NICK

It was an hour later. I was in the corridor, my coat on, my keys heavy in my hand. I was heading toward the exit.

That was the plan. I told myself I was leaving because the surgery was a success, the patient was stable, and my professional obligations had been fulfilled.

Whatever was happening in the waiting room was not my department. It was not my problem. It was certainly not my concern.

Naturally, I took the longer route to the parking structure. The route that passed the waiting room. I told myself it was a matter of floor-plan efficiency..

I didn’t question it. I could have, but that would have required acknowledging the small, persistent awareness sitting at the back of my mind, the one that hadn’t quite let go of him since the operating room.

So I ignored it.

The waiting room was exactly as I expected: sterile, uncomfortable, and filled with the low hum of shared misery. Cyan was there.

He wasn’t on the floor anymore; he was in a chair, which was technically an improvement. But the rest of him was a disaster.

The blood on his clothes had completely turned into a dark, crusty map of someone else’s trauma.

His hair was still that loud, absurd pink, recognizable from across the lobby even under the dim night lights. It made him impossible to ignore.

Not that I needed the help.

My gaze found him immediately. It lingered a fraction longer than necessary before I shifted it away, then back again without meaning to.

His head was hanging. His posture was that of a man who had stopped holding himself up several hours ago.

People were staring. There is a specific discomfort in a waiting room when someone doesn’t fit the expected presentation of "concerned family member."

He looked like a participant in whatever violence had occurred, not a witness.

A nurse was hovering near him, her body language suggesting she was attempting to be helpful and failing miserably. She hovered near him, speaking softly, her tone careful, uncertain. She shifted her weight, tried again, failed again.

I stopped. I stood in the corridor and looked at the scene longer than I wanted to. I felt a sharp prick of irritation... at the nurse, at the staring strangers, at Cyan, and mostly at myself for stopping. There was something else beneath it... A feeling...

I didn’t like that part.

I sighed and went in.

"I’ll handle it," I said to the nurse. The authority in my voice was reflexive. She looked relieved and vanished instantly.

Up close, it was worse. The faint metallic scent of dried blood lingered beneath the antiseptic air. He hadn’t reacted to my presence. Not even when I stopped directly in front of him.

I stood in front of Cyan, looking down at the top of his head. He didn’t look up.

"Are you injured?" I asked. It was clinical. Direct. It was the appropriate first question for a doctor to ask a person covered in blood.

Nothing. Not even a twitch of the fingers.

"You should get cleaned up," I added. Also direct. Also appropriate.

Still nothing. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

My grip tightened slightly around my keys. The irritation sharpened... but it wasn’t clean anymore.

It dragged with it that same unwanted awareness, the one that had followed me out of the operating room and into this corridor.

This was not what I expected. This was not the person I had been—

I stopped the thought.

I finished it internally anyway. This is not the person who hit me in front of XUM that day. That person had been vivid, colorful, sharp, and dangerous.

This person was a hollowed-out shell. I didn’t question why... didn’t question why I was still standing here... Why I even cared so much.

I raised my voice slightly. Not a shout, just a firmer register. "You’re making everyone in this room uncomfortable. You look like a crime scene, which you may actually be. Either way, you’re not helping yourself or anyone else by sitting here like this."

He looked up then. Finally. His eyes were the same color it had been back the but somehow a dull, flat purple.

It was the specific dullness of eyes that had once held a great deal of light and currently held none. He looked at me. He looked through me, partially, but not with the total vacancy of the hallway.

"I’m not leaving," he said. His voice was flat. Quiet. There was no performance in it, no wit, no mask. "I’m not going anywhere."

"You’re covered in blood," I countered. "You look like you might faint. And you’re scaring the other patients."

"I don’t care," he said. He said it like it was a fact about the world, like gravity or the weather. It wasn’t a choice; it was a state of being.

I stared at him. The irritation had several layers now. The top layer was the situation. Below that was something I refused to look at.

I tried a different approach. It required setting aside my irritation, which felt like a physical weight.

"He’s stable," I said. I said it differently this time, stripped of the clinical distance I’d used with Charles. "I operated on him. I know his condition better than anyone in this building right now. He’s going to wake up."

Something small shifted in his eyes. A fraction of the dullness receded. I caught it.

"He needs recovery time," I continued. "Not an audience. Not someone scaring the night staff. He needs to be left alone to do the work of recovering."

"I’m not leaving until he wakes up," Cyan said. The same way. Flat. Final.

"Then security will remove you."

"They can try."

We exchanged a look. I knew then that it wasn’t a bluff. This was a person who had been through something tonight that made a hospital security guard seem like a minor inconvenience at best. He would fight them, and it would be a mess. A mess I didn’t want to deal with.

I ran the calculation. The chaos, the disturbed patients, the paperwork, the late hour.

"Fine," I said. "I’ll make you a bet." It cost me something to say it. Doctors don’t make bets.

Cyan’s eyes shifted again. Something flickered.

"Cassian will be awake within forty-eight hours," I said. "I’m staking my professional assessment on it. If I’m wrong, you can stay in this hospital until he walks out himself. If I’m right, you leave now. Come back in forty-eight hours."