Chapter 14 Danae
Fourteen
Danae
The last patient on my list is a man who keeps apologizing for needing anything at all.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers when I adjust his oxygen tubing. “I know you’ve got a lot going on.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for being sick,” I tell him, gentle but firm, like I’m setting a blanket over both of us. “That’s literally why I’m here.”
His eyes shine in the low light. The monitors throw green and blue shadows across his cheeks. The hospital at night is its own kind of world—dimmed hallways, softened voices, the constant hush of air systems and distant alarms. Everything feels slowed down but never still.
I take his vitals, check his chart, straighten his blanket.
I do the things that make him feel cared for and the things that keep his body from slipping further away.
When I leave his room, I pull the door almost closed, leaving it cracked the way some people like—like a promise that if they call, someone will hear.
At the nurses’ station, the overhead fluorescents buzz like an insect trapped in glass. My shoulders ache. My feet ache. My brain aches. I’ve been running for twelve hours and it feels like the last four have been spent sprinting.
Medication seeking risk in one room. Confused elderly patient trying to climb out of bed in another.
A family crying quietly in the waiting area because no one wants to say the word hospice out loud.
Flu tests waiting on results, a potential UTI waiting on lab confirmation, and an accident in bed ten needing stitches to the head.
Two admissions stacked on top of each other, one for heart attack, another for potential stroke, patient is stable, but waiting on the scan results to confirm diagnosis.
A call light that won’t stop blinking because the person is coming down off something and the paranoia is consuming them as the high wears off.
The kind of shift that swallows time and spits you out at the end like you’re lucky to still be upright.
I chart until my eyes blur. I sip cold coffee that tastes like mud. I smile at coworkers with the kind of tired grin that says, We survived. Someone makes a joke about the moon being full. Someone else laughs too loudly. It’s how we keep from unraveling.
Around four in the morning, I finally get a moment to breathe.
I lean my hip against the counter and roll my neck, chasing away the tension.
My phone is in my locker, like always. I don’t like having it out on the floor.
Too easy to get distracted. Too easy to bring the outside in when I’m trying to hold the inside together.
But the outside has been pressing in on me for weeks anyway.
Miles.
Texts and calls that make my chest feel warm and unsafe in the best way. A man who lives like he belongs to the highway, who somehow found his way into the parts of me I keep guarded.
And Dr. Reeves.
The way his eyes linger too long. The way his voice shifts when he thinks no one’s listening. The way he tries to make me feel like I owe him politeness, like my “no” is a suggestion instead of a boundary.
I shake the thought off and go back to work. Because work doesn’t care about my feelings or distractions. Work cares about blood pressure and oxygen saturation and whether the bed alarm is turned on.
By the time the sun threatens the horizon, my body is moving on muscle memory alone. I give report. I sign off on paperwork. I answer one last call light because I can’t not. Then I finally clock out.
The locker room is cool and quiet. I change out of my scrubs, tug on my sweater, run a brush through my hair with a sigh. I look at my reflection and barely recognize the woman staring back—pale, tired, eyes shadowed.
I open my locker and grab my phone. The screen lights up.
One text from Miles. Morning, darlin’. Call me when you wake up. Missing you already.
My throat tightens, a tiny ache of wanting. I start to type back—Just got off. I’m tired. I miss you too—but my fingers pause. I’m too tired to talk. Too tired to explain. Too tired to be anything other than what I am right now: a woman held together by duty and caffeine.
I decide I’ll reply once I’m home. Once I’ve checked on Grandpa. Once I’ve washed the hospital off my skin. The time in the day where I always get a second wind being home.
I slip the phone into my purse and head for the parking lot.
Outside, the air is chilly enough to bite. The sky is that early-dawn gray that makes everything look unfinished. My car sits under a flickering light, alone in the far row like it’s hiding. The lot is mostly empty—night shift stragglers and early morning arrivals.
My keys feel heavy in my hand. I reach my car, unlock it, slide inside. The seat is cold through my jeans. I exhale and rest my forehead on the steering wheel for just a second. Just a second.
Then I sit up and start the engine. It turns over, catches, purrs to life. Relief loosens my shoulders.
I pull out, driving slow through the lot. My eyes sting with exhaustion. The radio stays off. I don’t want noise. I want quiet. I want my bed. I want my grandfather’s soft snores drifting from the living room where his bed is set up. I want the familiar creak of my porch steps.
I turn onto the main road, headlights cutting through the thin fog. The town is sleepy. Streetlights cast pale pools across asphalt. The world feels hushed, like it’s holding its breath.
I’m about thirteen miles from the hospital when my dashboard suddenly lights up like a warning flare. Every indicator blinks at once.
Battery.
Oil.
Check engine.
My heart jumps, a sharp little spike of irritation.
“No,” I mutter. “Not today.” The steering wheel stiff in my hands.
The engine sputters. My car shudders like it’s trying to shake itself apart.
I glance around, mind still slow from the shift.
There’s no one behind me. No one beside me.
Just empty road and trees and a billboard advertising a church revival.
The engine makes a clanking noise again. I grip the wheel tighter, force my brain into focus. I signal and guide the car toward the shoulder.
It gives me just enough time.
Barely enough.
The moment my tires hit the gravel edge, the engine dies like someone cut a cord.
The radio goes silent. The air stops blowing.
The dashboard goes dark except for a faint glow that fades like a dying ember.
I sit there with my hands still on the wheel, heart pounding too hard for something as simple as car trouble.
It’s the time of day. The place in my trip that is always desolate because it’s an empty two lane road of fields. The emptiness. The way the world feels too quiet.
I reach for my phone in my purse, planning to call Miles or a tow. I hadn’t figured out which call to make first then I need to update the caregiver to hold over and I will be home soon.
A tap.
Soft.
On my window. My head lifts automatically, irritation ready on my tongue. But the words die before they form.
Because there are two men standing beside my car. Not in hospital scrubs. Not in a uniform.
Dark hoodies. Ball caps pulled low. Faces half-hidden. And both of them are holding guns.
My breath stops.
The world narrows to the glint of metal and the shape of their hands. For a heartbeat, my mind refuses to accept what my eyes are seeing. It tries to make it something else. A mistake. A nightmare. A scene from a movie.
But then one of them lifts a piece of paper to the window.
A photo. My grandfather.
It’s from last year before he ended up bedridden. This was back when he could get around with assistance. He’s sitting in his recliner, the blue blanket over his knees, his eyes crinkled with a smile that makes my chest ache.
The picture is so normal. My stomach drops so hard I feel hollow.
The man with the photo taps again, more insistent, like I’m taking too long to understand. I can’t hear anything but my own heartbeat.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
My hands tremble. I force them to move. I lower the window an inch. Cold air rushes in, carrying the smell of damp earth and exhaust.
“Get out of the car,” the man says. His voice is flat. Not angry. Not loud. Worse.
Controlled.
I swallow. My throat feels tight, like it’s closing. “What—what do you want?” My voice comes out thin.
The second man leans closer, gun angled toward my chest like it belongs there. “You do what we say,” he tells me. “You won’t get hurt. And he gets to live.”
The first man tilts the photo slightly, making sure I see my grandfather’s face. A threat in a snapshot. My mind scrambles. Thoughts collide, splinter, scatter.
How do they have that?
How do they know him?
How do they know me?
My chest tightens until it hurts.
I try to breathe like I teach my anxious patients to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow. It doesn’t help. My fingers are numb on the window button.
“Now,” the first man says. “Get out.”
My body moves before my brain can argue.
I unbuckle my seatbelt with shaking hands. The click is loud in the silence. I push the door open and step out onto the gravel shoulder.
My legs feel unsteady, like I’m walking on water. My skin prickles.
I keep my hands where they can see them, palms open. I’m not thinking about bravery.
I’m thinking about Grandpa. About the way he coughs at night. About the way he squeezes my hand when he’s scared but doesn’t want to say so. About the way he looked at Miles, smiling like the world was finally giving me something good.
The men move fast. One circles behind me. I hear the crunch of gravel, close. The other keeps the gun on me, unwavering.
“Hands behind your back,” he orders.
My mouth opens but nothing comes out. I do it. I lace my fingers together, wrists trembling.
Plastic bites into my skin. Zip ties. They cinch them tight. Pain flares, sharp and immediate, like a hot line around my wrists.