Then her voice changes, brisk but gentle. “Right. Pack a bag. I’ll be there in forty minutes.”
I blink, wiping at my face. “What? Why?”
“To drive you to London,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Jennifer, no. You’ve got the kids, and—”
“They’ll survive,” she cuts in. “Tom can handle bedtime, and if he can’t, he’ll learn fast. You need to be there.”
“I don’t even know if they’ll let me see him,” I say, though it comes out half-hearted, more from habit than conviction.
“Then we’ll find out when we get there,” she replies firmly. “You’re not sitting alone, staring at your phone all night.”
I press a hand to my eyes. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” she says softly. “Now stop arguing and pack.”
The line goes quiet again, but it’s a different silence this time—solid, certain.
When she hangs up, I sit there for a few seconds longer, the echo of her words still in my ear. Then I stand, numb but moving, and start throwing things into a bag without really seeing what I’m packing.
By the time we reach London, the sky has already slipped into evening.
The drive passes in a blur. I barely remember getting in the car, let alone the miles in between. Jennifer doesn’t press for conversation, and I’m grateful. The silence feels like mercy.
I spend most of the journey watching the lights change outside the window, counting them without really seeing them. My thoughts loop through the same awful reel—the blast, the call, the wordshe’s in a coma. Every few minutes I catch myself imagining what he looks like now, and every time I have to force myself to stop.
At some point, I texted Will. The message was clumsy, half mistyped, but he replied almost straight away. He told me Aaron’s in the Private Patients Unit at St Thomas’. He’s already given them my name and told the staff I’m Aaron’s partner, so they’ll let me in.
Seeing those words…Aaron’s partner, made my throat tighten. It should have felt lovely, a small, solid truth. Instead, it just reminded me how fragile everything suddenly is.
When we pull up outside the hospital, the lights catch the car windows, soft and silver. I take a deep breath, unbuckle my seatbelt, and realise my hands are shaking.
Jennifer glances at me. “Ready?”
I nod, even though I’m not. Not at all.
“Only one visitor at a time.”
The nurse says it kindly, but it still feels like a threat. Jennifer squeezes my hand and tells me she’ll wait. I nod and somehow make my legs move.
The corridor feels too long, too bright. When I step into his room, the world narrows to a single sound—the steady rhythm of the machines keeping him alive.
Aaron lies so still it hardly looks like him. There’s a bandage across his forehead, another wrapping the side of his head. Cuts mark his face and arms, small but cruel reminders of how close it was. The machine beside him releases a soft hiss with every breath, and I realise it’s doing the work for him.
For a moment, I just stand there. I want to cry, but the tears won’t come. What I feel isn’t sadness; it’s fear—sharp, consuming fear that I’ll lose him before we even had the chance to start properly.
I move closer, fingers trembling as I reach for his hand. It’s warm, at least. That tiny detail becomes everything.
The knots in my stomach draw tighter. I lean forward, my voice barely above a whisper. “If you wake up, I’ll stop hiding,” I tell him. “I’ll move. I’ll travel. I’ll do everything I’ve been too afraid to do. I’ll be brave for both of us. But I need you to wake up, Aaron. Because I want to enjoy life with you. Every second. Because you never know when it ends.”
The machines keep their slow, steady rhythm.
And I stand there, holding his hand, trying to believe that he can hear me.
Chapter 20
Aaron
