Chapter 10

Episode 10 - Whistle Down the Wind

Brady woke slowly and groggily, feeling like something important was hovering just out of reach but unable to grasp what it was. He lay still for a moment, trying to pull together the scattered pieces. His head was heavy and throbbing but not stabbing or swimming like one of his worst days. He wasn’t on the injection, and he didn’t need it at the moment, so why the urgency pressing on his chest?

He reached a hand up to rub at the spot, but the familiar motion triggered an explosion of memories, and Brady shot up in bed, only to double over with a gasp as his head gave a sharp protest. He had to be gentle with it today—he’d pushed it far beyond its limit yesterday, to the point where it was probably a miracle he wasn’t laid out helpless in his bed. Although he wouldn’t have turned down the injection if it would offer him any chance to help Marcus…

Brady swung his legs over the side of the bed, still holding onto his head to keep it from falling off as his equilibrium tried to adjust to being halfway upright. He would take it slow, but he was going to get up. He’d given in to the group consensus and his own better judgement in agreeing to leave Marcus and go to bed last night, but if they planned to keep him away today, they’d have another think coming.

The throbbing in his head had subsided just a little, and Brady carefully levered himself up to standing, holding onto the wall until he was sure he wouldn’t fall into it when he let go. Not even bothering to change out of the shorts and t-shirt he’d slept in, he pulled open the door and stepped out into the hallway, immediately noting the light coming from the other end. Apparently, getting a decent amount of sleep was only a requirement when it came to him, not everyone else.

Brady shuffled carefully to the door of the common and glanced inside. Harper lay on her couch, curled up beneath her blanket and obviously asleep. No one else was in sight, and Brady turned back to the hallway but before he could decide where to look next, the door leading out toward the lab clicked, and Brady paused to wait for whoever was coming. But instead of opening, it rattled and seemed to stick, and Brady approached carefully, not wanting to accidentally run into whoever waited there if it opened unexpectedly.

But the sight that met him when he reached the door stabbed his heart. Rachelle had one knee propped on the seat of her walker, trying to hold the door open with one unsteady hand as she attempted to free the wheel stuck against its twin with the other. Brady immediately reached to hold the door for her, and her eyes widened as she looked up.

“Oh, you’re awake!” The words rasped a little in her throat, and dark smudges underlined her eyes. Brady shook his head as she awkwardly tugged her walker free.

“Yeah, and it looks like you should’ve been asleep a long time ago. Can you let me do—whatever you were doing—while you go rest for a while?”

“Brady.” She gripped his hand in trembling fingers. “You need to come with me. If you’re feeling up to it.”

Something cold stirred in Brady’s stomach, and he swallowed hard as the cascade of possibilities crashed down on him.

“Marcus?” He tried to keep his voice from cracking, but he couldn’t quite manage it, and Rachelle’s grip tightened.

“He’s alive. We’re still running tests. Dr. Mattox took him off the vent a few hours ago.”

“And you didn’t wake me up?” A stab of betrayal struck Brady’s heart, and Rachelle shook her head hard.

“I never promised that. I promised I’d check on you, and I did. You were sound asleep and needed it badly. And Marcus wasn’t even awake. We’d have woken you up if something serious happened, Brady. But you’ll be so much better for Marcus today than you would have been if I’d woken you up in the middle of the night.”

The worst part of it was that she had a good point—maybe several of them. Brady sighed and tried to let the hurt bleed away, although he couldn’t help one more complaint.

“So why does Harper get to sleep on the couch, and I have to go to my room?”

“I dare you to budge Harper from wherever she decides to fall asleep.” Rachelle’s lips twitched. “Besides, I sent Dash to his room just like you. There was absolutely no need for us all to stay up.”

“So when do you get to rest in all this?” Brady frowned down at her, and Rachelle offered a weary little shrug.

“Later. When the rest of you can take over and Dr. Mattox doesn’t need a second set of eyes—”

“And how good are your eyes going to be if you don’t even take a minute to close them?”

Rachelle hummed in a way that, at the very least, wasn’t disagreement, which only cemented Brady’s opinion of how tired she must be.

“Seriously, Chelle. You were hurting and drained before we got started yesterday, and now all night? If you can’t stand your room, will you at least lay back in your recliner for a while? You can read reports there just as well as you can in Marcus’s room. Please?”

Rachelle sighed, but after a moment in which Brady wondered if that was all the response he was going to get, she gave a slight nod.

“Okay. Fair’s fair. But come on and see him first.”

Brady’s heart quickened a little, and he willingly followed Rachelle’s slow progress through halls and around corners until they reached the recovery room. But as he reached a hand out to push open the door, he hesitated.

“You said he’s—doing okay?”

“Yes. Dr. Mattox thinks he should come out from under the anesthesia soon. That’s part of why I wanted you here—thought you’d want to be here.”

“And his lungs are doing okay after they took him off the ventilator?”

“Amazingly so. He’s still on oxygen as a precaution, but—that’s one of the main reasons we’re still running tests. Trying to get a read on what’s happening in his lungs and why it’s not matching expectations.”

“But you mean—better than expected?”

“I mean off the charts better—on the surface, at least. He should be deep in the trenches of an attack right now—and that’s just baseline, not counting getting stuck in a building collapse. It’s hard to tell whether the injection’s just taking extra time to work out of his system—and if that’s the case, there’s a high probability he crashes fast when it happens—or whether something else is going on that we haven’t pinned down yet. But—still better for the moment.”

“And the moment’s all we’ve got to live.” Brady repeated Mom’s saying under his breath almost unconsciously, and Rachelle’s face softened as she nodded.

Suddenly remembering that she wasn’t going to agree to go rest until she’d seen him settled, Brady reached for the door and quietly slipped inside. Marcus still lay on the bed, not nearly as pale as he’d been the last time Brady had seen him, and with only the hospital setting and equipment to indicate that he was one of theirs.

A hand brushed against Brady’s arm, and he jumped so badly his head nearly knocked him to the floor, but when the world came into focus again, he found Quentin seated in one of the plastic chairs and watching him with an apologetic half-smile. He must have noticed when Brady’s eyes cleared, because he nodded to the seat next to him, and Brady sank into it.

“You been awake all night?”

“Probably dozed a few times. And before you even think about apologizing, sleep was the best thing you could possibly do. For either of you.”

“Yeah, I know.” It was a sad truth, but it was still truth in the end. “How’s he doing?”

“I can’t quote the doctorspeak, but—honestly, he’s sleeping easier than I’ve seen him in a long time. Maybe it’s the anesthesia. I doubt it’s the oxygen; they’ve tried that before. But with the spot they found him in—I’d call it pretty much a miracle.”

Brady turned to watch the teen’s chest rising and falling steadily, with no sign of a wheeze or a struggle.

“Funny how we overlook what a blessing it is to just do that much.”

Quentin nodded but didn’t say anything more, and Brady was just trying to decide whether he should try to fill the silence or just let it hang when a soft moan broke the stillness.

“Marcus?” Lack of sleep or not, Quentin was on his feet so fast that the motion made Brady dizzy from beside him. “Right here, baby boy. I’m right here.”

Brady managed to clear his swimming head and pushed to his feet more carefully but hung back, not wanting to intrude on the moment. After a few seconds, Quentin turned toward him and jerked his head emphatically, and only then did Brady join him at the bedside.

“You’re—you’re okay, Marcus.” What exactly did you say to someone who might or might not be coming out of sedation? He couldn’t remember much from the few times he’d been put under—not counting the mild sedative Dr. Mattox used to prep them for the injections—except a confused impression of grogginess and half-awake blunders that Eden had delighted in recounting later.

Marcus turned his head and murmured something too indistinct to count as even an attempt at a word, but somehow Brady’s heart still leapt. Quentin already had a hand squeezing hard on Marcus’s shoulder, and Brady reached out to gently press the teen’s hand. Marcus’s face scrunched up a little, and his eyes blinked open for just a second before closing again.

“Good boy,” Quentin breathed, and Brady gripped Marcus’s hand harder.

“Hey, buddy. How you feeling?”

It was ridiculous to ask something like that when Marcus had scarcely opened his eyes, but the teen shifted and appeared like he might be attempting to roll toward them when a grunt of pain escaped him. Quentin held him in place with a firm hand.

“Easy there, baby boy. You’ve still got a broken leg, but you’re going to be okay. You just lie quiet, hear?”

“It’s okay, Marcus.” Brady wasn’t sure if the whisper even reached Marcus’s ears before it caught on a lump in his throat, but the relief was too much to keep bottled inside. “You’re back with us. Everything’s going to be all right.”