“Four hours? He’s been awake in this place for four hours, and nobody—?” She stops. I hear her breath catch. She’s seen me through the glass. “Oh, God. Rafael.”
Her palm hits the glass from the other side.
I feel it through my hand, the faint vibration of her palm meeting the surface where my forehead is pressed. The glass separates us by maybe two inches. I can feel the warmth of her hand through the barrier, or I imagine I can.
“I’m here,” she says. Then louder, pressing close to the glass so her voice carries through. “I’m right here. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.” My voice is barely mine, but the word comes out.
“Look at me. Can you see me?”
“Glass is dark. Can’t see.”
“Okay. Okay.” Her voice steadies itself. The healer taking over from the woman. “I’m going to get them to open the intercom so we don’t have to shout. Just…stay there. Keep your hand on the glass.”
I hear her turn. “Open the intercom. Now.”
“Ma’am, the protocols say—”
“Open. The intercom.”
A click. The room changes, the sealed silence cracking open as the speaker activates, and suddenly her breathing is in the room with me. Close. Real. Not filtered through glass and concrete.
“Rafael.”
Her voice, clear and unmediated, lets me breathe again. The wolf goes quiet. Not calm…quieted. The shaking in my hands eases. The shift stops flickering. My jaw settles back to human.
“I’m here,” she says. “I’m sorry it took so long. They made me wait. I’m here now.”
“I know.” I press my palm harder against the glass. On the other side, I can feel hers pressing back. “I can feel you.”
“Your hands,” she says. Her voice changes, the healer reading damage through a wall. “You hit the glass.”
“Once. Twice.” A pause. “I didn’t break it.”
“No. You didn’t.” There’s something in her voice that I can’t read through the speaker. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Rafael. Are you hurt?”
“My hands are fine. My head is—” I stop. Try again. “The room is hard. Too white. The smell. It’s…” I press my forehead against the glass. “It’s the same.”
“I know it is. I told them. I’m going to get you out of there.”
“Sable.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t leave.”
The speaker is quiet for a moment. Then her voice, lower, the woman and the healer both in the same word: “I’m not going anywhere.”
I keep my hand on the glass. The speaker carries every breath she takes, every small shift in her voice, while the monitors translate me into numbers behind my back: heart rate dropping, brain activity evening out, resonance still elevated but no longer spiking.
The cameras see bloodied knuckles, a cracked window, a wolf who was climbing the walls an hour ago and is now standing still because a woman on the other side of the glass told him she was here.
They’ll put that in the file. They’ll note the correlation.
