Chapter 331: Hospital Visit
CYAN
I turned my head, glaring at him through the shadows.
The urgency was rising inside my ribs like water pressing against a cracking levee, making my fingers twitch against my trousers.
I wanted to scream at him to move, to tell him that every second we stood here was a second I wasn’t next to Cassian.
Reginald didn’t blink.
He stood in the doorway, his arms folded loosely behind his back, his expression entirely calm.
He was the only thing in my entire life that had outlasted every single version of my panic, and he wasn’t going to move an inch now.
"Fine," I snapped, turning the brass handles of the shower until the water began to roar against the tile.
The black town car tore through the gray streets of the city, the tires humming hard against the wet asphalt.
I sat in the back corner, my body pressed into the leather cushion, while Reginald sat perfectly straight beside me.
Up front, the driver was weaving through the delivery trucks, finding every shortcut he could.
My right knee wouldn’t stop bouncing. It moved up and down in a frantic, restless rhythm against the seat, the kinetic energy of a body that had been trapped in a small dark box for too long and had suddenly been given a single, burning direction.
I could feel everything at once now, the sensory overload hitting me in a chaotic rush that made my teeth ache.
There was relief... a pure, physical ache that hurt my ribs because it was releasing a coil of terror that had been twisted tight for nearly a month.
He was alive. The world hadn’t ended on that dock.
But right behind the relief came the guilt, thick and suffocating. I could still see the dark water under the piers.
I could still feel the cold tiles of the hospital floor where I had completely fallen apart while they were wheeled him into surgery, showing everyone how useless I was when the stakes were real.
I remembered Nick finding me like a broken toy, and the deep, stinging cuts I had made on my skin just to keep from screaming out loud in the corridor.
And beneath all of that, living in the lowest part of my stomach, was the fear I couldn’t look at directly.
It was the old, terrible knowledge that Cassian being alive didn’t mean he belonged to me. It had never meant that. It never would.
I turned my face toward the glass, watching the dirty brick buildings of the city blur past. "Reggie."
"Sir," he answered without moving his head.
"Do you think he—" I started, the words catching in my throat. I stopped, swallowed hard, and tried again. "Never mind. It doesn’t matter."
Reginald didn’t say a word. His silence was its own familiar comfort, an acknowledgment that some questions didn’t have answers that would make the drive any easier.
The concrete towers of the medical center finally rose out of the gray mist ahead.
Before the driver had even brought the heavy car to a complete stop against the yellow curb, my fingers were already wrapped around the chrome door handle, pulling it back until the cold air rushed into the cabin.
"Sir—" Reginald started.
I was already out. My boots hit the pavement while the car was still rolling, my balance faltering for a split second before I straightened my spine and sprinted toward the wide glass doors of the main entrance.
I moved through the crowded lobby the way I moved through every obstacle that stood between myself and something I desperately required... without looking at a single face.
The bright lights, the smell of rubbing alcohol, and the low murmur of voices blurred into a gray smear as I pushed past the visitors.
The elevator was sitting on the ground floor, its doors closing too slowly, its mechanical hum feeling like an intentional delay.
I turned on my heel and took the concrete stairs instead, taking them two at a time, my lungs burning as I lunged up three flights.
My physical body wasn’t struggling; it was the rest of me, the frantic machinery of my mind, that was tearing itself to pieces trying to get to the end of the hall.
My thoughts were running miles ahead of my boots, flashing in a rapid, painful sequence.
I saw Cassian falling in my arms. I saw the bright red ink of his name written on the surgical schedule board.
I remembered the hours I spent lying flat on the floor outside the double doors, and the dry, confident sound of Nick’s voice saying he’ll wake within forty-eight hours.
It had felt like a wager back then, a careless dismissal from a doctor who didn’t understand that Cassian was my entire universe. Or maybe it had been something else. Something softer.
I shoved Nick’s face out of my head with a vicious mental twist. Irrelevant. Not now.
I hit the heavy double doors of the third floor, my shoes skidding on the green linoleum.
This was the private wing. The two guards stationed outside the corner room recognized me immediately, their expressions tightening as they stepped aside to clear the path.
The wooden door was right in front of me now. It was the single point I had been moving toward for three weeks, the only place in the world where the air might actually make sense again.
I reached out, my hand hovering an inch above the cold brass handle.
Before I turned the metal, I leaned forward and looked through the small, rectangular pane of thick glass set into the center of the wood.
It was an old, defensive instinct... the need to see what lay inside a room before my body crossed the threshold.
I expected to see the same medical stillness I had left behind.
I expected Cassian to be pale, swallowed by white sheets, surrounded by the slow, mechanical pulse of the monitors.
Instead, he was sitting up. He wasn’t lying back against the pillows; his legs were swung over the edge of the mattress, his bare feet hovering just above the floorboards.
His posture was already returning to that rigid, dominant shape I knew by heart... the posture of a man who took up every inch of a room without ever apologizing for the space he occupied.
And he was smiling.
The sight of it made my fingers freeze instantly against the brass handle.
It wasn’t the weak, exhausted expression of a patient recovering from a massive trauma. It was the real one.
The rare, brilliant smile that reached all the way to his blue eyes, the one I had only seen a handful of times in all the years I had spent trailing behind his shoulder. It was a look of genuine, unshielded warmth.
And it was directed entirely at Noah.
