Eventually, when the doctors are confident that Luke’s made the positive upswing necessary to be taken off the ventilator, they slowly begin the process of weaning him off it. It takes a full day after that before they extract the breathing tube. And when Luke blessedly keeps breathing on his own without the support, I could cry with happiness. I never thought I’d be more pleased to hear his soft snoring in my entire life.
Watching the entire process is nerve-wracking, a little bit scary, but also morbidly fascinating. It’s a good sign—a step toward Luke’s recovery, one I cling to with everything I have.
They take him off of the sedatives, but he remains unconscious as they finally move him to a private room upstairs and out of the ICU. He’s completely unaware as a new string of nurses come in to continually check his vitals and blood levels. Waiting for him to wake up might be the next worst thing I’ve ever had to experience. As the minutes tick to hours, it almost feels like he’ll never wake up.
The doctors say it’s unlikely he’ll have complications but that it’s not out of the realm of possibility. If he stays asleep for too long, it might be a sign of underlying issues. They assure me they’re monitoring it, and I have no reason not to trust them.
But in the private room, away from the hustle and bustle of activity in the ICU to keep me awake, my exhaustion creeps up on me like a thief in the night, and I find myself having a hard time keeping my eyes open while I wait. Days of terrible sleep weigh me down, the quiet acting like a heavy blanket over my frazzled senses.
With the chair pulled over to the side of his bed, I take his hand and put my head down on his legs, telling myself I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes. If only my body agreed.
Chapter Forty-Six
Closure
“Ethan.”
The sound of my name being called claws at the back of my brain with significance, but my eyelids are too heavy to open on command. My body is too heavy, frozen in a kind of sleep paralysis, just without all the fear that I’m being possessed by a demon. Instead, the feeling is comfortable.Warm.
“Ethan,” the voice calls again, and god,I know that voice. I’m simply too tired to put it to a face. My thoughts are sluggish with exhaustion.
I feel a hand in my hair, long fingers brushing through the strands in soft circles. It’s soothing and gentle—having the exact opposite effect of drawing me awake. I want to sleep forever with the tenderness behind that caress. Something about it resonates through my soul, the touch desperately welcomed.
In a recessed corner of my semi-conscious brain, there is a spark of recognition—a growing urgency to understand why this moment is important. Why this action has meaning. So, with a herculean effort, I force my eyes open, barely more than a sliver, and look up into the blinding light of day.
Pale sapphire eyes meet mine, and the sweetest smile on the only lips I want to kiss for the rest of my life hits me with full force. “Hi, baby.”
I snap up so quickly that I startle both of us. Luke’s eyes widen with shock as he watches me pop up from the chair, only to lose balance, my leg having fallen asleep sometime over the night. I have to grip the edge of the bed to keep from falling to the floor, but the pins and needles shooting through me are worth it becauseLuke is awake. He’s okay.
There’s no time for thought—no time to question my movements as I rush forward, taking Luke’s face in my hands, reveling in the sensation of touching him. He smiles at me, tears in his eyes, and then our lips are connected in a frenzy.
It’s like witnessing the Big Bang starting over, but in slow motion, the cosmos, galaxies, stars, and planets coming to new life in this single, colossal moment. It’s the feeling of reaching that part in every romance novel where the hero finally gets their happy ending after pages worth of struggle, and the meaning behind every sappy lyric of every love song ever written coming together to form the most megalithic surge of joy a human could possibly experience. There simply aren’twordsto describe it.
And the way Luke grips my hair in his right hand, holding me as close to him as possible, I know he feels it as acutely as I do. He’s crying now, the salty taste of his tears on my tongue, and I revel in that, too. Because he’s alive and awake andhere.He’s okay.He’s okay!
We stay with our foreheads together for a long moment before he takes a deep, shuddering breath, and I pull away to see his face more clearly. That beautiful,perfectface. I was so afraid I’d never see his sparkling azure eyes again that I never want to look away from them. And being the sole focus of his attention sends the most welcome shiver down my spine.
“Is this like a weird hobby for you?” Luke suddenly asks with a raspy chuckle. His voice is a little raw from the ventilator, but it’s still sweet music to my ears.
“What?” I frown, brushing a tear from his cheek with my thumb.
“Rescuing people?”
I bark a laugh, the echo of words spoken so long ago that it feels like a lifetime gone by. A moment that’s come full circle. My answering smile takes over my whole face.
“Only for you, my little crisis fiend. Always for you.”
“You and your fancy words.” Luke gives me a little pout with just a touch of his signature sass. I’ll catalog all these little quirks I nearly lost forever for as long as I live.
“God, I love you,” I say, the words barely scratching the surface of the sentiment.
Luke’s eyes widen slightly at the admission, almost like he forgot how I spilled my heart all over him while he was bleeding out on the kitchen floor. Maybe he has. How could anyone be expected to remember something like that in the middle of something so terrifying? But then he smiles like this is more of a confirmation that it really happened and wasn’t part of a fever dream.
“About damn time you said it back,” he sighs, dropping his head against the pillows. It’s the first time I notice how tired he looks.
“Said it back?” I frown.
“I’ve been waiting for you to say it for weeks.”
