Luke sits in a hard plastic chair outside Sal’s hospital room. Head dipped low, hands cupped around the back of his neck.
Everything and everyone tuned out.
Except Sal.
The fear of losing her punches him so hard he can barely breathe. Can barely utter a word to the friends and family who’ve arrived hours ago. They stand around, shocked and angry. Waiting on news about Sal right along with Luke.
Luke barely looks toward them. Numbness has settled around him like a lead weight. He’s in disbelief and rage at what’s happened in his own home. At what’s happened to his wife.
Not now, he thinks. She can’t be taken from him again. Not when she’s been through so much. Not when they’ve made it back to each other and then some. He closes his eyes at the image of Sal, still unconscious, being delicately loaded onto a stretcher. Her breathing ragged and halting. The siren of the ambulance as it screamed its way to the hospital.
He sits up slowly, frustration roiling through him.
Seth stops his pacing. His eyes flicker to Luke, sorrow shining in their depths.
Ripping a hand through his hair, Luke surveys the empty hallway. “I’m gonna lose my damn mind if I don’t hear somethin’ soon.”
A small noise from beside him.
Lacey sits with her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes closed—still closed, have been closed all this time. She nods. “I am going to kill someone.” She’s shaking.
Seth puts a hand on Lacey’s knee, squeezes reassuringly, and nods to Luke. “Let’s get some coffee.”
His jaw clenches. He doesn’t want coffee. He wants to know how his wife is, doesn’t want to leave her side for fear of missing anything, but Seth’s giving him a look, so he exhales and pushes himself out of the chair.
They walk the few short steps down to the vending machine. Seth drops a few coins in and presses an order for a cup of tepid coffee.
Silently, Jace appears, his hands in his pockets as he watches Luke carefully.
“She’s gonna be okay,” Seth says quietly. But there’s a tremor in his voice. One that betrays his doubt. One that says he’s scared shitless.
“She fought,” Luke says, his chest straining. “She fought like hell. But she ain’t indestructible. She’s ...”
His voice breaks. The words linger unfinished. He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. To think about the thousands of things that could be wrong with Sal.
Hot tears blur his eyes but he shakes his head. He can’t fall apart now.
Sal’s lived again and again and again. This won’t take her down. Not this.
Jace, his voice thick, asks. “Are you okay? You got a dead man at your house, Luke.”
Seth shoots Jace a harsh look of warning, but Luke knows his best friend is only stating the obvious. Sal killed someone—to save herself, to save Luke. It was her battle with Roy, and even as hurt as she was, she would not go quietly, and she would not give up. Only a person as remarkable as Sal could do that. It’s her strength that Luke cleaves to, here and now, to get him through, to give him that last push of wild, desperate hope that everything will be okay.
It has to be. Because if this is her end, it’s Luke’s as well.
“Luke.”
They all glance over.
Lacey’s standing, her hands clasped to her chest. The doctor beside her.
Luke stops breathing.
He doesn’t move. He can’t.
Beside him, Seth and Jace place steadying hands on his shoulders.
Then Lacey smiles. And she laughs, and she laughs, and she laughs.