28. Gabriel
Gabriel
I wake to the sound of people arguing in whispers.
“You cannot intimidate the nurses.”
“I’m not intimidating anyone.”
“You asked one of them whether she understood the consequences of letting him wake up alone.”
“That was a reasonable question.”
“It was a threat, Dad.”
“It was not.”
“It sounded like a threat.”
“Only because you spend too much time with criminals.”
Daniel sighs. The sound is familiar enough that I know where I am before I open my eyes.
Hospital. The air smells wrong. Too clean. Too dry. Machines hum somewhere close, and something pulls at the skin on my chest when I breathe.
My chest.
Memory returns all at once. The field. Evie running. Falcon. White light tearing through me. My heart stopping.
I open my eyes. The room is dim except for the monitor beside the bed and a narrow strip of afternoon sun cutting through the blinds.
Daniel stands near the door with his arms folded. My father sits in the chair beside the bed. He’s leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees, staring at the floor.
Neither of them notices I’m awake.
“Where is she?” My voice comes out rough.
Both men move at once.
Daniel reaches the bed first. Dad is only half a step behind him.
“Easy,” Daniel says. “Don’t try to sit up.”
“Evie.”
“She’s here.”
The answer loosens something inside me. “Where?”
“Getting checked downstairs,” Daniel says. “The doctors wanted to examine her and the baby after everything that happened.”
My pulse jumps. The monitor immediately tattles.
Dad’s gaze snaps to it.
“They’re all right,” Daniel says quickly. “Both of them. She fought the examination until Ethan threatened to carry her down there himself.”
“That sounds like her.” The words scrape my throat.
Daniel pours water into a plastic cup and holds the straw toward me. I take two careful swallows. Every part of me hurts. My ribs. My sternum. My shoulders. And a deep ache beneath all of it, as though somebody reached into my chest and wrung my heart out by hand.
I look down. Hospital gown. Wires. Bruises are already spreading beneath the adhesive pads.
Then I see my father’s hands. His knuckles are scraped, and one palm is bandaged.
I remember the pressure. A voice calling me.
Come on, son. Come back to me.
My eyes rise to his face. He looks older than he did yesterday. Stripped raw.
“Did you—” My throat closes.
Dad looks away first. “Ethan started compressions.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Daniel takes the cup from me. “I’m going to find the doctor.”
Coward.
He leaves before either of us can stop him. The door closes quietly.
Dad and I are alone. For most of my life, that would have been the worst possible arrangement. Now I don’t know what it is.
He sits back down, curling his hand around the edge of the chair. “You arrested in the field. Your heart went into ventricular fibrillation after the taser hit.”
The words are clinical. Safe. He’s always been good with facts when feelings are too dangerous.
“Ethan started CPR. I took over when I got there.”
“You brought me back.”
“The defibrillator brought you back.”
“Dad.”
His mouth tightens. “I kept your blood moving until they could shock you.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“You called me son.”
Silence fills the room. The monitor marks every second of it.
His eyes close briefly.
“I heard you.”
He swallows. Looks toward the blinds. Anywhere but at me.
“You called me Gabriel too.”
His jaw shifts. “I know your name.”
“You’ve spent thirty years acting like saying it costs you something.”
He goes completely still.
My chest hurts from speaking, but I can’t stop now. Not after dying. Not after hearing the one thing I spent my whole life pretending I no longer needed.
“Was it because you thought I was dead?”
His face folds. “I thought you were dying, and I knew the last thing I might ever have given you was silence.”
My eyes burn, but I don’t look away. I’m done looking away.
The monitor keeps its steady rhythm.
“I didn’t know how to look at you,” Dad says, his hands clasped between his knees now. “You looked so much like her.”
“Mom.”
He flinches at the word, then nods. “At first. The eyes. The hair. Then you got older, and you started looking like me.”
“I’m sorry that was so difficult for you.” The bitterness comes out before I can stop it.
He accepts it. Doesn’t argue. “That wasn’t the difficult part.”
“What was?”
“You lived.” He says it like a confession.
I go still.
“I was grateful,” he continues. “God help me, I was grateful. Your mother was dead, and you were alive, and every time I felt relief that you had survived, it felt like a betrayal of her.”
The room blurs at the edges. “So you punished me for it.”
“Yes.” No excuse. No softening.
The honesty hurts worse than denial would have.
He looks down at his hands. “I told myself I was protecting you from me. That Maggie was better for you. Your brothers were better. That distance was kinder than resentment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I know.”
“You made me think I killed her.”
His head jerks up. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The monitor speeds again.
Dad half rises.
I lift one hand. “Don’t.”
He sinks back into the chair.
“You couldn’t look at me,” I say. “Every birthday. Every surgery. Every time somebody mentioned her, you left the room. What else was I supposed to think?”
His face twists. “I thought Maggie told you.”
“She told me it wasn’t my fault.”
“Then why—”
“Because she wasn’t my father.”
The words crack between us.
Dad bows his head.
For a long moment, the only sound is the machine beside me.
Then he says, “You’re right.”
I wait for the rest.
His eyes lift to mine. “You were a child. And I left you to carry something that belonged to me.”
“I hated myself for surviving.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
“I do now.”
I laugh once, but there is no humor in it. “It took me dying?”
“Yes.”
His bluntness steals my breath.
Dad leans forward. “It took seeing you on the ground and knowing I had wasted every chance I’d been given. It took hearing Evie beg you to stay. It took looking at your hand on her stomach and realizing you had built more of a family in a few months than I managed in thirty years.”
Silence stretches between us.
Then his face eases into a smile. “Evie threatened to remove one of the paramedics from the ambulance with her bare hands.”
“That sounds right.”
“She loves you.”
“I know.” The certainty of it still feels new. Beautifully new.
Dad studies me.
“I loved you too.”
Loved. Past tense. The old wound opens before I can stop it.
He sees.
“Love,” he corrects immediately. “I love you, Gabriel.”
I’ve imagined those words before. As a boy. After surgeries. At graduations. At Daniel’s wedding, watching Dad hold his oldest son by the back of the neck and tell him he was proud.
Eventually I stopped imagining them because wanting something impossible is a slow way to destroy yourself.
Now he says them in a hospital room while my heart beats beneath bruised skin and I don’t know what to do with them.
Dad’s eyes redden. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“Good.”
He lets out a broken breath that might be a laugh. “I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Also good.”
“I expect to spend however long I have left proving I mean it.”
That reaches somewhere the apology can’t.
I look at his bandaged hand. “You hurt yourself.”
“Your ribs did most of the damage.”
“You break any?”
“Possibly.”
“Mine or yours?”
This time, he does laugh. It sounds rusty. “Yours, most likely.”
The door opens, and everything else disappears as Evie steps into the room.
She’s changed into hospital scrubs. Her hair is pulled back in a knot that’s already coming loose, and exhaustion shadows her eyes. One hand rests over our daughter.
She sees me awake and stops. For one terrible second, she looks as though she might fall.
I reach for her. “Come here.”
She crosses the room so fast that Dad barely gets out of the chair in time. Their eyes meet, and something passes between them. Gratitude. Grief. A promise I was not awake to hear.
Dad moves toward the door. “I’ll give you some time.”
“Dad.” The word feels strange in my mouth. Not because I’ve never said it, but because this time he turns around immediately.
“I’m not ready to forgive everything.”
“I know.”
“But you can come back later.”
His shoulders drop a fraction. “I’d like that.”
He leaves.
Then she’s beside me. Her hands frame my face carefully. “You’re awake.”
“Looks that way.”
“You died.”
“I heard.”
Her mouth trembles. “You do not get to joke about this.”
“I’m not joking.”
“You died, Gabriel.” Her words break on my name.
I take her wrist and press my lips to the inside of it. Her pulse races beneath my mouth.
Then I feel it. The bandaging on her right hand.
“You’re hurt.”
Something crosses her face—not quite a wince, not quite a smile. “Bruised, not broken.”
“What happened?”
The smile wins. “I punched Alexander.”
I stare at her.
“In the face,” she adds, in case that wasn’t clear.
“You punched your father.”
“He had it coming.”
I can’t argue with that. I also can’t help the laugh that escapes me, even though it costs me.
She shakes her head. The smile lingers for a moment, then fades into something quieter. Softer. “You came back to me.”
“I’ll always come back, darlin’.”
A tear slides down her cheeks.
I wipe it away with my thumb. “Our girl?”
“Perfect.” The word comes out on a sob. “They monitored her for nearly an hour. Strong heartbeat. No distress. She kicked the nurse every time she pressed down with the Doppler.”
“That’s our girl.”
Evie takes my hand and guides it beneath her scrubs. The familiar curve fills my palm. For a second, nothing happens. Then a firm kick strikes beneath my fingers. My eyes close. There she is.
“I felt that,” I whisper.
Another smaller movement follows.
I open my eyes.
Evie is watching me. “Do you need anything?”
I slide my hand from her stomach to the back of her neck. “You.”
“You have me.”
“Our daughter.”
“You have her too.”
“The barn converted before winter.”
“Ambitious.”
“A crib I build myself.”
She smirks. “Provided Ethan supervises the power tools.”
“Traitor.”
Evie’s hazel eyes hold mine.
“How about a wedding without a goat?”
I go still.
Her smile wavers, but she doesn’t look away.
“Evie.”
“I’m serious.”
My heart gives one hard beat beneath the monitors.
She takes my hand and presses it between both of hers.
“I almost lost you today. And all I could think was that we still have so much left to do. The barn. The nursery. Raising our girl. Arguing about names and whose turn it is to get up with her and whether she’s allowed a pony before she can walk. ”
“She is.”
“She absolutely is not.”
“We’ll discuss it.”
A tear slips down her cheek, but she smiles through it. “I want all of it, Gabriel. The ordinary days. The frightening ones. Every year we can get.”
My throat closes.
She draws in a shaky breath. “So marry me.”
For a second, I can only stare at her.
“You’re proposing to me.”
“Yes.”
“While I’m wearing a hospital gown.”
“You were taking too long.”
A laugh breaks out of me and immediately turns into a wince.
Evie leans closer, worry flashing across her face. “Does it hurt?”
“Only when I laugh.”
She laces her fingers through mine. “I can’t promise nothing bad will ever happen. I can’t promise I won’t get scared or want space sometimes.”
“I don’t need perfect.”
“I know.” Her thumb moves over my knuckles. “You taught me that.”
She glances down at our joined hands before meeting my eyes again. “But I can promise I’ll keep choosing you. Every time.”
My eyes burn. “Darlin’.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s a hell yes.”
Her face crumples.
I pull her carefully against me. It hurts, but I don’t care.
She buries her face against my neck, laughing and crying at the same time.
“No goat,” she whispers.
“No goat.”
“And Ethan supervises the power tools.”
“Now you’re pushing it.”
Evie laughs. The sound is watery and exhausted and perfect.
I look at her.
The woman who ran toward me. Who ordered my heart to keep beating. Who carries our daughter beneath the hand resting on my chest.
I once believed my heart was the worst thing about me. The broken thing. The price everybody else paid.
But it brought me here.
To her.
To our girl.
To my father standing outside the door, waiting to be invited back in.
Maybe a heart does not have to be perfect to do its job. Maybe it only has to keep choosing.