Page 23 of Seven Minutes
I pressed a hand over his, careful to avoid the IV lines. His skin was warm. Too warm. A fever heat that whispered of the body fighting back, refusing to surrender.
The guilt came in waves. First quiet, then sharp, then overwhelming.
I saw our last argument clearer than any physical thing in the room. The sound of my voice too loud, the edge of exhaustion in his.
“You don’t take care of yourself,” he accused. “You act like you’re indestructible, but you’re not. One day?—”
“One day, what?” I’d shot back. “One day I’ll die of bad habits and stress? Newsflash, Eli, that’s literally all of us.”
He’d gone quiet then, jaw set, eyes dark. “You’re already halfway there.”
And then I’d walked out.
Of course, he’d been right, but it was easier to ignore the truth.
I reached up and brushed his hair from his forehead, just like he used to do for me when I’d fall asleep on the couch after a double shift. The strands clung to my fingers, damp from where a nursing assistant had washed the blood out.
“Remember when we thought forever meant something simple?” I murmured. “You’d cook pasta, I’d burn garlic bread, and somehow we called it domestic bliss.” I let out a choked laugh. “God, we were idiots. Happy idiots.”
My throat closed around my next breath. The machine filled the silence for me, cold and efficient.
I leaned closer, forehead resting against the mattress beside his arm. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For every time I made you feel small. For every night I didn’t come home. For every time I thought saving strangers mattered more than being with you.”
The words poured out like a confession—quiet, desperate, and unfiltered.
“I thought I had time,” I said. “We always think we have time.”
I didn’t notice Mara until she touched my shoulder. Her voice was soft. “You should get some rest.”
I shook my head. “If I sleep, I’ll lose him again.”
She hesitated. “He’s stable. You need to be too.”
But I stayed.
Hours passed that felt like days. Nurses came and went, changing fluids, checking monitors, whispering updates I barely heard. I traced the pulse point on his wrist over and over, needing the reassurance of that faint, stubborn rhythm.
At some point, dawn started to creep through the blinds, brushing the room in muted shades of pink. I realized I hadn’t blinked in too long, hadn’t breathed properly since he arrived here.
“Hey,” I said again, voice frayed to nothing. “If you can hear me… You have to come back. You hear me? You don’t get to leave me here with all this.”
The sunlight touched his cheek. For a second, I thought I saw movement. A twitch. A breath that wasn’t machine-made.
I heldmine and waited.
But the room remained still.
And so I stayed, too.
The nurse came back around noon with a sandwich. Turkey on white, no crusts, as if I were five, and she was humoring a child.
“Eat something,” she said gently, setting it beside me.
I nodded but didn’t touch it.
The bread went stale. Hours bled together. The hum of the ventilator became a second pulse inside my skull.
Eventually, I stood. Sat. Stood again. My body couldn’t seem to decide what to do with itself. I ran a hand through my hair until it stood on end, until my scalp burned, until I realized my fingers were shaking.
