Chapter 25
REID
“I remember.”
The words barely sounded human.
They tore out of Noah, thin and raw, and then his legs folded beneath him.
I caught him before his knees struck the concrete.
His cane hit the floor and skittered beneath a workbench. Behind us, Owen silenced the radio. The song died in the middle of the chorus, leaving only the workshop’s mechanical hum, rain tapping the high windows, and Noah dragging air into lungs that had forgotten how to breathe.
“Look at me.”
He couldn’t.
His fingers twisted into the front of my shirt. He had clamped his right eye shut, and the muscles around it fluttered violently. Sweat shone across his brow despite the cold draft moving through the open service bay.
Caleb shoved a padded shop stool toward us.
“Get him down.”
I lowered Noah onto it.
He sagged against me, tried to force his spine straight, then folded again with one hand pressed over the scar at his temple.
“What came back?” I asked.
“Road.”
His breath hitched.
“Rain. The song.”
Owen stood several feet away, drained of color.
I cupped Noah’s cheek.
“Can you open your eye?”
“No.”
“Because it hurts, or because you can’t?”
“Hurts.”
The word came clearly.
That mattered.
It did not matter enough.
I checked his face for asymmetry. His mouth moved evenly. He had equal strength in both hands. He knew me. He knew where he was.
Fear sent ice through my chest.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
Noah’s left hand shot out and locked around my wrist.
“No hospital.”
“You almost collapsed.”
“Memory.”
His breathing accelerated.
“Not happening now. Already happened.”
“Your head—”
“Cal.”
The private name broke on a sob.
“Please.”
I looked at Caleb.
“Call Dr. Whitcomb. Tell the office it’s urgent. If they can’t reach her, use the neurology line.”
Caleb pulled out his phone and moved quickly toward the office.
Owen crouched beside us.
“Do you need something to be sick in?”
Noah swallowed.
“Yes.”
Owen dumped a plastic tray of electrical terminals onto the workbench and handed it to me. I settled it across Noah’s thighs.
He bent over it, shaking.
Nothing came up.
Only torn breaths.
Only tears.
“I can see the road,” he whispered.
I went down on one knee between his legs.
“You’re in the yard.”
“I know.”
“It’s Friday afternoon.”
“I know.”
“Caleb is calling Dr. Whitcomb.”
Noah’s hand searched blindly until it found mine.
“The wipers couldn’t clear the glass.”
I did not ask him to stop.
I did not urge him on.
“The bend after Quarry Hill,” he said. “Where the trees hang over the road.”
“That was on your route.”
“I had coffee beside me. The lid kept tapping against the cup holder.”
His face twisted.
“The song started.”
“Low Tide Morning.”
“Our song.”
Until that moment, I had not known he thought of it that way.
“We danced to it.”
A second memory moved through the first.
“The apartment,” he said. “The green lamp. You stepped on my foot.”
“I did.”
“You blamed the floor.”
“The floor leaned.”
“It did not.”
His laugh broke apart into another sob.
“Then I was on the road again.”
He pressed his fist harder against his temple.
“The chorus started. I thought about calling you.”
My throat closed.
“To say what?”
“That I was coming home early.”
The workshop narrowed around us.
Noah opened his eye for a heartbeat. It was unfocused, fixed on a place beyond my shoulder.
“I finished the marina job sooner than I thought. I was going to bring soup.”
“You never called.”
“I reached for the phone.”
His fingers moved as though repeating the action.
“A horn.”
His body jerked.
I caught his shoulders.
“You’re here.”
“The road turned white.”
“Rain?”
“Headlights. Spray.”
His head snapped toward his right shoulder.
“There were pipes.”
The load from the flatbed.
The failed restraints.
The police photographs I had studied until every detail lived behind my eyes.
“They came sideways,” he gasped. “One hit the hood. Another broke through the windshield.”
His hand flew toward his face.
“Glass.”
“Noah.”
“The van spun.”
His breath stopped.
For one terrible second, so did mine.
Then he dragged in air.
“I couldn’t feel the tires.”
His gaze fixed on something none of us could see.
“The trees were below me. I thought I was falling into them.”
The van had gone over the shoulder and slid down the slope.
“I turned toward the rock.”
The investigator had told me that choice prevented a longer fall.
“You saved yourself.”
“No.”
His head moved weakly.
“There was a car behind me. I was trying not to take them with me.”
I had never known.
The report had never mentioned another vehicle.
“Then the door came in.”
His fingers crushed mine.
“My hip.”
Pain twisted his face as though the bones were breaking again.
“God.”
“You are not inside the van.”
“It hurts.”
“I know.”
“It hurts now.”
His body curled inward.
I wrapped an arm around his shoulders to keep him on the stool.
“Stay with my voice.”
“Dark.”
“You’re in the workshop.”
“Couldn’t breathe.”
“You are breathing now.”
“Metal on my chest.”
“There is no metal here.”
“Cold water.”
“Rain came through the windshield.”
His eye opened wide.
“The green light.”
“Aaron’s helmet lamp.”
“I thought it was you.”
The words hollowed me out.
“What?”
“In the dark.”
His face crumpled.
“I saw green. I thought you’d found me.”
I covered the back of his neck with my palm.
“I’m here now.”
“I tried to whistle.”
His chest shook.
“I couldn’t get enough air.”
He attempted the signal.
Two short, broken breaths.
The third failed completely.
I answered.
Two clear notes.
One long.
Noah collapsed against me.
The sob that came out of him began somewhere deep enough to shake both our bodies.
“I thought I was going to die before I told you I was coming home.”
I closed my eyes.
“You came home.”
“I didn’t know you when I got there.”
“You still came home.”
His arms locked around me.
The workshop disappeared.
The accident disappeared.
Caleb and Owen disappeared.
There was only Noah in my arms and the unbearable knowledge that while he had been pinned in darkness, bleeding and unable to breathe, he had been thinking of me.
Caleb returned with the phone.
“Dr. Whitcomb’s on.”
I took it without loosening my hold on Noah.
“Reid?”
“I’m here.”
Caleb and Owen moved away but stayed close enough to help.
I described everything.
The song.
The sudden memory.
The pain.
I described his eye clamped shut, the sweating, the near-collapse, the nausea, his preserved speech, his equal strength, and the absence of new weakness.
Dr. Whitcomb questioned Noah through the speaker.
His name.
The date.
Where he was.
The current president.
Three words to remember.
He answered all of them, though the date took him several seconds.
“Any new numbness?” she asked.
“No.”
“Vision changes beyond the light sensitivity?”
“Blurred because I’m crying.”
“That qualifies as humor. I find that reassuring.”
The corner of Noah’s mouth almost moved.
“Pain level?”
“Seven.”
“Is it different from your usual headaches?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Sharper. Pressure behind my eye.”
Dr. Whitcomb remained calm.
“Reid, get him into a dark room. Use the breakthrough medication exactly as prescribed, give him water, and observe him closely. Retrieving traumatic memory can activate the nervous system with extraordinary intensity, including sensations of pain stored with the event.”
“Could this be another bleed?”
“His current symptoms do not strongly indicate one, but I cannot rule out a complication over the phone. If the pain increases, if he vomits repeatedly, becomes confused, develops weakness, loses consciousness, has unequal pupils, or cannot be woken normally, take him to emergency care immediately.”
“I will.”
“Noah, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Are you refusing the hospital because you are afraid, or because you believe the symptoms are already improving?”
He thought about it.
“Both.”
“Honest. Reid will monitor you. If any warning sign appears, you will not argue about going in.”
Noah looked at me.
“I won’t.”
“I want an update in two hours.”
“You’ll have one,” I said.
“And remove the trigger. Do not play the song again to test the memory.”
“I had no intention of doing that.”
Noah’s fist tightened in my shirt.
Dr. Whitcomb heard the change in his breathing.
“One more instruction. Do not force the memory into sequence today. Trauma often returns in fragments because fragments are all the mind can tolerate at one time. Let what arrived be enough.”
Noah closed his eye again.
“Okay.”
The call ended.
I slid the phone into my pocket.
“I’m carrying you upstairs.”
He did not argue.
That frightened me almost as much as the scream.
I put one arm behind his back and the other beneath his knees.
Noah leaned into my chest, his face turned away from the workshop lights.
Caleb retrieved the cane.
Owen opened the stairwell door.
“I can bring up the chair,” Caleb said.
“Leave it.”
“Need anything else?”
“Lock the radio controls.”
Owen nodded immediately.
“That song never plays here again.”
“No.”
Noah’s voice was barely audible.
I looked down at him.
“No?”
“Not forever.”
Each word came slowly.
“Just not today.”
“All right.”
I carried him upstairs.
Every step sounded too loud.
His fingers curled into the fabric over my shoulder. He kept his eye closed, and by the time we reached the apartment his breathing had grown heavy.
In the bedroom, I lowered him carefully onto the mattress.
I drew the curtains until darkness filled the room, leaving only the muted green glow of the navigation lamp beneath the partially open door.
“No light?” I asked.
“Leave the green.”
I did.
He swallowed the medication with water, then turned onto his side. I placed the cold cap over his temple and set a basin beside the bed.
Marlowe climbed onto the mattress with exaggerated care, circled twice, and settled against Noah’s calves.
“Stay,” Noah whispered.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“No. Here.”
I lay beside him fully dressed and curved one arm around his waist.
His body remained rigid.
“Where are you?”
“Bedroom.”
“What can you feel?”
“Your hand.”
“What else?”
“Marlowe against my legs.”
“Anything from the wreck?”
“Not right now.”
“Good.”
His breathing slowed by a fraction.