Chapter 21
Jul 18, 2025
Hospitals weren’t built for hearts like mine.
They were built for quiet tragedies, for machines that beeped like they were counting down the seconds you didn’t know you were losing. The walls were too white. The lights too bright. And the air smelled like lemon cleaner and hopelessness.
I sat in the waiting room for ten minutes before someone realized I wasn’t going anywhere. My hoodie sleeves were soaked through from my palms. I hadn’t cried, not really, but something in me had unraveled on the car ride over and now I couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe without shaking.
The nurse at the desk glanced up, then down at her screen like seeing me hurt. “Room 204,” she said. “Down the left hall. First right.”
I walked like I was sleepwalking. My shoes barely made a sound against the tile, but inside, everything screamed. Every breath, every heartbeat, every thought that came rushing in too fast to name.
When I reached his door, I paused. My hand hovered just over the handle. If I walked in and he was asleep, I didn’t know if I could take it. If he was awake, I didn’t know if he’d want to see me.
But I went in anyway.
The room was still. A monitor beeped quietly beside the bed. The blinds were half drawn, slicing sunlight into thin gray lines that didn’t quite touch his face. And there he was.
Chase Donovan.
My chaos. My fire. My hurricane. Lying in a hospital bed with bandages wrapped around both wrists.
He didn’t look broken. That’s what scared me. He looked numb.
I stepped closer, one breath at a time. “Chase?”
No response. Not a flicker.
I moved to the side of the bed, careful not to make noise, and looked at him like maybe I could will him back to life. His eyes were open, staring at a spot on the ceiling like it held answers to questions I wasn’t allowed to ask. His lips were chapped. His skin paler than I’d ever seen it. But his chest rose. Steady. Real.
“Hey,” I tried again, softer this time. “It’s me.”
Nothing. Just a blink.
I sat in the chair by his side. My knees bumped the metal. My fingers clenched the edge of the cushion like maybe the right kind of stillness could pull him back to me.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. “I didn’t think—I mean, I said things, but I didn’t think they would… stick like that.”
Still nothing. Just the machine keeping rhythm. Just the silence that always meant more than words ever could.
I was about to speak again when the door creaked open. I turned, expecting a nurse. But it was her. Chase’s mom.
I stood fast. My throat went dry. I didn’t know what to say. I braced for impact. For blame. For the cold snap of a woman who needed someone to scream at.
But instead… she hugged me.
Her arms wrapped around me like I was something fragile, something necessary. Like maybe I was the only thing left that still tethered her son to the world.
“Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “He won’t talk to me.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. I barely nodded.
She pulled away and looked at me like she already knew. Like she saw through the eyeliner and the attitude to the girl who loved her son even when she didn’t know how to say it.
“I’ll give you two a minute,” she said gently, stepping out and closing the door behind her.
When I sat again, my hand found the edge of the blanket. I didn’t touch him. I just stared at the pulse in his throat, the way it fluttered like a bird caught in a net.
“I’m not good at this,” I told him. “I ruin things. I get scared and I bite and I say things I don’t mean. But you—Chase, you were never nothing.”
His eyes flicked to mine then. Just for a second. Just long enough to hurt.
I leaned forward, voice cracking. “I texted. I called. I wanted you to yell at me. To say something. Anything.”
And finally, finally, he did.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
