Page 4 of What We Burn

I bring her hand to my mouth, pressing my lips to her fingers. I close my eyes.

The monitor beeps. Her fingers tighten around mine, reaching for safety even as her eyes drift closed.

I press my forehead to her knuckles. For the first time in my life, I pray. Not to anyone in particular. Just to whatever is out there listening. Whatever divine force decides who lives and who doesn’t.

Not her. Take anything. Take everything. But not her.

The sirens wail. The hospital gets closer.

I press my lips to her knuckles again and try to stay in the prayer. I can’t. My head keeps going back to the sound that pulled me out of the car. Weight on a rope. A sound I know by heart.

I know it because we make it.

Someone hung her the way we hang men. And they weren’t counting on anyone cutting her down.

TWO

KNOX

Thirty-two hours. That’s how long Fury’s been in a coma.

Medically induced. To help her heal.

They put her in a room on the fourth floor around two in the morning on the first day, and the machines took over from there. Pulse-ox clip. IV line. The tube down her throat that’s keeping her airway open while the swelling recedes.

I’ve been watching the green line on the monitor. Up. Down. Up. Down.

She’s fighting to stay.

The chair next to the bed is a molded plastic monstrosity hospitals buy in bulk. At six-foot-seven and two hundred and fifty pounds of scar tissue and muscle, I’m not exactly built for it. But I’ve been in it the best part of two days, waiting for Fury to wake. My back is fucked and my right leg fell asleep hours ago. I haven’t moved because every time I think about it, her hand twitches in mine, and I’m not willing to risk that she’ll wake up to an empty chair.

The doctors say they’ll wake her tomorrow.

Maybe.

I’ve held dying men’s hands before. When you sit watching over the dying, you learn what their fingers do at the end. They go slack. The tension drains out of the joints and the hand sits in yours like they’re already gone, even if the chest is still moving.

Fury’s hand isn’t doing that.

Her fingers have been curved around mine for hours. Loose grip, but constant. Every time the green line dips, her grip tightens. Every time the machine clicks through whatever cycle it runs, her thumb shifts a fraction against the back of my hand.

She’s holding on.

Micah comes back from the cafeteria and sets a paper cup of coffee on the rolling tray beside the bed.

Black and steaming. He doesn’t ask if I want it. We both know it’s a need at this point.

“How is she?” he asks, like the answer might have changed in the twenty minutes he was gone.

His face is pale, his blue-gray eyes circled by dark rings. He’s gentle, and loving, and the kind of person everyone gets along with.

Well, everyone except the sex offenders he murders.

“No change,” I mutter into the coffee.

“Eli?”

“Also same.”