Nathan had caught him before he hit the floor, barely... and now Julien was lying in the bed beside mine, perfectly still, his face pale, his breathing steady, completely and utterly unconscious.
And his colleagues... well, they were having the time of their lives.
“I need to document this,” Hayden said, pulling out his phone. “For posterity.”
“Don’t you dare,” I gasped.
“Too late.” He was already taking pictures. “This is going into the hospital newsletter.”
“It absolutely is not!”
“Dr. Julien Darcy, a renowned neurosurgeon, faints upon learning he’s going to be a father,” Hayden narrated. “Colleague’s report: he went down like a sack of potatoes.”
“It was more like a tree,” Nathan corrected. “Very rigid. Straight down.”
“Did he make a sound?” Quinton asked.
“A small gasp,” Nathan said. “Very dignified.”
“Nothing about this is dignified,” I protested.
“That’s what makes it so perfect,” Fitz said, grinning. “Julien Darcy, the man who color-codes his socks and schedules his bathroom breaks, just fainted because his wife is pregnant.”
“He’s going to bemortifiedwhen he wakes up,” Gabriel said, though he was smiling too.
“Good,” Hayden said. “He deserves it after all the years of judging the rest of us.”
“He doesn’t judge.”
“He absolutely judges,” Winnie interrupted gently. “But we love him anyway.”
I looked at Julien, still unconscious, his face peaceful in a way it never was when he was awake.
“The universe is testing him,” Freyja had said.
Well, the universe had a funny way of testing people.
“How long has he been out?” I asked.
Nathan checked his watch. “Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.”
“Should we be worried?”
“Nah,” Hayden said. “His vitals are fine. He just... overloaded.”
“Like a computer?”
“Exactly like a computer. Too much information, system crashed. He needs to reboot.”
“That’s not how brains work,” Quinton said.
“It’s howJulien’sbrain works.”
I wanted to argue, but... they had a point.
My mom appeared at my bedside, her earlier panic completely gone, replaced by pure joy. “Sweetheart, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Really. Just a little dizzy earlier, but I’m okay now.”
