I lift Sam's hand to my lips and press a kiss to her knuckles—slow, lingering, desperate.
"Angel... I'll be right here, okay? I'm not going anywhere. You're gonna be okay. I promise."
She nods, but even that small movement pulls a grimace of pain across her face. It guts me.
I brush her damp hair back from her forehead—my hand shakes—and kiss her there too.
"I'll be here when you get back," I whisper.
And then the nurses push her bed out of the room, turning the corner until she disappears.
The second she's gone, the room feels too big. Too silent. Too cold.
The waiting is torture.
The minutes stretch, thin and warped, like someone's pulling time apart with their bare hands. I can't sit still. I pace from the bed to the window, then back, then to the doorway like I might somehow see them coming sooner if I stare hard enough.
Then I sit.
Then I'm up again.
My nerves feel raw, exposed, like someone scraped them down with sandpaper. Every time I close my eyes, I see Sam bent over, clutching her stomach, choking on sobs while I stood there helpless—fucking useless—holding a basin and whispering apologies she couldn't even hear.
"Please be okay," I mutter into my hands. My voice cracks. "Please, please... God, just let her be okay."
It feels like something is carving into my chest from the inside. A slow, brutal twist. I can't get the image of her vomiting, retching so violently her whole body shook, out of my head. I don't think I ever will.
Lord, don't let this be something worse.
Don't let there be a perforation, or obstruction, or something surgical. Please don't let them tell us she needs an operation. Please don't let anything delay her chemo.
Because she needs to start induction as soon as humanly possible. Every day matters. Every hour. Delays can give the cancer more time to spread, to strengthen, to take more of her away.
I press my palms to my eyes, trying to stay grounded, but my thoughts spiral hard.
What if the CT shows something bad?
What if the infection is worse than they thought?
What if this is the start of another hell we can't pull her out of?
My breathing stutters.
I swear it feels like my ribs might crack from the pressure building inside me. Helplessness is a physical thing—heavy, choking, merciless. And it sits in my chest like a loaded weight.
I would trade places with her in a heartbeat. I would take every fever, every cramp, every stab of pain if it meant she didn't have to go through this again. But all I can do is wait here like a useless bystander while my little sister is wheeled into a machine to find out how much more she has to suffer.
I scrub my hands over my face and whisper one more time into the stale hospital air:
"Please... just let her be okay. I can't lose her. I can't."
CHAPTER fifty-eight
CAROLINE
The room is dim when I step inside — just the soft glow above Sam's hospital bed and the steady rhythm of the monitor. Zach is exactly where I left him: sitting in the chair pulled right up to the bedside, hunched forward, his hand wrapped around hers like he's terrified she'll slip away if he lets go.
But the moment he glances up at me, my heart drops straight through the floor.
