Page 47 of The Golden Hour

And that’s clear now, as his daughter is too small in the NICU, and his wife is recovering from almost bleeding to death.

“Do you want us to bring you anything from your house?” Marlene quietly asks Mason.

“Just clothes,” Mason says, clearing his dry throat. “A couple of days. I’m not going home without Honey and Daisy.”

Marlene gives him a look he can’t read, like he doesn’t understand something obvious to her, but she nods and walks away without another word.

His father looks at him for a moment longer.

“When she wakes up,” Rob says, stressing the first word and giving his son a sharp look, “I don’t want you demanding things or making unilateral decisions. You listen to what Honey needs. You’ve been setting the rules for too long, Mason. Your wife and daughter are going to need you.”

Mason nods, swallowing hard and shoving the rising tears back down. “Yes, sir.”

Rob claps his shoulder before following his wife toward the elevators. Mason then realizes he’s now alone with Phil, who’s sitting in one of the available chairs, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

Mason knows he can’t just stand there in the middle of the hallway, and he knows that his father-in-law needs to say his piece. With a deep breath, he walks over and sits down next to the older man.

They sit in a tense silence, Phil not even acknowledging Mason’s presence for a few minutes as he takes deep, slow breaths. Mason feels an odd numbness spreading through his body, which, clinically, he knows is shock.

His brain’s stress response has flooded his nervous system with adrenaline, and his body is protecting itself from the full weight of the terror by dulling its edges.

It’s actually the first time he truly believes in a soul-body connection.

The things he’s seen in this hospital, the state people are delivered to him, were something he had to get used to. Seeing people trying to keep their insides inside of them, missing limbs, impaled, shot, stabbed, bleeding so much that you can taste the metal in the air.

He’s seen things of nightmares and barely even flinched.

But this is his wife—his soul in danger—and he’s never felt so turned inside out.

It won’t last.

The adrenaline will bleed from his body, and he will feel the terror once more.

“How’s she look?”

Mason almost jumps at the rough voice next to him, and he turns to see Phil sitting up straight, looking right at him. It takes him a second to realize Phil is asking about Daisy.

“Just like Honey,” Mason responds honestly, a spark of joy pressing through his panic. “She’s perfect.”

Phil’s pinched brows soften, and the harsh lines in his face smooth slightly at Mason’s words. His salt-and-pepper beard twitches as one side of his mouth quirks into a grin.

“My girls seem to have an uncanny ability to just create clones,” Phil says, his voice soft and fond.

Mason allows himself to smile.

“I’m not happy with you,” Phil says then, his jaw locking. Mason nods, understanding, but is surprised by Phil’s next words. “But I am sorry for telling you not to come undone. That wasn’t fair.”

“It was fair,” Mason protests. “It’s not about me.”

“Just because it ain’t about you doesn't mean that you ain’t allowed to feel scared, Mason.”

Mason opens his mouth to protest, but a sharp look from Phil makes him snap it closed.

“I was scared,” Phil says. “And when I get scared, I get mean. It’s not a good way to be. I am sorry.”

Mason feels humbled by the apology and realizes he would not be as forgiving if the roles were reversed. If Daisy were in that hospital bed, if her husband had been the one who did not answer, if it were his daughter in surgery and his granddaughter in the NICU, he does not know if he would be able to sit beside that man without putting his fist through his face.

For that, he also admires Phil Hayes.