CHAPTER FOUR
The nurse at the third floor station recognizes the name before I've finished saying it.
"Both, actually." It's the first time in three years I've said that word about myself in relation to this town, and it comes out easier than I expect it to, like some part of me has been waiting for permission to use it again.
My father looks smaller than I remember.
That's the first thing, the thing nobody warns you about, how illness shrinks a person down to something you have to relearn how to see.
Eldin Hargrove has always been a big presence, big voice, big hands, the kind of man a room organized itself around without anyone deciding to let it.
The man in this bed, tubes taped to the back of one hand, monitor cords disappearing under a thin hospital gown, looks like a smaller, more fragile draft of the father I've spent three years avoiding.
Gilda is in the chair beside the bed, and she's on her feet the second she sees me, crossing the small room in three quick steps to pull me into an embrace that smells exactly like it always has, cedar and coffee and something floral I've never been able to name.
"There she is." Her voice is thick, relief and worry tangled together. "I told him you'd come. I told him."
"Of course I came." I hold on a beat longer than either of us probably needs, grounding myself in the one unconditional thing this town still offers me.
My father's eyes are open. He's watching me over Gilda's shoulder with an expression I can't fully read yet, something caught between disbelief and a hope he doesn't seem to trust.
"Niamh." His voice is rougher than I remember, worn down by whatever the last twelve hours did to him, but it's still unmistakably his. "You didn't have to drive all night."
"You had a heart attack, Dad. I think I did."
Something that might be a laugh, cut short by a wince, moves through him. Gilda steps back, giving us room, retreating to the doorway with the tact of someone who's spent a lifetime knowing exactly when a conversation needs privacy.
I pull the chair closer to the bed and sit, and for a moment neither of us says anything at all.
Three years of silence doesn't undo itself just because the room got smaller and the stakes got higher.
I find myself falling into the clinical register instead, because it's the only language I trust myself in right now.
"What's the plan? Did they say when they're doing the catheterization, or has it already happened?"
"This morning. They put in two stents." He says it like he's reporting someone else's diagnosis, distant, almost bored, though the strain around his eyes tells a different story. "Doctor says I got lucky. Says if Gunnar hadn't found me when he did."
He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't have to.
"You're on blood thinners now, obviously. Beta blocker?"
"Something like that." A ghost of a smile. "You sound like the nurses."
"I am the nurse. Professionally." It comes out lighter than I mean it to, and something in his face eases slightly, like the joke has given him permission to relax by one small degree.
"Good," he says. "Good, I'm glad you're. That you found something good for yourself out there."
Out there. Like the city is a separate country, which I suppose, to him, it might as well be.
I look down at his hand, at the IV taped into skin that's gone thinner and more spotted than I remember, and something in my chest tightens with a grief that has nothing to do with the heart attack itself and everything to do with all the ordinary aging I wasn't here to witness happening in real time.
"I should have called," I say, quieter now, the clinical register finally cracking under the weight of what actually needs saying. "I should have called a long time before this."
He's quiet for a moment, working something over, and when he speaks his voice has lost the forced lightness from before.
"You left because you needed to. I understood that better than I ever told you.
" A pause, his eyes finding mine and holding there with an effort I can see costing him.
"Doesn't mean I didn't feel it. Every day.
Doesn't mean this chair beside your old one hasn't sat too quiet for three years. "
I don't know what to do with that, so I do what I always do when a feeling gets too large to hold cleanly.
I stand, straighten his blanket that doesn't need straightening, check the drip rate on his IV that's already correct, busy my hands with small, useful tasks that let me avoid meeting his eyes for a few more seconds.
"You don't have to fix anything in this room, Niamh." His voice is gentler than I expect. "Least of all me."
I go still, hand on the blanket, caught out.
He's always been able to see through me faster than anyone except possibly one other person in this town, and I'm not ready to think about that other person yet, not standing here, not with my father's heart still healing under a chest full of new hardware.
"Old habits," I say, which is as close to an admission as I can manage right now.
He studies me for a long moment, something calculating behind the exhaustion, and I recognize the expression, it's the one he used to wear before club meetings when he already knew what he was going to say and was simply deciding how to say it.
"There's a nurse who's been checking on me every hour since I got out of the cath lab," he says, apropos of nothing I can follow yet. "Younger one. Efficient. Reminds me of someone."
"Dad."
"I'm just saying, this town could use someone with your training. Permanently. Not saying you have to decide that tonight." He shifts against the pillows, wincing slightly at the movement. "Just saying the door's open, if you ever want to walk back through it further than a hospital room."
I don't answer that either. There's too much in it, the club, the chair, the man I still haven't let myself think about since I walked out of that garage bay an hour ago, and I'm not ready to hold all of it at once, not tonight, not with my father one bad hour away from a very different outcome than the one we got.
A nurse comes in to check his vitals, and I use the interruption gratefully, stepping back to let her work, watching her efficient, practiced movements with the specific professional appreciation of someone who recognizes good technique when she sees it.
My father watches me watch her, something soft in his expression that I catch and don't fully know how to hold.
"You're good at this," he says quietly, once the nurse has gone. "Really good. I always knew you would be."
"You used to say I'd make a better road captain than half the men we had."
"You would have." No hesitation. "Still would, probably, if that road existed for you to take it."
He shifts again, restless in the way sick people get when their bodies won't let them move as much as their minds want to, and for a moment his gaze drifts to the window, to the rain still streaking the dark glass, before coming back to me with something more deliberate in it.
"I heard you saw Ravinia tonight." Careful, testing, the same way he used to broach dangerous club business at the dinner table when I was younger. "And Thane."
"I did."
"And?"
"And nothing, Dad. It was one conversation in a doorway." Which is technically true and feels like a lie anyway, the way most technically true things do when they're covering for something bigger.
He doesn't push, which is its own kind of mercy, though I can see the questions still sitting behind his eyes, patient, unhurried, the questions of a man who has learned that some things can't be rushed no matter how little time he might have left to wait for the answers.
The comment lands somewhere I wasn't braced for, and I busy myself with his water pitcher instead of answering, pouring a glass he hasn't asked for, giving my hands something to do while the rest of me catches up to how much this one conversation has already cracked open in less than twenty minutes.
"Get some rest," I tell him finally, setting the glass on the tray table within his reach. "I'm not going anywhere tonight."
"Good." His eyes are already drifting closed, exhaustion finally winning out over whatever he still wants to say. "Chair's still there, Niamh. Whatever else happens. It's still there."
I don't know if he means the chair beside his hospital bed or the one at the oak table three miles from here, and I suspect, watching his breathing even out into sleep, that he means both, and that he's known exactly what he was saying the whole time.
I sit with him another twenty minutes in silence, listening to the monitor's steady rhythm, watching the numbers on the monitor hold steady in a range I've learned to trust over years of watching far worse ones, before his breathing settles fully into sleep and I finally let myself step out into the hallway.
Gilda is waiting there, arms crossed, watching me with the particular patient attention of someone who's spent decades reading rooms full of people who don't say what they mean.
And beyond her, unexpected and quiet against the wall near the vending machines, is Thane, still there, still waiting, like he never actually left the clubhouse parking lot at all, just followed me here in his own vehicle and stationed himself in this hallway the whole time I sat with my father.
"He's asleep," I tell Gilda, and my voice comes out rawer than I intend, worn thin by the last hour.
"Good." She studies my face for a moment, something knowing in her expression. "You did good in there. I could hear you being his daughter through the door, not just his nurse. That matters to him more than you probably know."
I don't trust myself to respond to that without my composure slipping further than I want it to in a hospital corridor, so I just nod, and Gilda, reading the moment correctly, squeezes my arm once and excuses herself to check in with the nurses' station, leaving me alone with Thane for the first time since the doorway of the clubhouse.
He pushes off the wall, closing half the distance between us before stopping himself again, that same visible restraint I noticed earlier, like he's drawn a line for himself and refuses to cross it uninvited.