I did my job.
I did not cry.
I did not beg.
Not out loud.
Inside, I made promises to every god, ghost, mother, desert, and saint that had ever watched over foolish girls and dangerous men.
Then the monitor changed.
A rhythm.
Weak.
But there.
“Got him.”
Air left the room in one collective breath.
I looked down at Dylan’s face above the drape, pale beneath the tube, lashes dark against skin that had no business being that color.
“You don’t get to leave,” I whispered.
No one heard me.
Or if they did, they were kind enough to pretend they hadn’t.
The surgery lasted three hours.
Three hours of blood, repair, pressure, counting, adjusting, fighting the body’s stubborn desire to surrender. Three hours in which I became nothing but hands and eyes and a voice that answered when spoken to.
By the time they were done, my legs felt hollow.
The surgeon stepped back, his gown marked with the battle.
“He’s alive,” he said.
Alive.
One word.
A whole universe.
“But he’s critical. Next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are everything. Fifty-fifty if complications hit. ICU now.”
Fifty-fifty.
People thought medicine gave clean answers.
It didn’t.
Sometimes it gave a coin toss and asked you to be grateful the coin was still in the air.
I nodded because I was staff.
Because I knew how to receive ugly information without making it harder for the person giving it.
