Like they belong to all of them.
She's staring at the blood on her sister's leg, and she looks like she's about to shatter.
I move before I think about it.
It's instinct—the same instinct that made me become a nurse in the first place, the same one that drives me to fix what's broken and hold together what's falling apart.
I crouch down to her level and make sure my voice is the softest thing in this room.
"Hey, sweetheart. I'm Leah. I'm taking care of your sister." I wait until those blue-gray eyes find mine. "She's going to be just fine. I promise. Can you tell me your name?"
Her lower lip trembles. "Sadie Jo."
"That's a beautiful name, Sadie Jo. Can you do me a favor? There's a chair right around the corner in the waiting area. It's got a really terrible vending machine next to it, but the hot chocolate is actually pretty good if you hit the button twice. Can you go sit there for me while I finish helping your sister?"
She looks at her father. He hasn't turned around—his hands are still on Wrenleigh's face, his forehead pressed to hers, murmuring something I can't hear.
But he feels his younger daughter's eyes on him the way parents do, some sixth sense that never sleeps, and he turns just enough to nod.
"Go on, Sadie Jo. I'm right here."
She lets go of his cut.
Slowly, like peeling her own fingers back costs her something.
Then she looks at me one more time—measuring, deciding—and walks toward the waiting area with the crutches tucked under her arm like she's carrying them for someone else.
Because she is.
She's thirteen years old and she's already carrying things for other people.
Something in my chest tightens.
I turn back to my patient.
Her father has pulled a chair to the bedside and he's holding Wrenleigh's hand, his thumb moving across her knuckles in slow, steady strokes.
The panic has receded behind his eyes—not gone, but leashed. Controlled. He's rebuilt the wall in the space between breaths, and now he's what she needs him to be: solid, present, unshakable.
I know that trick. My brother does the same thing.
Garrett can be falling apart on the inside—I've seen the wreckage of it, the nights he showed up at my apartment with hollow eyes and shaking hands after pulling Vanna out of another overdose—but the moment someone needs him, the mask goes on. Feel everything, show nothing.
I wonder if Coin knows he's not hiding it as well as he thinks he is.
"I need to get her to imaging," I say, pulling up beside the bed. Professional. Competent. These are things I'm good at. These are things that don't require me to feel anything I'm not prepared to feel. "The fracture needs to be set properly, and I want to make sure there's no additional damage. An orthopedic surgeon will be handling the procedure."
He nods. His eyes haven't left his daughter's face. "Whatever she needs."
"She's in good hands," I say, and I mean it the way I always mean it—as a statement of fact, not comfort. I'm good at my job. This is one thing in my life I've never doubted.
He looks at me then. For the first time tonight, those blue-gray eyes focus on me—not as a nurse, not as a uniform, but asme—and I feel it like a physical thing. A hand pressing flat against my sternum.
I've stood across a room from this man.
I've watched him flip that coin between his fingers while Ruger talked.
I've said maybe ten words to him total in all the times I've visited the clubhouse.
