Page 31 of Deacon

It was a neat explanation. Safe. Professional.

It was also bullshit.

The truth was simpler. I couldn’t walk out of the hospital knowing Jackson remained inside without seeing him first, so I stopped fighting the habit almost as soon as it formed.

Night after night, I slipped quietly into his room, nodded to Priest or the tattooed biker if one of them was there, then went straight to the chair beside Jackson’s bed. Priest sometimes sat across from me, wearing the heavy stillness of a man determined to keep fear hidden beneath his skin. The tattooed biker usually stayed near the window with a phone in his hand or a laptop open, appearing detached until I noticed he missed absolutely nothing. Most nights, both men were there.

Neither questioned my visits or watched me with the kind of curiosity and pity I would have needed to defend myself against.

They simply let me in.

At first, I didn’t speak. I sat down and took Jackson’s hand carefully, mindful of bruising, tape, wires, and all the damage done to a body that still looked too strong for a hospital bed. Then I stayed while the machines hummed and the IV dripped, the room holding its breath in the peculiar patient way hospital rooms did when everything depended on time and nothing could be rushed.

I arrived exhausted, my scrub top creased and my feet aching, my hair pulled back badly because vanity had no place at the end of those shifts. I sat in silence long enough for it to stop feeling awkward and become its own quiet ritual, something I did because there was nothing else left to offer him.

Jackson never squeezed my hand. His eyes remained closed.

Still, I came.

Silence should have been easy for me. I worked amid noise, blood, urgency, and panic, but I also knew what came afterward. I knew how to stand beside families once they ran out of words, and how grief could turn a crowded room utterly still.

This silence was different. It carried history. Seventeen years crowded into the space between Jackson’s unmoving hand and mine, pressing closer with every night I refused to fill it.

After several visits, the quiet stopped feeling peaceful and began to feel like pressure. One more hour with Priest pretending not to watch from across the room and the tattooed biker tracking every change in Jackson’s monitors might have been enough to crack me open in front of both of them.

The night I finally broke, I had worked too long, eaten too little, and spent the final hour of my shift arguing with an intern who seemed to believe panic qualified as a treatment plan. Exhaustion had thinned my defenses by the time I entered Jackson’s room.

Priest sat in his usual place. The tattooed biker leaned against the wall, his expression as unreadable as ever, though I had begun to suspect unreadable and unfeeling were two very different things.

I washed my hands, lowered myself into the chair, and took Jackson’s hand. The room settled around us, and for several minutes I expected to follow the usual ritual, sitting there until leaving felt too much like surrender.

Then I heard myself say, “Jackson was my brother’s best friend.”

Priest looked up. The tattooed man shifted away from the wall, giving the moment his full attention without moving close enough to crowd me.

The monitor chirped, sharp enough to cut through the room but nowhere near an alarm. Jackson’s heart rate climbed by several beats, his breathing changing for one shallow second before settling again.

Then his fingers twitched against mine.

Once.

The tattooed biker stepped closer immediately. I remained frozen, my gaze jumping from the monitor to Jackson’s hand and back to the numbers. Professional instinct took hold before anything else could, tightening my grip by the smallest degree.

“Reflex response,” I said quietly. “Auditory stimulus.”

My voice stayed steady, but tension pulled through every inch of my body around a feeling I wasn’t prepared to name.

The man leaned toward the monitor without touching Jackson or disturbing a single line. “Timing matches.”

I nodded, my thumb resting beneath Jackson’s knuckles.

“If you speak to him again,” he said carefully, “we can see whether it repeats.”

“No.”

The refusal came quietly. Final, rather than defensive.

He studied me for half a second, reading more in my stillness than I had given him in words. Then he straightened and stepped back. “All right.”