After the echo

Ophelia the regret

It had been seven days. Seven days of burnt hospital coffee, sleepless nights, and the same beige-tiled hallway that led to Room 406. Seven days of watching Lucas lie still, the steady beeping of machines pretending to be his heartbeat, the hiss of a ventilator stealing the sound of his breath. Seven days of Bane, too. Not always here, but when he was, it was like gravity worked differently.

He came with black coffee and quiet shoulders, wearing the same worn hoodie and steel-cut gaze, and he didn’t ask questions. He didn’t speak unless I did, didn’t flinch when I cried, didn’t look away when I didn’t cry at all. But lately, he started vanishing for hours at a time. At first, I told myself it was normal. People needed breaks from tragedy. But each time he left, he came back looking… smaller. Not just tired. Not just stressed. Something else I couldn’t name.Today, the clock ticked past six before I saw him again.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked without meaning to sound so sharp. My voice had edges I didn’t recognize lately. “Nowhere important,” he said. The lie fell flat between us. I turned back to Lucas. His chest rose and fell with the help of a machine. His hand in mine was warm, but still. I squeezed, as I did every day, hoping for something. A twitch. A sign. Anything. But there was only the sound of air and waiting. “You’ve been disappearing a lot,” I said after a while. Bane leaned against the wall near the window. “And you’ve been sleeping in a plastic chair next to a man who can’t hear you. We’re both making dumb choices.” I didn’t laugh, but the line of my mouth softened. That was how it had always been with Bane. Sharp truths, dull delivery. A dry brand of comfort only he could manage. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His hoodie was damp from rain, clinging to his arms. He looked thinner. Paler. His cheekbones had sharpened since last week. “Do you remember the first time we met?” I asked quietly. His head tilted. “In the library. Eleventh grade.”

“You spilled orange soda on my notebook,” I said.“You called me a delinquent.” “You were a delinquent,” I smiled. “You smelled like cigarettes and arrogance.” He gave a soft laugh. “And you smelled like lavender and judgment.” I looked back at Lucas, but I wasn’t really seeing him. My mind had slipped into the warm glow of memory, the kind of memory that sneaks in when you’re too tired to guard the doors. I remembered Bane with a black eye and a crooked smile, slipping me a note in the middle of a history exam because he was bored. I remembered the first time he kissed me under the bleachers, all fire and fear and everything I wasn’t supposed to want.

“You used to scare me,” I said. “Good,” he replied. “You scared me too.” I traced a circle with my thumb against Lucas’s palm. “Do you remember the night I told you I loved you?” Bane went still. “Yeah.” “You didn’t say it back.” “I wasn’t ready.” “You were never ready.”

He didn’t argue. He sat in the chair beside me, elbows on knees, fingers laced. “You were always too good for me. I knew it even then.” “That’s not what I wanted.” “Didn’t matter. I ruined it anyway.”There it was. The honesty we never touched for long. I turned to him. “I wanted you to fight for me. I waited. Even after I married Lucas, some stupid part of me still hoped you’d show up one day and say it wasn’t too late.” He looked at the floor. “I did show up. The night before your wedding.” My heart slowed. “What?” “I stood outside your hotel room. I had this whole speech ready. I never knocked.” “Why?” “Because when I imagined you turning me away, it broke something in me I didn’t know how to fix.” I swallowed hard. “So you let me go.” “I thought I was doing the right thing.” “Then why are you here now?” His eyes finally met mine. “Because letting you go didn’t work.” I stared at him, anger and tenderness colliding in my chest. The silence between us pulsed like a bruise. Lucas’s monitor beeped steadily. The room smelled like bleach and fading hope.

I pressed my forehead to the edge of the bed, trying to steady myself. My fingers still held Lucas’s hand, but the warmth in my chest was coming from somewhere else. Someone else. “This shouldn’t be happening,” I whispered. “To him. To me. To us.” “I know.” I looked back at Bane. “You’re here, and I’m leaning on you like I shouldn’t, and I don’t even know who I am right now.” “You’re someone going through hell,” he said softly. “And I’m just trying to keep you from burning.” “I thought I hated you.”

“Maybe you did. But you loved me first.” I looked down at the man I married, then over at the man I never stopped loving in ways I couldn’t admit out loud. I stood abruptly and walked to the window, crossing my arms. The rain had started again. A slow, steady patter on the glass. “We had something real,” I said. “I know.” “So why didn’t we make it work?” He didn’t answer right away. I turned around, heart hammering, throat tight. “Tell me,” I said. “Why didn’t we end up together?” Bane sat frozen, the question lingering in the air like smoke. He opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say, he swallowed it.

His voice, when it finally came, was so low I almost missed it. “Because I didn’t think I deserved you. And I think… some part of me still doesn’t.” My chest cracked open. All the years. All the fights. All the silence and ache and almosts. They spilled out in that moment like water from a dam. I sank into the chair beside him, burying my face in my hands. And for the first time since the crash, I cried, not for Lucas. Not just for Lucas. I cried for everything Bane and I could’ve been. And everything we still might