Chapter 13
Olivia
The house doesn’t sleep.
It pretends to.
Lights dim. Voices lower. Movement slows just enough to give the illusion of rest, but beneath it, everything is still active. Guards rotate. Doors open and close in controlled patterns. Footsteps echo softer, not fewer.
The sound is constant, an endless electronic rhythm that reminds me of a hospital in the worst possible way.
Only this room is colder, quieter, stripped of anything that might make it feel human.
There is no reassuring bustle beyond the door, no voices moving through the halls, no illusion that someone else might take over if things go wrong.
There is only the steady pulse of the monitor, the faint mechanical hiss of the equipment, and the man lying motionless in the bed beneath the harsh white light.
I stand beside the monitor, watching the numbers instead of watching him because numbers are easier to manage.
They are honest. They don't hide what they're thinking, they don't deflect questions, push back against authority, or test boundaries simply because they can.
Numbers tell me exactly what is happening, whether I want to hear it or not.
And right now, they are telling me something I don't like.
The change is small enough that someone less experienced might miss it, a subtle dip that barely registers before the machine corrects itself, but I have spent too many years learning the difference between a fluctuation and a warning to dismiss it.
I move immediately, reaching for the line and checking the flow before adjusting it with careful precision, recalibrating what I can without making the mistake of overcorrecting.
My fingers know what to do even while my mind races ahead, already calculating possibilities, already measuring how much instability he can tolerate and how much time we have before everything becomes more complicated than it needs to be.
“Come on,” I murmur beneath my breath, the words directed as much at the situation as they are at the man lying in front of me.
“Not now.” We don't have room for instability.
Not tonight. Not before surgery. Not before I have what I need from him.
His breathing changes almost imperceptibly, the rhythm catching before settling into something shallower, and that tiny shift confirms what the monitor has already warned me about.
He is slipping. Not dramatically, not critically, but enough that I can feel the margin narrowing between controlled and dangerous.
I step closer, placing one hand against his shoulder, using the contact to ground him even though I know he can't consciously feel it yet.
“Stay with me,” I tell him, keeping my voice low and steady because panic has no place in this room.
“You don't get to do this tonight.” His eyes remain closed, his face still and unreadable beneath the dim light, but there is the faintest response beneath my hand, some minute shift in his breathing that tells me he is still fighting his way back toward awareness.
Good. That's enough.
I move faster, reaching for what I need and making the necessary adjustments on instinct, trusting the muscle memory built from years of repetition rather than wasting precious seconds trying to reason through every movement.
This is where experience matters. This is where routine can mean the difference between a body stabilizing and a body shutting down.
I have done this before, though never with quite this much riding on the outcome, and I force myself to focus on the immediate problem instead of the questions waiting for me once he is strong enough to answer them.
“Wake up,” I say, more firmly this time, letting my voice cut through the quiet of the room.
There is no response, not enough of one anyway, and something cold twists through my stomach as I lean closer.
I apply just enough pressure to force a reaction, refusing to let him drift any farther from me. “Rico.”
His name sounds different when it leaves my mouth.
More intimate than I intended. More personal than it has any right to be.
For a second, I almost let myself notice that, almost let the weight of his name settle somewhere beneath my ribs where it doesn't belong.
Then I bury the feeling beneath the only thing that matters and force my attention back to him.
Focus. The monitor. His breathing. The slight movement beneath my hand.
And then I see it.
A flicker.
His brow tightens slightly, his breathing stuttering before stabilizing again.
“Good,” I say, adjusting again, recalculating, pushing where I need to push and pulling back where I don’t. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
His eyes open slowly this time, unfocused at first, then sharper as awareness returns.
“You always wake people up like that?” he murmurs, his voice rough, strained.
“Only when they’re trying to die on me,” I reply without hesitation.
That earns me the faintest shift in his expression.
Not quite amusement.
But close enough.
“Wasn’t trying,” he says.
“Your body disagrees.”
I step back slightly, watching the monitor again, tracking the recovery, making sure the adjustment is holding. It is, barely, but enough.
“You’re pushing too far,” he adds after a moment, his voice quieter now.
I look at him.
“No,” I say. “I’m keeping you where you need to be.”
“Feels like pushing.”
“That’s because it is,” I reply. “The difference is—I know where the line is.”
Silence settles between us again, but it’s not the same as before. There’s something sharper in it now. Something more aware.
“You stay up for all of them?” he asks after a moment.
“Patients?” I clarify.
“Yes.”
“Sometimes,” I say. “When it matters.”
“And this matters?”
I hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary.
“Yes.”
It’s simple.
Direct.
True.
He studies me, something thoughtful settling behind his expression.
“Why?” he asks.
That’s the wrong question.
Not because I don’t have an answer—
But because I don’t have one I’m willing to give.
“Because it’s my job,” I say instead.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I look back at the monitor, using the numbers as an anchor again.
“It’s enough of an answer.”
“For you,” he says.
“Yes.”
He doesn't push after that, and somehow that tells me more than an argument ever could.
He knows when to challenge me and, more importantly, he knows when not to.
Good. That makes this easier. I turn away from him and cross to the small table beside the equipment, going through the supplies again even though I already know exactly where everything is.
I check each item out of habit, making sure nothing has been moved, nothing is missing, nothing will leave me reaching for something I need once the next phase begins.
Surgery is coming. Soon. Every decision I make now is leading toward it, every precaution designed to get him there alive and stable enough to survive what comes next.
There is no room for complacency, not here, not with him, and certainly not with the people who have brought him into a place I still don't trust.
“You don't trust this place,” he says suddenly.
I don't turn around. My fingers remain occupied with the supplies as I consider the question, because the truth is too complicated to offer him without giving away more than I intend. “I don't trust anything that isn't controlled,” I answer eventually.
“This is controlled.”
That makes me stop. I glance over my shoulder at him before turning fully to face the bed. “No,” I say quietly. “This is managed. There's a difference.”
His brow shifts, the smallest indication that I've caught his attention. “Explain.”
I walk back toward him, stopping beside the bed as I fold my arms loosely across my chest. “In a controlled environment, every variable is accounted for before it becomes a problem.
You anticipate what can go wrong, you remove the threat before it has a chance to become dangerous, and you don't wait for circumstances to force your hand.” My gaze moves briefly around the room before settling on him again.
“Here, you're reacting to problems as they happen.
You're dealing with whatever walks through the door, whatever someone decides to change, whatever information gets withheld until it becomes impossible to ignore.”
“That’s still control.”
“No,” I tell him, my voice quieter now. “That's survival.”
The silence that follows feels heavier than the one before it.
He studies me from the bed, his eyes lingering on my face as though he's trying to decide whether there is something beneath my answer that I'm refusing to say.
Perhaps there is. I have learned a long time ago that control isn't something you're given.
It's something you build, piece by piece, because the moment you stop paying attention, someone else will take it from you.
Survival is what happens when control fails.
“You're good at it,” he says.
I hold his gaze. “Surviving?”
“Both.”
For a moment, I don't know what to do with that.
The acknowledgment lands somewhere deeper than it should, brushing against a part of me I've kept deliberately untouched.
I could dismiss it. I could tell him he's wrong.
Instead, I simply turn back toward the monitor and check his vitals again, watching each number settle where I need it to be.
There is nothing useful in accepting praise, and there is certainly nothing useful in wondering why his opinion matters enough for me to notice it.
I'm not here for validation. I'm here to keep him alive.
For now, everything is holding.
I know better than to mistake that for certainty.
“You should rest,” I tell him after another moment, keeping my attention on the monitor.
“So should you.”
“I will.”
The lie leaves my mouth easily enough, but something in his expression tells me he doesn't believe it.
He watches me for another few seconds, saying nothing, and I have the strange impression that he can see through me more easily than I would like.
He doesn't argue, though. Maybe he understands that pushing now won't change my mind, or maybe he's simply too exhausted to try.
Either way, his eyes eventually close again, and I watch the tension gradually leave his face as his breathing evens out and his body settles into something closer to sleep.
I remain exactly where I am.
Watching him. Watching the monitor. Waiting for the slightest change.
Because I don't trust this place. Not fully.
Not yet. There are too many variables, too many unanswered questions, too many things happening beyond the walls of this room that I cannot see or control.
And because if something shifts again, if his breathing changes or that steady rhythm on the monitor falters, I need to be here when it happens.
The house might not sleep tonight, but neither will I.
Not when it matters.