Chapter 265: Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Two — Hold On

The corridor remains unchanged.

The doors stay shut.

Surgery continues on the other side.

Time loses its shape after that. It stretches thin and distorted, measured only by the sweep of the second hand on the clock mounted above the trauma doors and by the occasional swing of nearby doors that are never the ones he is waiting for. Nurses pass with charts tucked against their chests. Orderlies move equipment with quiet efficiency. A family farther down the hall argues in low, urgent whispers in a language he does not understand. Somewhere a child cries and is quickly hushed. The hospital continues functioning as if nothing extraordinary is happening, as if lives are not being held together behind closed doors.

He does not move from his seat.

Two hours have passed. He knows because he has checked the clock enough times to memorize the intervals. He knows because his phone screen has dimmed and brightened in his hand more times than he can count. He knows because the adrenaline has drained out of him and left something worse behind, a kind of empty clarity that offers no comfort.

He stares at the trauma doors until they blur slightly and forces himself to blink.

Footsteps approach from the direction of the elevators, quick and uneven. He does not look up at first.

Then he hears his name.

"Zane."

It is his mother.

He turns and stands slowly. She is walking fast, almost running, her coat half-buttoned, hair pulled back in a way that suggests she left mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-anything. Her face is pale. Not theatrical pale. Real pale. The kind that drains from someone when they have been told something that rearranges their reality. She stops in front of him and for a second neither of them speaks.

"She’s in surgery," he says before she can ask.

The words sound rehearsed even to him, flattened by repetition inside his own head.

Lorrynne exhales, but the breath shakes on its way out. "Is she—"

"She was alive when they took her in," he says quickly. "There was so much blood."

He clings to that distinction as if it is structural.

"How long ago?" she asks.

"Two hours."

The number hangs between them, impossible to measure in any meaningful way.

Then she reaches for him.

There is no caution in it, no restraint. Her arms come around him with sudden force, pulling him against her chest as if she has already decided she will absorb whatever she can. It is instinct. Protective. Fierce.

Zane does not hug her back.

His arms remain at his sides, hanging uselessly. He does not lift them. He does not return the pressure. He simply stands there while she wraps herself around him. After a second, his forehead lowers slowly until it rests against her shoulder. He does not collapse and he does not cling. He just lets the weight of his head settle there because holding himself upright feels like too much effort.

He smells her perfume, something clean and familiar. His chest rises once in a shallow inhale that catches halfway.

"My poor boy," she whispers.

He hears it, but it does not fully register.

His hands are trembling. He does not feel them against his thighs, the small constant shake he cannot control. Her hand moves to the back of his head, fingers threading gently through his hair the way she used to when he was feverish as a child. She presses her cheek briefly against his temple.

She is crying.

He realizes it from the damp warmth against his shoulder.

For a moment he does not cry. He stands there with his eyes open but unfocused, staring past her at nothing. Then something in his chest shifts and the first tear slips free. It slides down without sound. No sob. No dramatic release. Just steady, quiet tears he does not attempt to hide.

"I should have gone with her," he says hoarsely. "I could have done something. I should have been with her."

Lorrynne tightens her hold on him.

"No," she says immediately. "No."

Her voice shakes, but it is firm.

He pulls back slightly, just enough to look at her. Tears are streaking down her cheeks, not only for Willow but for him, for what she sees written openly across her son’s face.

"Mom," he says, the word unsteady. "I can’t lose her."

The sentence is stripped of pride. There is no control left in it.

Lorrynne pulls him into another embrace, less fierce this time and more desperate. "You are not losing her," she says, though she cannot promise that. "You hear me. You are not."

They remain standing for a long moment, mother and son holding onto each other because there is nothing else to hold. Eventually the tears slow, not because the fear has eased but because the body cannot sustain that level of release for long.

They sit side by side in the rigid hospital chairs. Her hand remains wrapped around his. Their fingers intertwine, firm and unyielding.

The clock above the trauma doors keeps moving.

It does not hesitate and it does not slow. The thin black hand drags forward with mechanical indifference, marking time in small, relentless movements. Zane watches it as if memorizing it will grant him some kind of leverage over what is happening behind those doors.

The fluorescent lights hum softly overhead. A cart rolls past, wheels whispering against polished tile. A nurse laughs quietly at something someone says at the far end of the hall and then lowers her voice. Life continues.

He tries to imagine what is happening inside the operating room.

He cannot.

His mind refuses to cross that threshold. The word surgery exists, but it carries no image. It is a sealed space, just like the doors. He knows hands are moving. He knows machines are running. He knows decisions are being made in seconds that will define everything that comes after. But he cannot see it. His brain gives him nothing but blankness.

He inhales slowly. The air feels thin. His chest rises and falls in shallow cycles. The tremor in his hands has not left. It runs quietly beneath his skin like a low electrical current that will not switch off. He presses his palms together in his lap to contain it, but it continues anyway.

Lorrynne tightens her grip when she feels it. She does not speak. She just sits closer, their shoulders touching.

Two hours and twelve minutes.

Two hours and twenty.

Two hours and thirty-seven.

The numbers pass without meaning. Each minute feels stretched thin, as if time itself is reluctant to move. Zane finds himself staring at the clock, willing it to jump ahead. Willing it to skip to the moment when someone finally opens those doors.

A doctor exits a different room down the hall and speaks quietly to another family. Zane’s head lifts automatically. Hope flares, sharp and involuntary.

Not for them.

The doctor turns away.

The hope drains just as quickly.

He swallows.

Two hours and forty-one minutes.

Two hours and fifty-three.

The increments begin to blur into a single oppressive stretch of waiting. His phone rests face down in his other hand. He has stopped checking it. There is nothing new to see. Everything that matters is behind those doors.

Lorrynne’s thumb begins tracing small circles against the back of his hand, a gesture she once used to soothe him when he was too young to understand what frightened him. Now he understands exactly what frightens him.

And there is nothing either of them can do about it.

The clock moves.

The doors remain closed.

They sit there, fingers locked together, not speaking, not moving, watching time crawl past at a pace that feels almost deliberate.

Surgery continues on the other side.

And all he can do now is hold on.