NOAH

I sat at my desk in the morning.

I was on time. Being on time took everything I had. My body did not want to be in the office.

It wanted to be back in that room, waiting for news that didn’t come. But I sat there anyway.

I opened my laptop and looked at the screen until the white light made my eyes ache.

I spent the first hour saying the right things. I apologized to the contracts manager. I apologized to the CFO.

My words were correct. My tone was soft and professional. I told them there had been a personal emergency.

I kept it vague so they couldn’t check, but specific enough so they would stop asking questions.

Then HR called me in. They gave me a formal written warning. It was for abandoning the client meeting without a proper handover.

I read the paper. I nodded when they told me why it was wrong. I signed my name on the line they pointed to.

Internally, I felt nothing. The warning was just a piece of paper. The words they spoke had no weight.

It was like hearing sounds while you are deep underwater. You know someone is talking, but the meaning doesn’t reach you.

I didn’t hear the HR manager. I heard the monitors from the hospital. I heard the soft, steady rhythm of the machines. In my head, I could see Cassian’s chest. I saw it rising. I saw it falling.

Mason appeared at my desk later. He didn’t say much. He just looked at me with that face he makes when he already knows the answer to his own question.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

"I’m fine," I said. My voice was flat. We both knew it was a lie. It was the kind of lie that meant I wasn’t okay, but I didn’t have the words to tell him why yet.

Mason just nodded. He didn’t push me to talk. He just pulled up a chair and sat beside me. That is the thing about Mason. He stays when everyone else walks away.

My phone rang in the middle of the morning. I saw Nick’s name on the screen and my heart stopped. I answered it before the second ring could even start.

"You can come," Nick said.

It was just one sentence. There was no warmth in it.

"Now?" I asked. I was already standing up.

The call ended. Nick didn’t wait for me to say anything else.

I looked at my desk one last time. My laptop was still open. The email I was pretending to read was still there.

The warning letter from HR was sitting in the corner. I packed up and walked out.

This second time I was in the hospital was different. The first time I came here, I was in shock. I was frantic.

I was running toward something I wasn’t prepared to see. I didn’t know what was waiting for me on the other side of those doors.

Now, I knew. I knew the room number. I knew the smell of the air. I knew the sound of the monitors. I knew exactly what his face would look like under those bandages.

Knowing didn’t make it easier. It made it a different kind of hard. It was the hard of someone who had already felt the world fall away and was waiting for it to happen again.

I felt the drop in my stomach, and I knew I would keep feeling it every time I walked down this hallway.

The corridors were familiar now. The guards didn’t stop me because Nick was standing near the door. We walked into the ward. We walked to the door.

I saw him. Cassian was still. He was exactly the same as I had left him. There were the bandages.

There were the monitors. There was his face, but it wasn’t doing any of the things his face usually does. It didn’t move. It didn’t frown. It was just a mask.

I didn’t freeze this time. I just took a breath. I held it in my chest until it burned, then I let it go. My body was learning how to take this in without falling apart.

I watched Nick move through the room. He was so efficient.

He moved like a machine that knew exactly what it was doing although I felt a strange kind of exhaustion clinging to him.

He checked the vitals. He checked the dressings on the wound. He checked the drainage.

He read every monitor and filed the numbers away in his head. He updated his notes. He made small, precise adjustments to the equipment.

He gave me Instructions without even looking at me. That is how Nick says everything.

"If the third monitor fluctuates, call the nurses station," he said. "Don’t touch the IV line. Don’t let anyone in who isn’t cleared. Don’t move him".

I listened to every word. I nodded. I memorized the instructions.

I watched his hands. They were so calm. There was no shaking. There was no fear. I felt fear in every part of my skin, but Nick looked like he was reading a book.

"Ten minute check-ins," Nick said. He moved toward the door. He stopped before he went out, but he didn’t turn around.

"He’s stable," he said to the wood of the door. He wasn’t talking to me, but he wasn’t talking to himself either. He was just saying it to the room.

The door closed.

The room changed after Nick left. The authority was gone. The structure was gone. Now it was just the machines, the quiet, and the sound of breathing. And me.

I sat in the chair beside the bed. I opened my laptop. I tried to look like I was working. I opened an email. I read the words, but they didn’t mean anything. I read them again. They still didn’t make sense.

The third time I tried to read it, I just gave up. I closed the laptop. I set it on the floor beside my chair. I stopped pretending I could do anything else but sit here.

I looked at the blanket. It was slightly uneven at the edge. I reached out and straightened it. It gave my hands something to do. It was better than taking his hand, which is what I really wanted to do but was too afraid to try.

The light from the window moved across the room. It landed on Cassian’s face. I watched the way it hit his skin.

Eventually, I moved my hand. I touched his. I did it very lightly. It was the lightest touch I could manage.

I held him the way you hold something that is already broken and you are afraid It will break more if you press too hard.

I watched his chest. I saw it rise. I saw it fall. Then I saw it rise again.

I realized I was counting. I was counting his breaths without even thinking about it. I needed proof that the next one was coming. I needed to see the rise before the fall finished.

He’s still breathing, I thought.

I looked away for a moment. I looked out the window at the city. It was an ordinary day out there. People were driving cars. People were buying coffee. No one out there knew about this room or the man in this bed.

I looked back at him.

His finger moved. It was the smallest movement in the world. It was so small that I thought I had imagined it.

I watched him. I didn’t blink. Nothing else moved.

Then, I saw a tear. It was at the corner of his eye. It moved slowly down his temple and into his hair.

"Cassian?" I whispered. My voice was soft. I was afraid to speak too loud. I didn’t know if he was really there.

I leaned closer to him. His face was still. His eyes were closed. The tear was the only thing happening. It was the only evidence that something was going on inside his head.

Where are you? I thought. What are you dreaming about? What is making you cry?

I didn’t want to finish the thought. If I finished it, I would have to imagine what could make a man like Cassian Wolfe cry. I already knew the answer. The list of things was very short, and my name wasn’t on it.

Nothing else happened. His finger didn’t move again. His face went back to being a mask. There was just the dried path of the tear on his skin. His chest kept rising and falling.

I didn’t move away. I stayed leaned in close to him. My hand was still holding his.

The words came out of me because I didn’t have any strength left to hold them back. The room had been too quiet for too long.

"You can’t do this," I said to his closed eyes. "You don’t get to just—"

I stopped. I had to start again. "You don’t get to disappear like this and not come back".

My breath was uneven now. I had been holding everything in since that meeting. I had held it in on the floor and in the lobby. I had held it in while I watched Nick work. But I was tired now. My grip was weakening.

"I’m not asking for much," I whispered. My throat felt tight. "I just need you to wake up".

I tightened my hand on his.

"Please," I said. It was the smallest word I had, but it was for the biggest thing I had ever asked for. "Please wake up".

The monitors kept humming. The machines didn’t care about my words. The room stayed quiet.

I stayed there. I didn’t let go. I watched his chest rise. I watched it fall. I watched it rise again.