“Bleeder,” Dr. Lee said, calm as a winter lake. “Suction, Ruiz. Visual, now.”
She moved, fast and sure. Tay’s clamp dropped in the exact right place, and Lee tied off. I remembered how to breathe.
The grind returned—slow hours and tiny, precise cuts, broken into segments when we rotated for short breaks. “Drink,” Jesse said at some point, and I needed a second to register the squeeze bottle pressed into my glove. It pinged a distant echo of him telling me just that—after the lights came back on, after we’d kept a baby breathing when the power went out, before we’d crashed into each other like magnets.
“Thanks,” I said, hoarse.
The faintest softening around his eyes hinted at a smile. He turned away, kept moving.
Minutes, hours. Time moved in increments measured by each readout of the vitals. Voices issued clipped commands as my back became one big ache that I ignored. We hit the pivot for Twin B—small, fragile bile ducts glared where we’d hoped for more. Novak didn’t even sound disappointed, just prepared.
“No cowboy nonsense,” she said. “Temporary setup now, full reconstruction once things have healed. We give this child the best chance.”
Behind me, a nurse murmured something about biliary drains. I filed it under things I’d need to look up later.
We closed one abdomen, then the other—neat, tiny sutures that hid a medical miracle. Or maybe it only felt that way to me, young and naive, awed by the idea of two parents hearing “itwent well” and grabbing it with both hands, turning it over until it widened their lungs and they could breathe again, finally.
Twin A rolled out first. Twin B followed, and the room went quiet.
Novak broke it. “Good work,” she said, and for the first time, emotion shone through her voice—relief and pride, something soft I’d never heard from her before. “It’s moments like this that remind us why we do the things we do, even if it comes at a price. You all stepped up today. Go home. Rest. Be proud.”
My throat clicked as I swallowed, fumbling as I tried to peel off my gloves. I’d been one tiny part of a much bigger effort, but—God. Ihadbeen there. And now two tiny babies were rolling toward recovery.
Yes, I was ambitious—but if that were my only fuel, I could have tried to be a lawyer or pilot. Not that someone like Travis would ever get the difference.
I hit the scrub sink and let warm water run until I could feel my hands again. Jesse appeared next to me, close enough to imagine the heat of his body. I glanced over just as he did, his eyes bright with post-adrenaline. He looked younger like this, lighter in a way that I recognized because I felt it, too.
One corner of his mouth hitched up. I bit my cheek against a smile.
We filed out into the corridor after the others, too warm after the chill of the OR. My shoulders ached. What time was it? Twelve hours after we’d started? Fifteen? Late enough that night had fallen, darkness pressing in against the windows. Everything seemed disjointed—my thoughts, the happy buzz that reached all the way down to my toes.
We did it.
Jesse walked ahead of me, so I saw it when Novak stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. “Solid assist, Dr. Maddox,” she told him.
It might as well have been a job offer. My chest went hot as he dipped his chin, and even from ten feet away, I could feel how that simple praise would sit inside him for days. Novak moved on, already reaching for her phone to make arrangements for the next steps, while Jesse stood rooted to the spot, looking like he was ready to burst into a million glittering pieces.
“Congrats,” I whispered as I passed him.
He looked up at me—exhausted, elated, almost silly with relief. We were the last ones, everyone else a few steps ahead already, so I was the only one who caught it when his mouth curved up into something wild and reckless.
“Finn.” His voice was pitched low like a secret. “Come home with me?”
EIGHTEEN
JESSE
The subway ride hummed in my stomach—sensation crashing in after hours in a sterile room. Someone’s unwashed body scent wafted past while ad posters peddled credit cards, the blink of a dozen phone screens all around. Next to me, a woman promised her toddler a pink lollipop if he justpleasestopped darting around people’s legs.
Finn was three feet away, one hand holding on to the same pole. Not touching. We’d changed in different locker rooms and left in different elevators, then entered the same train as if by accident. His reflection in the window was drained of color—dark jacket and curls a little flattened. When I glanced at him, his eyes held the same after-surgery brightness I could feel buoying inside me, like he’d swallowed a star and now it was shining through the cracks in his skin.
I wanted him, God. So much I needed to curl my hands around cool metal to keep from reaching out right here and now.
Some corner of my mind still counted seconds to the echo of monitor beeps. Under that, Novak’s voice replayed in a loop. “Solid assist, Dr. Maddox.”And then the Jacksons’ faces after she’d given them the news—looking like they could breathe for the first time all day, or maybe all year.
“You’re glowing,” Finn said into the rattle of another passing train, the words low enough they were just for us. Like when he’d replied, “Yeah, yes, of course,”as if it had never even been a question. Yes, he’d come home with me. Of course he would.
“Feels like that should be my line,” I told him. “You did great, by the way.”
