Chapter Twenty-Six
The private room was very white and very quiet, and the machine breathing for Colin was the only thing breaking the silence.
Lysander sat in a chair by the window. His hands were in his lap, his fingers laced together so tightly that his knuckles had gone bloodless. He watched Diwa hold the baby, his little sister, because there was nothing else in the room he could bear to look at.
Tala was now five hours old. The nappy the nurses had put on her was so comically oversized that it had coaxed a smile out of Lysander when he’d first seen her in it.
She lay on Diwa’s bare chest with her legs folded beneath her like a frog’s, her miniature fingers splayed against his collarbone, and she was so small that Diwa’s hand covered her entire back.
The consultant had stood in the doorway twenty minutes ago and explained that Colin’s liver function was crashing and his platelet count was in free fall. They would keep him sedated and ventilated while they tried to stabilise him.
Colin lay in the bed with a tube down his throat and a cannula in the back of each hand.
His face was slack, his jaw propped open by the ventilator’s hardware, and his skin had taken on a waxy pallor.
The monitors above him traced green lines across their screens in repeating patterns that meant nothing to Lysander, but at least kept moving.
From the adjoining sitting room, Lysander heard Stephen crying.
Ryland’s voice ran beneath it in a low, steady murmur.
Diwa hadn’t spoken since the consultant left. He sat in the chair beside Colin’s bed with his shirt unbuttoned, Tala curled on his bare chest, and his free hand resting on the mattress close enough to Colin’s arm that his fingers grazed the tape holding the cannula in place.
The baby stirred. One of her legs kicked out from its folded position, and her mouth opened in a silent yawn that showed pink gums and nothing else. Diwa’s hand moved from her back to her fist, and his index finger stroked across her knuckles.
He started singing. Diwa’s voice was untrained and flat on the high notes, cracking where the tune climbed, and he didn’t care. His mouth moved against the top of Tala’s head, the words breathed into the dark wisps of her hair, and his finger kept its slow stroke while the song went on.
His eyes never left Colin. He sang to his daughter and watched the man who’d given her to him breathe through a machine. Lysander pressed his fist to his mouth and didn’t make a sound.
“He’ll be fine,” Diwa said calmly. “He needs to be fine for you and your big brothers. And me.”
Lysander stood. His chair scraped against the lino. He crossed to Diwa’s side, leaned down, and pressed his lips to the top of Diwa’s hair. He’d never done it before. It wasn’t something he’d planned to do, and he wouldn’t have thought to make this gesture even just a day ago.
Then Lysander bent lower and kissed Tala’s head. Her wispy black hair was soft against his lips. She smelled like a Huxley, was his immediate thought, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to explain what that entailed exactly, if he were pressed to.
“I’m going to grab us some food and coffee,” Lysander declared. “Any preferences?”
Diwa shook his head. His fingers were still tracing Tala’s fingers, his gaze fixed on Colin’s chest as it rose and fell in the ventilator’s mechanical rhythm.
Lysander left the room.
He didn’t head for the canteen right away. Instead, he walked past the lifts and found the toilets at the far end of the ward. He pushed through the nearest cubicle’s door, locked it behind him, and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet.
Lysander pulled his mobile from his pocket and dialled Hamish without checking the time in Melbourne. He knew that Hamish would answer, no matter what, and that was the only fact of his life that his brain had room for right now.
The line connected on the third ring.
“Sander?”
“Tala’s here.” His voice came out bright and clear, a performance so convincing that it almost fooled him. “She’s gorgeous, Hamish. Tiny. She looks like a frog in a nappy.”
“Amazing, big bro!”
“But…daddy’s not in a good way.”
His throat closed on the last word, and Lysander pressed the heel of his hand into his eye socket as his face crumpled.
He let out an ugly, gasping sob that bounced off the cubicle tiles, allowing himself to cry freely, now that he was out of Diwa and Ryland’s earshot.
Hamish stayed on the line throughout it all, breathing steadily into Lysander’s ear, a constant low presence beneath the mess of his grief.
“Tell me what’s happening,” Hamish said, when the worst of it had passed and Lysander’s breathing had settled.
Lysander rested his forehead against the cool tiles of the cubicle wall.
“They delivered Tala by emergency section. She’s fine, Diwa’s got her on his chest, doing skin on skin time.
” He wiped his nose on the back of his wrist. “Daddy’s sedated.
He’s on a ventilator. His liver’s failing and his blood isn’t clotting properly.
They’re trying to stabilise him, and I don’t — I can’t —”
“Okay.” Hamish was using the same tone of voice he’d use to talk someone through a difficult interview. “Sander, say the word and I’ll be on the plane tonight with Cassian. We can be with you in a few hours. Or would that just be a distraction for your family right now?”
That had always been the plan, discussed over FaceTime with Colin while his father ate ginger biscuits in bed and listed the things he wanted to show Cassian when they arrived, chief among them, The Serpentine, because Colin was convinced that Cassian would immediately try to commune with the swans.
“I need you, Hamish.” The admission should have frightened him.
It didn’t. He’d spent his entire adult life not needing anyone.
He hadn’t said that to an alpha since Dane, who’d taught him that needing someone led to them gaining leverage over you.
That the moment you said I need you to an alpha, you’d handed over the means of your own destruction.
But Hamish wasn’t Dane. Hamish made Lysander feel like an equal, not because he pretended the alpha-omega dynamic didn’t exist, but because he’d never used it as currency.
Lysander could say I need you to this man and know that it wouldn’t become the invisible leash that Dane had kept him on for years.
“Then I’m coming,” Hamish said, as though Lysander had just asked him to pick up milk from Woolies.
“Let’s hold off for a week.” Lysander sniffed hard and dragged his sleeve across his face. “The doctors say the next forty-eight hours are critical, and right now the house is wall-to-wall Huxleys with Diwa barely holding it together.”
“Okay. Whatever your family needs, Sander. I’m right here. Just call any time you need to.”
Lysander nodded as he picked at a thread on his jeans, then realised that the alpha wouldn’t be able to see him. “I will. Tell Cassian that my dad is going to be fine. I know he’ll worry.”
“I’ll tell him. He’ll want to bring something for Colin.”
“Please make sure he doesn’t pack his suitcase full of healing crystals.”
Hamish’s laugh was quiet, warm, and exactly what Lysander needed to hear. “No crystals. I’ll check his luggage before we leave.”
Lysander closed his eyes. “Hamish?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for picking up.”
“Sander.” Hamish’s voice dropped. “I will always pick up for you, even though it’s been a while since you sent me a nudie pic.”
By the time Lysander said goodbye and hung up, he was smiling.
The mirror above the sink showed him a pale, blotchy face, the skin beneath his eyes bruised with exhaustion.
He ran the tap cold, splashed water on his cheeks, and watched it drip off his chin.
Then he pocketed his mobile, reminded himself that Diwa needed coffee and Tala needed her big brother, and went to find the canteen.