He said that first.
Thank goodness, he said that first.
“He survived the surgery,” he told us, and the sound that left Elenore did not belong to any cold mother Cade had ever described. It belonged to a woman whose body had been waiting for permission to keep living.
My hand flew to my mouth as Dad’s palm landed warm and heavy between my shoulder blades.
The surgeon took a breath before continuing, his eyes moving from Harrison and Elenore to my dad and then, finally, to me.
“Cade’s injuries were severe,” he said carefully. “One wound punctured his lung, collapsing it and causing significant bleeding into the chest cavity. We placed a chest tube to help drain the blood and air, and his lung is responding, but he still needs ventilator support while it stabilizes.”
Elenore’s hand tightened around mine.
The surgeon’s voice stayed gentle, but nothing about the words felt gentle. “The abdominal wound caused internal bleeding and damage to part of his lower intestine. We repaired the injury, controlled the bleeding, cleaned the area thoroughly, and closed what we could tonight. He also received blood during surgery.”
My stomach turned so hard I thought I might be sick.
Harrison’s voice came out rough. “But he’s alive?”
“He’s alive,” the surgeon confirmed. “He is in critical condition, but he is stable right now. The next forty-eight hours are highly critical.”
Critical but stable.
I grabbed onto those words with both hands. Those words became the first fragile thing I could hold.
Critical but stable.
“He is on a ventilator,” the surgeon continued. “We’re keeping him deeply sedated for now. His body has been through substantial trauma, and we need to reduce stress on his lungs and abdomen while we monitor swelling, bleeding, infection, and how his lung responds over the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
“Sedated,” I whispered.
The surgeon looked at me kindly. “A medically induced coma, essentially. It allows the machines to help him breathe while his body begins recovering. It does not mean he won’t wake up.”
Won’t wake up.
My body rejected the phrase even with the does not in front of it.
“When?” Harrison asked, voice strained but steady.
“If he remains stable, we’ll reassess in a couple of days and start reducing sedation gradually. But with injuries like this, we take it hour by hour.”
Hour by hour.
I hated time.
I hated every version of it.
Harrison asked questions I couldn’t follow. Elenore cried silently beside me, her hand locked around mine. Dad listened like he was memorizing every word in case I needed him to explain it later when my brain worked again.
When we stepped back into the private waiting room, every face turned toward us.
For a second, no one spoke until Harrison did.
“He’s alive.”
The room broke. Not loudly. Not all at once. But like every person there had been holding their body too tightly and finally loosened one muscle.
Briggs covered his face with both hands, his shoulders folding inward like the words had finally found the softest part of him. Easton bent forward with his palms braced on his knees, head down, breathing hard through whatever fear he refused to let turn into sound. Rider turned away, one hand dragging over the back of his neck, while Ryan closed his eyes like hearing Cade was alive had nearly taken him down instead of holding him up.
