Blood Ties

Chapter9

Levi

I don't leave the hospital.

I tell myself it's because someone should be here when she wakes up — if she wakes up — but the truth is I don't trust the space she's been left in. Too many doors. Too many people who don't know what to look for.

They say she's stable.

They always say that, like the word means safe.

I sit where I can see the corridor and the room at the same time, back against the wall, arms folded tight across my chest. The lights hum overhead. Somewhere nearby, a machine keeps a rhythm that isn't mine.

She hasn't moved.

I try not to think about the amount of blood on the sand. About how still she was when I found her. About the sound she made when they lifted her — low and broken, like her body didn't recognise itself anymore.

I replay it anyway.

She didn't show up when she was supposed to.

That was the first wrong thing.

A small thing. Easy to dismiss.

Except she isn't careless like that.

I went looking because no one else would have noticed yet. Because I knew where she liked to go when she needed space. Because something in my gut wouldn't let it go.

The beach was almost empty when I got there. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that presses in on you, makes your skin prickle. I saw her before I understood what I was seeing.

Her name is written on the board outside the room. Black marker. Block letters. Reduced to something clinical and flat.

It doesn't suit her.

A nurse passes and glances at me twice. Suspicious. Curious. I don't give her anything to read. I've learned that much, at least.

People talk when they think you're not listening.

"She's lucky," someone says.

"Knife missed anything vital," another replies.

"Someone must've cared enough to call it in."

Lucky.

I don't feel lucky. I feel like something unfinished is sitting in my chest, tight and restless. Like a sentence cut off mid-word.

I rub my hands together, scrubbing at skin that still feels dirty no matter how many times I wash it. I can't shake the image of her eyes opening on the beach — unfocused, glassy — locking onto my face like I was the last thing tethering her to the world.

That look stays with you.

A doctor says she's still unconscious. Says it could be hours. Days. Says to prepare for confusion when she wakes.

When, not if.

I cling to that harder than I should.

Someone asks how I know her.

I tell them I was there.

That seems to satisfy them.

They don't ask why.

The waiting stretches, elastic and cruel. I watch shadows move across the floor. Listen to footsteps slow near her door, then continue on. Every sound feels like a test I don't know the rules for.

I think about what happens if she wakes up and remembers.

I think about what happens if she doesn't.

Neither option feels clean.

There's a part of me — quiet, buried — that resents the people hovering now. The concern. The attention. Like she hasn't spent most of her life unseen. Like she hasn't learned how to disappear better than anyone I've ever met.

They didn't earn this moment.

I did.

The thought slips in uninvited, sharp enough to make me sit up straighter. I force my breathing to slow, my face to settle back into something neutral. Concerned. Appropriate.

Normal.

I glance at the door again.

She's still there. Still breathing. Still out of reach.

Good.

For now.