…just give us a moment,” I rasp, looking up at him like a desperate man begging for air.
The doctor exhales, but he doesn’t argue. “Just a few minutes,” he says, and then steps back, giving us space.
“But don’t upset her. We need her vitals to remain within parameters.” His voice is stern, as if I’m being scolded, and he walks out the door.
I turn my gaze back to Deirdre, drinking in every detail of her face. The exhaustion, the slight furrow of her brow, the way her lips part like she has so much to say but not enough strength to say it.
I reach up, cradling her cheek in my palm. “You scared the hell out of me, Miss Ravencroft.”
She manages the faintest smile. “I have to keep you on your toes, Professor.”
I let out another unsteady breath and press my forehead against the back of her hand.
For the first time in seven days, I can breathe.
She’s awake. She’s awake.
The words cycle through my head, over and over, like I can’t quite believe them.
As if I’ll blink and this will all disappear.
Like we will return to the moment before this, and she will still be lying there, silent and unreachable, trapped in that damn limbo of unconsciousness.
But she’s here. She’s looking at me. Her fingers are weakly curled around mine, and her breathing is steady.
Her lips slightly part as if she’s trying to find the strength to speak again.
I tighten my grip, just enough so she can feel me. So she knows she’s not alone.
“Kieran,” she rasps again, her voice still raw from days of disuse. I hate the sound of it. It’s so fragile, so unlike the Deirdre I know, but I will never take for granted hearing my name on her lips again.
“I’m here,” I whisper, lifting her hand to my lips, pressing another kiss against her knuckles. “I’m right here.”
She takes a slow breath, and then her brows knit together slightly. Her voice is quiet, but calm. “W-what happened to me?”
The words stop me cold.
I should have expected the question. Of course, she’d ask.
But something inside me recoils, every instinct flaring at once.
She doesn’t need to relive that right now.
Not when she’s barely clinging to wakefulness.
Not when the doctor warned us not to upset her, when her vitals need to stay stable, when the risk of complications is still very real.
I hesitate, my mind racing for a way to shield the truth, to protect her from it.
But Deirdre is Deirdre. Even weak and battered, she knows me too well. She sees the hesitation, the way my jaw clenches. She notices the way my eyes flick away for the briefest second.
“Kieran,” she says again, more firmly this time. “I need you to tell me.”
I inhale sharply, my grip on her hand tightening. “Deir…” I say, in protest, but she cuts me off.
She shakes her head, barely more than a twitch, but enough. “I have to know. I need to remember.”
I exhale through my nose, my free hand running through my hair in frustration. “I don’t want to upset you. If your vitals spike…”
“Then we’ll stop,” she interrupts, her voice firm despite its weakness. “But I need you to understand. I need you to trust that I can handle it.”
Trust her. Like I’ve asked her to trust me.
I close my eyes briefly, forcing back the instinctual need to shield her from everything and to carry this for her.
When I open them again, I nod.
“Alright,” I murmur. “But we do this carefully. If you start getting overwhelmed, we stop. One of us calls the safeword, understood?”
She exhales, her lips twitching slightly, as if she might laugh if she weren’t so drained. “Our usual?”
A ghost of a smirk tugs at my mouth. “Nevermore.”
She nods.
I take a slow, measured breath. “What do you remember?”
She frowns, her gaze unfocusing slightly as she tries to pull the fragments together. She looks down at the hospital blanket, and I can see the wheels turning in her mind before she speaks.
“I was packing my bag for the night…” she whispers. “I was digging in Claire’s drawers when I heard the door creak. I thought it was you. When I turned around to throw them in my bag…someone grabbed me.”
I can’t stop the inhale that rattles in my chest, but I keep my face still, expressionless. “Did you see his face?” I question, despite knowing. I need to know what she saw, what she remembers.
Her forehead creases in frustration. “No. He was wearing a hoodie. It was covering his face. I just remember…his hands. Rough hands.” Her breathing hitches slightly, but she pushes forward.
“There was a blinding pain across my head, and I heard glass shattering. I remember feeling my skin against the carpet. It was so rough. It burned like fire. I remember hitting the wall.” Her voice begins to crack.
“I remember the pain. And then…nothing.”
My throat tightens painfully, my fingers flexing around hers. Nothing. Because after that, she was unconscious. Left to die alone in that stairwell.
Her eyes flick to mine, searching. “What did he do to me?”
I press my lips together, at war with myself, with the part of me that wants to protect her, then the part that wants to listen to her.
“Deirdre,” I say carefully, my voice low, careful. “You have several cracked and bruised ribs,” I start, pausing. “You suffered a brain injury. A subdural hematoma. You…weren’t breathing when I found you.” My chest constricts. “I had to resuscitate you.”
Her breath stutters, her fingers flexing against mine. She blinks repeatedly, absorbing the weight of my words.
“I almost died?” she whispers.
I don’t answer. Because we both know the truth.
Her gaze flickers with a brief spark of fear. “And the man who did this?”
A dark, seething rage coils in my chest.
Trevor.
I school my face into neutrality. “He’s still out there.”
A long, heavy silence stretches between us. Her grip on my hand is the only thing tethering me to the moment. Then, she swallows and nods, like she’s filing this information away. Like she understands, even in her weakened state, that there is unfinished business.
I tighten my grip around hers, grounding us both.
“I won’t let him get away with it,” I murmur, a promise more than anything.
She looks at me then, really looks at me, and something flickers behind her tired gaze. Something strong. Unwavering.
“I know,” she whispers. “Because I won’t either.”