“Logan?”
Alon’s voice came through thick with sleep, scratchy and unfocused. Disoriented.
Logan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to find his voice in the tangle of grief and fear choking his throat. His hand tightened around the phone, his knuckles aching. It felt like his entire chest was splitting open, like if he said the wrong thing, it would all come crashing out—every tear, every scream, every second of the last year.
“Hey, Alon.” His voice was low, taut with restraint. “Sorry about the hour. I know it’s late over there.”
He forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Steady.
There was a pause, the sound of movement on the other end. The faint rustle of sheets. The creak of a mattress. Then the subtle click of a door closing.
“It’s fine,” Alon murmured. “Give me a second.”
After a few moments Alon’s voice returned, softer now. More awake. “Yeah, I hear you. I’m at the base, so I just didn’t want to wake the others.”
Logan nodded reflexively, though he knew Alon couldn’t see it. His throat burned. His pulse was a thunder in his ears. His father stood silently nearby, a quiet sentinel. The world felt suspended.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “Of course.”
For a moment, Logan couldn’t speak. The words sat like stones on his tongue, too heavy, too sharp. Because saying them aloud would make them real, and once they were real, there was no going back.
“Logan?” Alon’s voice was clearer now, alert and tinged with concern. “Is everything okay? How’s Adrian?”
His chest clenched. His fingers curled tightly into his palm, nails biting skin. It was like trying to breathe through concrete.
“Not so good,” the words barely escaped. “He needs a bone marrow transplant,” Logan said finally, his voice cracking on the edges. “As soon as possible.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick. It pressed in, the way silence does in hospital rooms, in places where lives dangle by threads.
Alon didn’t flinch. His voice held steady. “You want me to give it?” No resistance. No fear. Just a quiet sinking into the gravity of it. A man walking into the ocean because someone he loves is drowning.
Logan inhaled sharply and tried to steady himself. “Yeah. We’d test you first,” he said, voice catching. “It’s easy… a cheek swab or blood, just to see if you’re a match. If you are, then… then they’ll give you shots, for a few days. To make the stem cells leave your bones, go into your blood. And after that, they hook you up to a machine… it takes the blood from one arm, pulls out the cells… and gives the rest back through the other.” A breath. A quiet exhale. It came out messy. Half-formed. Too clinical and too human at once.
“Fuck,” Alon muttered under his breath, barely audible. Then, after a beat, “Can I talk to him?”
Logan’s eyes fluttered shut. He leaned his forehead into his hand, the weight of everything pressing inward.
“No,” he said softly. “He’s sleeping. He’s... he’s really weak.”
He paused, swallowing hard. It felt like the truth was slicing its way out of him.
“In the past two months, his condition has declined rapidly. The bleeding’s worse. He gets sick constantly. He can’t eat. He’s in pain all the time.”
Each sentence felt like glass. Shards in his throat.
On the other end, Alon’s confusion surfaced.
“But when we talk to him... he sounds okay,” he said, uncertain, like he was trying to reconcile two versions of his brother, the one on the phone, and the one Logan was describing.
“He’s lying,” Logan whispered. And this time, his voice broke completely. “He’s lying because he doesn’t want to scare you. Because he thinks that if you know the truth, it’ll make it real. But itisreal, Alon. It’sworse than you know. And I—” He choked on the words, pressing shaking fingers to his forehead. “I can’t lose him.”
There was a pause.
“Would you do the test?” It came out quietly. Raw. A plea wrapped in hope and desperation.
And after a moment of silence that felt like it might break the world in two—
“Of course,” Alon said.
