NOAH

Eventually, I stopped telling myself the stories, because the words weren’t landing anymore. They weren’t reaching whatever deep, terrified part of me needed to hear them.

They were just bouncing off the walls of the corridor, leaving me entirely alone in the plastic chair, shivering through to the bone while the clock on the wall ticked forward.

I didn’t know how many minutes had passed.

Time had done something elastic and broken, stretching out until a single minute felt like a whole afternoon, but leaving the day without any structure or weight. I had no reliable way of knowing if the sun was still up outside the brick walls.

Then the latch on the door clicked.

I was on my feet before the wood had even cleared the frame, my laptop sliding off my lap and hitting the floor with a loud plastic thud that I didn’t care about.

Dr. Vasquez stepped out into the hall. He was pulling the green paper mask down from his chin, his shoulders dropping slightly as he looked at me.

His face didn’t have that heavy, gray shadow that doctors wear when they are about to deliver a death sentence. I read that look instantly, before he could even open his mouth to speak.

"He’s stable," Dr. Vasquez said, delivering the two words first because he could see the sheer terror written across my forehead.

"His heart rate dropped severely, and we had a very difficult few minutes, but we were able to bring him back and stabilize his readings. He’s awake."

What those two words did to my chest was a physical blow. It felt like a massive iron fist that had been clenched around my lungs since the monitor changed suddenly opened up, letting the air rush back into my throat all at once.

A heavy, shaking exhale came out of me, far more violently than I expected, and my right hand slapped against the plaster wall beside the chair. I didn’t do it for drama; I did it because my legs had completely turned to water and I needed the support to keep from hitting the floor.

"Awake?" I whispered, repeating the word just to confirm the air in the hallway was real.

"Yes," Dr. Vasquez confirmed, giving me a small, tired nod. "The nurses are still checking his lines. He’s incredibly disoriented right now, which is completely expected after three weeks of deep unconsciousness and a severe cardiac event like the one he just had. His brain is still trying to catch up with his body."

"Can I see him?" I was already moving toward the door, my fingers reaching for the handle.

"Shortly," the doctor said, putting a hand out to stop me. "We need a little more time to make sure his blood pressure stays where it belongs and finish our initial assessment. I’ll send a nurse out to get you the second you can go in."

I nodded quickly, my chin shaking as I watched him turn back into the ward. The door clicked shut again, the gray blind still drawn across the glass.

I turned around, my boots heavy as I walked down the corridor until I found the nearest quiet corner... a small, dark alcove right next to the concrete stairwell.

I stepped into the shadow, pressed my spine flat against the cold wall, and let myself slide down a few inches. My knees bent, my head dropped back against the brick, and the crying came out of me.

It was completely silent. That was the only kind of weeping I had left after three weeks of living in this building. My shoulders shook against the wall, my chest heaving as the tears ran down my nose and hit my collar.

Thank you, I thought, staring up at the yellowed light fixture in the ceiling. Thank you. I said it to the lights, to the air, to whatever random force of luck or universe had made those numbers stop falling, the force that had let that doctor say the word awake instead of the other word I had been fighting off for twenty-one days.

I stayed in the dark corner for five minutes, just letting my lungs work properly for the first time all day.

The nurse found me by the water cooler ten minutes later. I had already washed my face in the small basin in the stairwell bathroom, rubbing the cold water into my skin until my eyes stopped stinging, forcing my features back into something that looked functional and calm.

I followed her back down the hall, and this time, the wooden door opened properly. No one reached out to steer me back into the corridor.

The mattress was exactly where it always was, but the man inside it was entirely different.

Cassian’s eyes were wide open. The blue plastic lines were still taped to his nose, the wires were still hooked to his chest, and the machines were still ticking away, but his pupils were moving.

He was tracking the white acoustic tiles on the ceiling, his gaze traveling slowly from one corner of the plaster to the other.

I stopped dead just inside the doorway, my breath catching in my teeth.

Cassian’s head turned slightly against the pillow. His eyes drifted across the room until they hit my face, and the focus in them wasn’t fully there yet.

It looked like a lamp being turned on in an old house, the wire glowing slowly but not reaching full brightness quite yet.

"Cassian," I said quietly. I didn’t trust my own voice to carry the name without cracking.

His mouth moved, his dry lips parting as he tried to form a shape, but nothing came out except a faint puff of air.

His eyes stayed on me for two seconds, then drifted away toward the window, then came back to my face. The confusion was written plainly across his forehead; his gaze couldn’t quite commit to a single spot in the room.

I took two slow steps closer to the rail. "It’s me," I whispered. "It’s Noah. You’re in the hospital, Cassian. You’re completely safe. You’re okay."

His eyes fixed on me a second time, and this time, they held. Something shifted behind his pupils, a slow, heavy grinding of cogs as his mind began to process everything.

For one brief second, his fingers twitched against the white blanket. It was a strange, searching motion, his hand dragging across the linen without any real destination, as if he were reaching for something that wasn’t in the room anymore.

A sharp, dark shadow crossed his features, an expression of pure agony that was gone before I could even read the edges of it.

Then his hand went completely still against the sheet, and his gaze turned solid. He looked more present than he had a minute ago, the cloudiness clearing out of his eyes.

I stood perfectly still by the rail, terrified that if I moved an inch or made a sound, I would break whatever fragile thread was keeping him in the room with me.

The nurse finished adjusting the plastic drip bag and turned to look at me. "He needs a lot of rest, Mr. Bennett. Don’t let him talk too much right now. We can’t overtire his heart."

She leaned over the bed, giving Cassian a professional smile. "Mr. Wolfe, you’re doing very well. Try not to pull at the blue lines on your wrist."

Cassian didn’t even look at her. His eyes stayed locked onto my face, watching me with an intensity that didn’t break until the door clicked shut behind her back.

The room dropped into that small, familiar quiet, broken only by the steady green beep of the monitor.

"Can you..." I started, my hands clamping onto the metal rail. "Do you know where you are, Cassian?"