She looks down at our hands, then back at me. Her face is composed. Her pulse is not. I can feel it in the thin, reckless place where our fingers touch.
“Stubborn,” she says.
“You like it.”
“I tolerate it under medical duress.”
I let go before I do something stupid.
She walks away, but not before I see the heat in her face.
For the first time since the corridor outside the tunnel, I feel something besides fear.
Peyton
By afternoon, Susan has walked one lap of the cardiac floor and declared the walker “a suggestion with wheels.” Ryan hovers on her left. Bill manages the IV pole. I stay close enough to help and far enough not to be claimed as family by accident.
Easy, my entire traitorous body repeats.
After Susan settles back into bed, the Austin transfer takes over the next layer of the crisis. Discharge papers. Transfer forms. Medication lists. A cardiac recovery facility with open beds and a nurse coordinator who speaks in brisk paragraphs. Ryan handles intake like a man who has found a task he can survive. Bill handles Susan. I handle the twins because one of them has discovered vending-machine espresso and neither should be trusted near it.
When I go back to Susan’s room, Ryan is off the phone.
“The fine is official,” he says. “Sully says Game Six is handled if I stay.”
“Are you staying?”
His eyes move to his mother. To Bill. To the twins on the floor with a deck of cards. Then back to me.
“Until the transfer is settled.”
Honest. Not automatic.
It should not make me want to kiss him.
Everything makes me want to kiss him.
By evening, Susan is stable in Austin, Bill is reading rehab instructions, the twins have been bribed with the hotel pool, and Ryan looks like a man running on fumes and willpower.
He finds me in the hotel lobby at nine.
I sit at a corner table with my laptop open, Westwood fallout already beginning in my inbox. Parents thanking me. School officials requesting corrections they cannot name. One anonymous email calling me destructive, which feels like a promotion.
Ryan stops beside the table.
“You ate?”
“Vending machine.”
“That is not dinner.”
“Everyone is very invested in my protein intake lately.”
“Good. Come on.”
I look up. He is running on fumes and willpower and has decided my dinner is the one problem in the building he can still solve.
I close the laptop.
