“Your brain had other priorities.”
“No room.”
“I know.”
His words were becoming harder to understand.
“We’ll make room together.”
He gave a tired nod.
I covered him with a blanket.
“Sleep here. I’ll move you when you wake.”
“Stay?”
“I need five minutes downstairs.”
His fingers tightened.
I remembered the morning.
“I’m going to the office,” I said. “Owen is in the north bay. Marlowe is beside you. I will come back before the next medication alarm.”
Noah opened his eye enough to focus on me.
“You’ll whistle?”
“Yes.”
He released my wrist.
I kissed his forehead.
At the stairwell, I gave the signal.
Two short notes.
One long.
Noah’s mouth curved without his eye opening.
His answer was a breath too soft to form a whistle.
“I’m here.”
I went downstairs.
Caleb waited in my office beside a stack of unpaid invoices and a box of relay assemblies from Harbor Supply.
“You got them.”
“Ben agreed to thirty days.”
“On whose account?”
“The yard’s.”
