I take the paperwork I’m handed and immediately hand it back because words swim and the pen feels like a blunt instrument. “I’ll fill it,” the nurse says with a half smile that says she does this for husbands and hockey players and men who think they can outskate fear. “Just breathe, big guy. She’s okay right now.”
Right now is a dot I can stand on. I pace three steps to the curtain and three back because anything longer feels like leaving. I count her breaths under the monitor’s soft beep: in-two-three-four, hold-one-two, out-two-three-four-five-six. I match her so she doesn’t have to change rhythm for me. The world narrows to the rise and fall of the sheet over her ribs and the green digits that insist on translating her into numbers.
The monitor catches a tightening. Riley’s mouth goes flat; her fingers fist the sheet, then unfurl. “Six,” she says before anyone asks. The nurse nods like she already knew and checks the belt position, small adjustments, tiny mercies.
I bargain with every god I don’t believe in and some I invent on the spot. I promise games, years, good behavior. I promise to sit for a season if it buys us one more minute of nothing worse than this. I promise to learn patience like it’s a second language and to never again confuse silence with safety. I promise anything to the air if the air is taking requests.
The curtain ruffles as someone pushes past with a portable ultrasound for the next bay. The soft jelly sound, the wheeled click—my body thinks of a tabloid headline and a window flash and wants to break something that isn’t a rule or a person. I close my eyes until the impulse passes, jaw aching with restraint.
“Jason,” Riley says, calling me back from a place that doesn’t help. Her hand is there, palm up, so simple I almost miss it. I take it like it’s oxygen. Her skin is cool and dry; mine is damp. She squeezes once—here—and some of the buzzing in my teeth drops to a bearable frequency.
A tech appears, scans the bracelet on Riley’s wrist, and checks the monitor leads. “Dr. Hassan’s on her way down,” she says. “Labs are ordered. Try to relax.” She says it like anyone has ever succeeded at that instruction in this room.
Relax is not on my list of skills tonight. Hold is. I hold her hand and the line where her pulse beats my name against my fingers. I hold my feet to the floor. I hold the part of me that wants to pace the hall into submission because leaving the square of this curtain feels like losing ground.
A beeping down the hall quickens, then settles. The ER makes a sound like a rink before a faceoff—loud, then suddenly, watchfully quiet.
I count the next six of Riley’s exhales like they’re lifelines and tell myself that if I get to sixty, the doctor will appear. I start at one because it’s the only number that feels honest.
The nurse returns with a blanket warmed to kindness and drapes it over Riley’s legs. “Vitals are steady,” she says, voice a cushion. “What you’re feeling can happen. Bodies practice. It’s a scare, not a catastrophe. We’re going to run labs and keep you on the monitor. Doctor will be here any second.” She saysscarelike it’s a thing with edges we can hold without bleeding.
Riley nods, jaw unclenching a fraction. I inhale that word and try to make it bigger than the room.
A phlebotomist rolls in with a tray that rattles like a pocketful of change. Tourniquet, alcohol, the sharp lemon sting that rewires my brain to a childhood flu shot and my mother’s hand on my neck. Riley looks away as the needle slips in; I don’t. I owe her my steadiness more than I owe myself comfort.
“Sorry for the pinch,” the phlebotomist murmurs, labeling vials with the boring efficiency that keeps this place from falling apart. She’s gone in thirty seconds. The monitor keeps up its patient beeping like it’s counting for me.
I grip Riley’s hand, careful and too tight anyway. Knuckles white. She wiggles her fingers pointedly until I let up. “Hey,” she says, a small smile trying on her mouth. “Hands are for holding, not breaking.”
“Fine,” I manage, the word rough. I smooth my thumb over the back of her hand, mapping tendons I’ve taped a hundred times on other people and never learned like this. If the headlines were a person, I’d put them through the boards. If the pressure had a throat, I’d close my hand around it until it understood what it did to her lungs.
Guilt gnaws like bad tape under a skate. I was built to carry weight and I still let it settle on her. The press room. The cameras. The way the city seems to think my life is their streaming service. I offered to sit. I’ll do more than sit. I’ll?—
“You don’t get to make this your fault because it’s easier than admitting bodies are chaotic,” Riley says, as if she can read my thoughts off my face like a whiteboard.
“I can still hate the timing,” I say. “I can still hate that we had to walk through a hall of microphones to get to a room with a fetal monitor.”
“Both can be true,” she says, voice going trainer-flat in a way that soothes me more than any lullaby. Her fingers squeeze mine once. “But you don’t get to punish yourself as enrichment.”
I huff a laugh that’s more exhale than humor. “Since when did you become my therapist?”
“Since you started bargaining with God out loud,” she says. “He’s busy.”
A portable Doppler rolls past; somewhere beyond the curtain a baby’s heartbeat gallops, too fast and perfect, and I have to resist the urge to rip the wall down to see it. Our monitor answers with its own softer ocean. Practicing, the nurse said. A scare.
The tech returns with a paper cup and a labeled specimen cup. “Sorry,” she says to Riley with a grimace that says she’s asked this a thousand times and hated it every one. “If you can.” Riley nods, practical, and I help her sit, sliding the blood-pressure cuff cord out of the way, adjusting the belt so it doesn’t dig. She moves carefully, grimacing once, eyes flaring and settling like a storm remembering it’s supposed to pass.
When she’s back on the bed, I tuck the blanket like a man learning how to fold corners. My hands don’t shake. I tell myself that’s growth and not just fatigue pretending to be courage.
“Jason,” she says after a minute, eyes on the ceiling tiles like she’s aligning herself with a grid. “Look at me.”
I do.
“I’m okay right now,” she says, and I realize she’s throwing me the same rope the nurse threw her. “Holdright nowwith me.”
So I hold it. I count the beeps until they turn into something like a rhythm I could skate to. I watch her breathing and breathe with her. I keep my feet planted inside this square of curtain, and I don’t lunge at the shadows outside it.
Scare, not catastrophe. I repeat it until my jaw stops aching.
