That became the only sentence I could survive.
He was breathing.
The first surgery lasted forever. It could have been twenty minutes or four years. Time had stopped behaving normally somewhere between Life Flight landing on the football field and a nurse taking us into the ICU waiting area with soft eyes and a clipboard she kept holding too close to her chest.
A trauma surgeon came out once, not to update us exactly, but to tell us Cade was still in surgery and they were working on the chest injury first because his lung had collapsed and he had lost too much blood. They had placed a chest tube. They were trying to get him stable enough to deal with the abdominal injury fully.
His abdomen.
That word kept coming up.
Abdominal trauma. Internal bleeding. Possible damage to something they needed to repair before infection or blood loss took another swing at him.
I hated every word.
I hated that his body had suddenly become something he couldn’t rely on anymore. Cade’s body had been power. Heat.Control. The solid wall behind me in bed. The arms that carried me when my ribs hurt. The hands that held mine like letting go was not an option. The chest I pressed my face into when the world got too loud.
My Cade was not a medical report.
He was the guy whose fingers slid into mine without thinking. The way he watched my mouth when I talked too fast. The way he said “Pip” like it meant home. The way he looked at me from the ice like the entire arena disappeared if I smiled at him.
At some point, I stood.
Aura’s hand tightened around mine immediately. “B?”
“I need…” I didn’t know what I needed.
Air.
A miracle.
A world where this wasn’t happening.
“I need a second.”
Charm rose too. “I’ll come.”
I shook my head.
She looked like that hurt, but Aura touched her arm gently. My dad started to move, but I pressed my hand to his before he could stand.
“I’m not leaving,” I whispered.
Dad’s face folded. “I know.”
“I just need to talk to God and ask Him to help me…” My voice broke as I looked at my dad.
“To breathe,” he said.
I nodded even though breathing was the exact thing I couldn’t do.
The chapel was down the hall, tucked behind a corner like the hospital had hidden hope somewhere between vending machines and elevators.
It was small. Warm. Too quiet after the ICU room. Wooden pews. A simple cross on the wall. A table with tissues, prayer cards, and a little battery candle flickering like a tiny stubborn heartbeat.
I walked to the front and sat in the first pew because my legs didn’t trust me to go farther. For a long moment, I didn’t pray. I stared at the cross and cried.
Softly.
