Chapter 3
REID
Noah opened his eye again six hours later.
This time, it remained open long enough for him to look toward the sound of my voice.
“Hey,” I said.
The word emerged rough after days of whispering.
He stared through me.
That did not matter. Not yet. His brain was injured. He was waking through pain, medication, and confusion. Recognition would come when the fog lifted.
“You’re in the hospital,” I told him. “You were hurt, but you’re safe.”
His brow tightened.
Tessa stood on the opposite side of the bed. “Noah, can you squeeze my hand?”
Nothing happened.
She repeated the instruction.
His fingers twitched.
“That’s good,” she said.
Good became a precious word. I collected every use of it.
Good pupil response.
Good oxygen levels.
Good movement.
Good tolerance after the ventilator was removed.
The breathing tube came out that evening. Noah coughed weakly and drifted back to sleep with an oxygen line beneath his nose.
I sat beside him and studied the rise of his chest.
His breathing was shallow, but it belonged to him.
I could have listened forever.
“You snore less in here,” I told him. “I’m not sure whether to be pleased or offended.”
His eyelids remained closed.
Tessa adjusted an infusion pump. “Keep talking.”
“He’ll wake up to get away from me.”
“He might find your voice familiar.”
I looked at her.
She smiled gently and returned to the nurses’ station.
Familiar.
I wanted to believe the body could remember what the mind struggled to reach. That something inside Noah knew the sound of me, the pressure of my hand, the cadence of our life.
I told him about Leah’s flight. She would arrive the following afternoon. I told him Caleb had taken over the yard and was probably enjoying the authority too much. I told him Owen had discovered water beneath the office windows and repaired it without being asked.
I told him I had slept in the chair, though calling it sleep was generous.
I told him I missed him.
The confession came quietly.
“I know you’re here,” I said. “I can see you. But I miss you.”
His hand lay in mine, limp and warm.
“I miss you looking at me like you know every version of me. I miss you telling me I’ve loaded the dishwasher wrong. I miss you taking my pillow after claiming you don’t.”
I lowered my head.
“You should wake up soon, because Caleb is making decisions about the yard sign.”
Noah’s fingers tightened.
I froze.
The pressure vanished almost immediately.
“Tessa.”
She looked up.
“He squeezed my hand.”
She came to the bedside and checked him, speaking his name.
Noah’s eye opened.
For several seconds, he looked directly at me.
Not through me.
At me.
“Hi,” I whispered.
His lips moved.
No sound came.
“That’s all right. Don’t try yet.”
He blinked slowly.
“You’re safe.”
His eye closed.
This time, hope did not feel small.
It filled me until I could barely contain it.
Over the next two days, his waking periods lengthened.
He followed simple commands. He moved his right hand. He frowned when the lights were too bright and tried to turn away when doctors examined him.
The nurses celebrated his irritation.
“Strong opinions are encouraging,” Tessa said after he pushed away a blood-pressure cuff.
“He’s always had those.”
Noah looked toward my voice.
His gaze rested on me for a moment, then drifted.
I waited for the change. The instant his face would soften. The recognition that would bring him back to me.
It did not come.
I told myself he was tired.
He was in pain.
His vision might be blurred.
The injury had affected the left side of his brain, and the doctors had warned me not to expect a straight path. Recovery could move forward, backward, sideways. A good morning might be followed by a terrible afternoon.
I learned patience because I had no alternative.
On the fifth day, he spoke.
Tessa had raised the bed and given him a sponge soaked in water. He swallowed with visible effort.
I stood near his shoulder.
“More?” she asked.
His gaze moved between us.
“Hurts,” he rasped.
The sound of his voice struck me harder than I expected. Damaged, dry, barely audible—and still his.
“I know,” Tessa said. “Your throat will be sore for a while.”
He lifted his right hand toward his head, but she intercepted it before he touched the bandage.
“You had surgery. Try not to pull at anything.”
His eye found me.
I smiled, though my face had forgotten how.
“You gave us a scare.”
He studied me with grave concentration.
I waited.
His lips parted.
“Who?”
One syllable.
It cut cleanly.
Tessa answered before I could. “This is Reid. He’s been here with you.”
Noah looked at me again.
Nothing changed in his face.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked.
His brow furrowed. “Hospital.”
“That’s right.”
He closed his eye.
“Head.”
“Your head hurts?”
A tiny nod.
Tessa lowered the lights and gave medication through his line. Within minutes, he slept.
I remained standing.
She drew the blanket higher over him. “Confusion is expected.”
“He asked who I was.”
“I heard.”
“He didn’t know me.”
“He’s only just beginning to orient. Don’t decide what that means yet.”
I sat because my legs had begun to shake.
Tessa’s hand rested briefly on my shoulder. “The brain protects itself in strange ways.”
“Does it protect itself by erasing people?”
“We don’t know that he’s erased anything.”
I looked at Noah’s face.
He was right there. The scar beneath the bandage was his. The faint notch in his eyebrow from a childhood fall was his. The dimple near his mouth appeared when he slept on his side.
But I had seen his eyes.
I knew what recognition looked like in them.
It had not been there.
The next morning, Leah arrived.
She looked enough like Noah to make my chest ache. Same dark eyes, same sharp cheekbones, though her hair was lighter and her expressions less guarded.
She stopped outside his room and covered her mouth.
“He looks so small,” she whispered.
Noah was six feet tall and broad through the shoulders. There was nothing small about him except the helplessness of his body beneath hospital sheets.
Leah took my hand.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look terrible.”
“You flew all night.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
A nurse allowed her ten minutes.
Noah was awake when we entered. His eye moved toward us.
“Hey, nuisance,” Leah said, her voice breaking. “You really know how to ruin a week.”
He stared at her.
She came closer.
“It’s Leah.”
His brow creased.
I watched the hope leave her face.
“Your sister,” I said.
Noah looked at me, then back to her.
“Leah,” he repeated slowly.
“Yes.” She smiled through tears. “That’s me.”
He closed his eye as though the effort had exhausted him.
Leah sat beside the bed and held his hand. He did not pull away, but he did not hold on.
After visiting hours, she and I went to the cafeteria. She bought soup. I moved a spoon through mine until the surface cooled.
“Did they warn you?” she asked.
“About what?”
“The memory.”
“No. Not specifically.”
“He didn’t know either of us.”
“He just woke up.”
“I know.”
“He’ll remember.”
“I hope so.”
The softness of her answer angered me.
“He will.”
Leah stared down at her soup. “All right.”
I regretted the tone immediately. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I haven’t slept.”
“I know.”
“I keep waiting for him to look at me.”
She reached across the table and covered my hand. “He loves you.”
Present tense.
Not loved.
I held on to it.
That afternoon, Noah underwent more scans and neurological testing. The unit encouraged me to go home.
I refused until Tessa threatened to have security escort me to the parking lot.
“Shower,” she said. “Eat something that wasn’t wrapped in plastic. Sleep horizontally.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You fell asleep while standing at the sink.”
“I was thinking.”
“Go.”
Leah came with me.
The apartment felt wrong the moment I opened the door.
Too quiet.
Noah’s jacket still hung from the hook. His coffee mug sat beside the sink where I had left it after washing it the morning of the accident. A pair of his shoes blocked the hallway.
Marlowe raced toward us from the living room, moving with more energy than he had shown in years. He pushed past me and searched the stairwell.
“He’s not here,” I said.
The dog looked up.
I crouched and buried my face in his neck.
Marlowe smelled of Caleb’s house and rain.
Leah touched my back, then moved away to give me privacy.
I showered.
The water ran gray around my feet.
When I climbed into bed, I stayed on my side. Noah’s pillow carried the faint scent of his shampoo. I pressed it to my chest and closed my eyes.
Sleep came like unconsciousness.
I woke two hours later in panic, reaching across an empty mattress.
Leah stood in the doorway. “The hospital called.”
I was out of bed before she finished.
“He’s stable,” she said quickly. “They want you to come in and speak with the neurosurgeon.”
My hands stopped on the buttons of my shirt.
“Why?”
“They wouldn’t tell me.”
I drove too fast.
Dr. Bell met us in a private office near the intensive care unit. A neurologist named Dr. Marcus Venn sat beside her. He had kind eyes, which I had begun to distrust.
“Noah’s scans show improvement,” Dr. Bell said. “The swelling continues to decrease, and there is no new bleeding.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.”
“But.”
Dr. Venn leaned forward. “We’ve been speaking with him during his wakeful periods.”
“So have I.”
“He is able to understand language and answer simple questions. His speech is slow, but that is not unexpected. He recognizes common objects and can recall factual information.”
I waited.
“He does not appear to understand the current date,” Dr. Venn continued.
Leah’s fingers locked around mine.
“What date does he think it is?” she asked.
“Six years ago.”
My mind refused the number.
“He believes he is twenty-seven,” the doctor said. “He thinks he is living in Denver and working for a vehicle conversion company.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“That was before he came back here,” Leah whispered.
“Yes.”
“Before he met me,” I said.
Dr. Venn looked at me.
“Before he met you,” he confirmed.
I released Leah’s hand and stood.