But my voice wasn’t working. Nothing was working except the part of my brain that kept calculating how much time I had left.
A doctor appeared. Young. Tired.
He used words I recognized individually but couldn’t string together into meaning. Blood clot. Hemorrhagic. Critical but stable.
Those words made no sense together—critical meant dying, stable meant safe, and she couldn’t be both. She had to be one or the other and I needed him to tell me which one because I couldn’t breathe until I knew.
The doctor kept talking. Something about vitals and monitoring and the next few hours being crucial. I watched his mouth move and understood that he was trying to prepare me for something I would never be prepared for.
“Can I see her?” My voice came out wrong. Too high. Too thin.
“She’s being moved to ICU now. Someone will come get you when?—”
I didn’t hear the rest. My knees buckled.
Jack caught me before I hit the floor. His arms locked around me and suddenly I was sobbing into his chest—it came frommy bones. My sadness didn’t care about dignity or who was watching—only that I felt like I was breaking and couldn't stop it.
“I wasn’t here,” I gasped into his shirt. “She was alone and I wasn’t here and what if she—what if she thought?—”
“She knows.” Jack’s voice was steady. Certain. “She knows you love her. She’s always known.”
“I should have stayed. Last night I should have called?—”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have felt it. I should have—” My knees gave out again. Jack held me up, like he’d stand there holding me for however long it took.
I’d watched him do this when Claudette was sick. Watched him hold it together when his sister was dying, watched him function through the worst months of his life with that iron control he wore like armor. I’d thought he was cold then. Unreachable. Too controlled to feel anything.
I understood now. He’d been terrified. He’d just been terrified quietly, keeping it locked down so Claudette wouldn’t see, so his family wouldn’t fall apart, so someone could make decisions and handle logistics and keep the world spinning when everything else was chaos.
He was doing it again now. For me.
A nurse appeared with a wheelchair I didn’t remember asking for. Jack helped me into it with hands that were gentle but efficient, and I let him because my legs had stopped working and all I could do was sit there shaking while he dealt with everything I couldn’t.
Aunt Callista joined us. One look at me and she said, “You should go home.” Her voice wasn’t unkind. Just practical. “Get some rest. You can come back in the morning when?—”
“No.”
“Pauline, sweetheart, you can’t?—”
“I’m not leaving.” My voice trembled, but it was final. “I’m not leaving her alone.”
Aunt Callista looked at Jack like he was supposed to back her up, to be the voice of reason that convinced me to be sensible.
He didn’t.
“I’ll make sure she eats,” he said. “And rests. But she’s not leaving.”
Something in my chest unknotted. Just slightly. Just enough to breathe.
Aunt Callista studied him for a long moment, then nodded once and let it go.
They let me in to see her an hour later.
The ICU was all machines and monitors and too-bright lights that made everything look harsh and unreal. My grandmother lay in the bed looking smaller than I’d ever seen her—diminished in a way that made panic climb my throat because she’d never been small, never been anything except this force that raised me and loved me and made me believe I could survive anything.
Her eyes were closed. Tubes and wires connected her to machines I didn’t understand. A monitor beeped steadily, and I focused on that sound because it meant her heart was still beating, she was still here, I hadn’t lost her yet.
