CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The alarm on the monitor wakes me before the nurse even reaches the door, a change in rhythm my body registers before my conscious mind catches up, some old, trained instinct snapping me fully alert in the space of a single heartbeat.
My father's numbers are wrong. Not catastrophically, not yet, but wrong in the specific way that precedes catastrophic, and I'm on my feet and pressing the call button before I've finished processing what I'm seeing, years of ER training overriding the three seconds of pure animal panic that want to take over instead.
"Dad." His eyes are open, unfocused, sweat beading at his hairline despite the room's cool temperature. "Dad, stay with me, help's coming."
The next several minutes happen in the specific, adrenaline sharpened blur I know intimately from the other side of a hundred codes, except this time I'm not the calm professional running the room, I'm the daughter standing pressed against the wall while a team of people I don't know fights to stabilize a heart I've loved my entire life, and the two versions of myself, nurse and daughter, war against each other in a way that leaves me shaking by the time someone finally, gently, guides me out into the hallway.
I don't remember calling anyone. I must have, at some point, some functioning corner of my brain reaching for the one number it trusts most in a crisis, because Thane is there within twenty minutes, still in the same clothes from the day before, hair disheveled like he ran out the door the second his phone rang, and the sight of him coming down that hallway toward me undoes something in my chest that three years of careful management never fully accounted for.
"Niamh." He reaches me and doesn't hesitate, doesn't maintain the careful arm's length distance he's kept since the doorway two nights ago, just pulls me into him, solid and warm and entirely unguarded, and I let him, some final piece of my resistance finally giving out under the weight of the last twenty minutes.
"They're working on him." My voice comes out smaller than I've heard it in years, muffled against his chest. "I don't know anything yet. I don't know."
"Hey." His hand moves slow against my back, steady, grounding. "He's strong, Niamh. He survived the first one. He's going to survive this."
"You don't know that." It comes out sharper than I mean it to, grief already looking for somewhere to land.
"You're right, I don't." He doesn't flinch from the correction, doesn't try to smooth it over with false comfort. "But I know your father, and I know he's not done yet, not with everything he's still got left to say to you. That has to count for something."
We stand together in that hallway for what feels like an hour and is probably closer to twenty minutes, his arms around me the entire time, neither of us speaking, both of us watching the door to my father's room like it might offer some answer if we just stared hard enough.
When the cardiologist finally emerges, expression carefully neutral in the specific way doctors train themselves into, my whole body goes rigid, bracing.
"He's stable," the doctor says, and the two words land like something physical, my knees actually weakening beneath me for a half second before Thane's arm tightens around my waist, holding me upright without either of us acknowledging it out loud.
"It was a smaller event, likely stress related given everything his body's been through this week, but we're moving him to a monitored bed for the next forty eight hours as a precaution. He's asking for you."
I don't remember walking into the room, only that I'm suddenly there, my father conscious, pale, exhausted, but unmistakably alive, and I take his hand without saying anything at all, needing the physical proof of his pulse under my fingers more than I need words right now.
"Scared you," he says, voice thin but steady. "Sorry about that."
"Don't apologize for your heart trying to kill you, Dad. That's not exactly a controllable variable."
A weak laugh, quickly turning into a wince, and I ease my grip on his hand slightly, mindful of the IV line.
He studies me for a long moment, something urgent moving behind his exhausted eyes, like the last twenty minutes has stripped away whatever patience he was planning to exercise about the conversation he clearly still wants to have.
"Niamh." His voice drops lower, private, private enough that I glance toward the doorway, relieved to find Thane has stepped fully out into the hallway to give us that privacy, out of earshot, respecting the boundary without needing to be asked.
"I need to say something, and I don't want to wait for a better moment, because apparently better moments aren't guaranteed. "
"Dad, you should rest."
"I'll rest after." Firm, despite the exhaustion. "That night. Everhart. I need you to tell me where you actually were. Not the version you gave me two days ago. The real one."
My chest goes tight, the old, familiar instinct rising immediately to deflect, to protect, to keep the secret locked exactly where it's lived for three years.
But something about the last twenty minutes, about nearly losing him twice in one week, about the specific, terrifying clarity that comes from almost watching someone die, cracks the lock open despite every instinct telling me to keep it shut.
"I was with Thane," I say, quiet, the words finally, finally leaving me after three years of careful containment.
"We were together that night, under the fire road bridge, and I was forty minutes late because of it, and if I'd been where I was supposed to be, watching his blind side the way I always did, maybe he doesn't go down on that switchback, maybe he's still.
Dad, I've never told anyone that. Not even Thane knows I've said it out loud until right now. "
The room goes very quiet, my father's eyes on mine, something moving through his expression that I brace myself against, certain, in this moment, that I'm about to watch him understand exactly how much I've cost this family and never had the courage to admit.
He opens his mouth to answer, and for one suspended second I watch him gather himself, watch thirty years of restraint and love and something that might be forgiveness already starting to move across his face, and I brace for whatever he's about to say, more afraid of his understanding than I ever was of his anger.
A nurse pushes through the door before he can get a single word out, brisk and apologetic, explaining that they need to move him to the monitored bed now, that visiting hours for anyone but immediate family are about to end for the transfer, and the room fills instantly with motion, machines being unhooked and rehooked, my father's hand slipping from mine as they reposition his bed for the transfer.
"Dad." I lean in close, desperate, suddenly aware that whatever he was about to say might not survive the interruption. "Dad, what did you mean, you've known?"
"Later," he manages, already fading under the exhaustion of the last hour, the nurses working efficiently around him. "I promise you, Niamh. Later. Just. Not like this. Not with an audience and a monitor beeping like it wants to kill me all over again."
They wheel him out before I can push further, the specific efficient chaos of a hospital transfer sweeping him away from me before the sentence he started can finish, and I'm left standing in the now empty room, chest heaving, the confession I've held for three years finally spoken out loud into a room that didn't have time to answer it back.
Thane appears in the doorway a moment later, having watched the transfer team wheel my father past him down the hall, concern written plainly across his face at whatever he's reading in mine.
"Hey." He crosses the room without hesitation this time, no careful distance left between us at all. "What happened? You look like you've seen a ghost."
I open my mouth to tell him, some reckless, exhausted part of me ready to finally say the whole truth out loud to the one other person who's carried half of it silently for three years, and then I stop myself, the words catching, because I don't know yet what my father meant by I've known for over a year, don't know what shape that knowledge takes or how it got to him, and some cautious instinct tells me I need to understand that before I hand Thane a piece of the puzzle I don't fully have myself.
"Nothing," I manage, which is such an obvious lie that he doesn't even bother challenging it, just studies me for a long moment with an expression that says he's choosing, deliberately, not to push.
"Okay." He reaches out, hesitant, and rests a hand lightly against my shoulder, the first fully voluntary touch either of us has initiated since the garage bay crate three nights ago.
"You don't have to tell me right now. But you're shaking, Niamh, and I don't think it's just the cold in this hallway. "
I let him guide me to the small waiting area near the nurses' station, empty at this hour except for the two of us, vinyl chairs and a television playing muted late night programming to nobody, and I sit because my legs have finally stopped pretending they can hold me up through sheer will alone.
"He's going to be okay," Thane says again, settling into the chair beside mine, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch. "This time and every time after, until he isn't, which hopefully is a long way off yet."
"That's not exactly comforting phrasing."
"I'm an engine mechanic who runs a motorcycle club, Niamh, not a grief counselor." A ghost of a smile, tired but genuine, and something in my chest eases fractionally at the familiar, dry humor of it. "I'm doing my best with the tools I've got."
We sit together in the quiet for a long while after that, the television's muted light flickering across both of us, neither of us speaking, both of us simply present in a way that feels different from every carefully managed conversation we've had since I got back.
At some point, without either of us deciding to, his hand finds mine on the armrest between our chairs, fingers lacing through mine, and I let it happen, too exhausted and too raw to build the wall I'd normally have ready.
"Get some rest if you can," he says eventually, quiet. "I'll wake you the second there's any update."
I don't sleep, not really, just drift in and out of something adjacent to it, my head eventually finding his shoulder sometime after two in the morning, his hand still wrapped around mine, both of us keeping vigil together in a waiting room that's seen more of our history in the last hour than either of us has said out loud in three years.