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“Stay with us,” a doctor said. A doctor? Maybe a doctor. I’d never heard his voice before.
My plan was to respond, to offer some affirmation I could keep fighting, but even summoning the energy for a simple nod felt like scaling a mountain. It was almost comical, too pathetic even for my own dark sense of humor. Here I was, a master of weapons and combat, undone by my own body. If there was anything I despised more than my helplessness, it was the irony of it all.
The doctor - whoever he was - continued barking orders while I hovered in the limbo between consciousness and oblivion. His voice sounded frantic, but maybe that was just the morphine. Or the blood loss. Or the overwhelming fear that I might never see Sofia again.
I'd barely registered what had happened when I first saw Sofia taken her father. The shock and denial came first, followed by anger and guilt. I'd replayed that moment in my mind countless times since then, each time more vivid than the last.
Every facial expression, every cry for help, every desperate plea that echoed through the emptiness. Every slice of the knife, every drop of blood. Each replay was a fresh punch to the gut, each time my sense of failure grew deeper, my will to fight stronger.
I had told her I would protect her. That I would never let anything happen to her. The realization that I had failed was as painful as the gash in my side. I had been so smug in my certainty, so confident in my abilities. Sofia trusted me.
A sour taste clawed at the back of my throat. I had failed them - failed Sofia when she needed me most. That fact gnawed at me with a ferocity that made the physical pain seem bearable. No, not bearable - irrelevant.
Suddenly it dawned on me, the brutal reality of what giving up would mean. It'd be surrendering to my wounds, letting go of the promise I’d made Sofia. I'd become just another distant memory in her life, another name she would remember with a bitter-sweet ache on lonely nights. And who would protect her if I wasn’t around? How could they?
The pain sizzled at my side again. My bloodied hands clutched at the cold steel of the hospital gurney. That feeling, the sharp sting, it reminded me I was alive. Alive and still capable of fighting.
With a titanic effort, I forced one eye open. The harsh fluorescent lights of the ER pierced my retinas, sending waves of pain crashing through my skull.
And then the morphine kicked in.
And the world slipped away.
I woke with a start, gasping for air as though I'd been submerged underwater. The harsh fluorescent lights assaulted my eyes as they fluttered open, sending jolts of pain straight through to the back of my skull. The room spun around me in a disorienting whirl of white and pastel green. For a moment, I had no idea where I was or what had happened.
Then it all came tumbling back.
“Sofia."
Her name ripped from my throat in a hoarse whisper, barely audible over the incessant beeping of the heart monitor next to me. My heart pounded in my chest, echoing the frenzied rhythm of the machine.
A nurse bustled into the room at the sound, her face pinched with concern as she glanced at the monitor before turning to me. "Easy there, you're okay."
The words washed over me without sinking in. Everything slowly came back into focus, the sterile smell of the hospital, the piercing whiteness of the room, and the dull ache at my side. My hand instinctively moved to touch the wound but was halted by thick bandages. An IV line trailed from my arm, its rhythmic drip bringing more pain relief coursing into my veins.
"I'm okay? Really?" I rasped out, the cruel irony not lost on me.
The nurse had a comforting smile on her face, but her eyes told a different story. “Well, you’re alive.”
“What about the guys I came in with?”
“I can’t say much,” she replied. “But you’re all getting out of here in one piece.”
My eyelids felt heavy as I blinked back at her. The morphine was doing its job, wrapping me in a haze of detached confusion. It was a relief to know that the others were alive, but there was someone else...someone more important.
"Thank you," I murmured, my voice raspy and hoarse. She gave me a curt nod before bustling out of the room once again, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I stared at the ceiling, its stark whiteness searing into my eyes. The pain was less now, more of a dull throbbing sensation than the searing agony from before. I was alive - that was something. That meant I had another chance to set things right.
I couldn’t stay here for too long. I heard footsteps approaching me and opened my eyes. Grayson stood over me – face paler than the hospital sheets, eyes haunted. “Teo,” he said, and his voice was gravely, like a man who hadn’t slept in days. He wore a hospital bracelet around his wrist and his bloodied face had been washed.
I tried to sit up, but an unseen hand pressed me back down to the bed. “Relax,” he said. “You shouldn’t get up.”
“Jace? Sam?”
“Sam’s out of surgery, he looks like shit but he’s fine,” he said. “Jace just needed some stitches. You…”
His voice trailed off, and he swallowed, his gaze looking past me. I followed his line of sight to my bandaged torso. There was a pause, brief, yet filled with unspoken words. I couldn’t figure out if it was good or bad news, but his silence spoke volumes.
