Page 292 of Cross Checked
Dad’s expression softened immediately. “Ma’am.”
Elenore tried to smile, but it collapsed halfway. “Cade loves your daughter.”
The room went silent as my knees almost gave out again.
Dad looked at me, then back at her. His eyes shone. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “I know.”
The tiny room had been cramped before. With Harrison and Elenore inside it, plus my family, the girls, and the team filtering around the doorway, it became impossible. Too many bodies. Too much fear. Too many people standing because there weren’t enough chairs, too many phones buzzing, too many whispers building in the hall outside as word spread faster than anyone could control.
Harrison looked around once.
Just once.
Then something in him shifted. Not grief leaving, but grief organizing itself into power. He stepped out of the room without explanation. Elenore watched him go, then closed her eyes like she knew exactly what he was about to do.
Fifteen minutes later, he came back.
“We’re moving,” he said.
Knox looked up. “Moving where?”
“To a private family waiting area off one of the secured wings.” Harrison’s voice had changed. Not colder. Sharper. “It’s near the women’s and children’s wing. Fewer publicentrances, controlled access, and security can keep reporters from wandering anywhere near us.”
Coach Little, who had been standing near the door with his phone in one hand and fury in every line of his face, looked like he might kiss the man. “Reporters already know a little of what happened.”
“They will know less by the time I’m done,” Harrison said.
No one argued because apparently nobody told wealthy people no when they were in motion. Especially not terrified wealthy people with connections, grief, and a son in surgery.
Hospital staff moved us through a back corridor within minutes. Two security guards appeared near the elevators. A nurse with kind eyes led the way, murmuring apologies like any of this was her fault. The new space wasn’t fancy exactly, because hospitals were still hospitals, but it was bigger. Quieter. A private lounge with softer chairs, a small adjoining consultation room, its own restroom, a coffee machine no one touched, and doors security could control.
It was tucked near a secured unit where visitors had to be buzzed in, away from the main ICU waiting area and the elevators where anyone with a phone could pretend they were just passing through.
It should have felt better.
It didn’t.
Nothing felt better without Cade.
Hours passed, though I had no idea how many because time had stopped moving in anything as useful as minutes. It stretched and snapped around every update, around every door that opened, around every nurse who walked past without looking at us, around every time someone’s phone lit up and everyone in the room flinched like the screen might know something we didn’t.
Four hours.
Six.
Maybe eight.
Long enough for my body to ache from sitting and my eyes to burn from crying and my hand to go numb inside my dad’s because neither of us knew how to let go.
The updates came in pieces that were not really updates at all, just medical fragments we were supposed to somehow survive. They had repaired damage in his abdomen. They had controlled the bleeding. They had given him blood. His lung had collapsed, but the chest tube was working. He was on a ventilator. They were keeping him sedated so his body could rest, which sounded almost gentle until the words swelling, infection, and complications kept following behind it.
Every time one of those words entered the room, my dad’s hand tightened around mine. Like he could hold me together through pressure alone if he squeezed hard enough. As if Cade would keep breathing somewhere beyond the doors none of us were allowed through.
At some point, Aura fell asleep with her head on Easton’s shoulder and woke up crying thirty minutes later. Briggs sat on the floor with his back against the wall, staring at his hands like he could still see Ryan’s blood on them even though he hadn’t been the one covered in it. Charm paced until Rider physically placed her into a chair and told her if she passed out, he would move to the floor, and she passed out with her head in his lap instead. Coach Little sat with his phone in his hand as he relayed everything we knew so far to the Detroit Red Wings staff.
Coach Little had been planning to talk to Cade after the game and tell him they wanted him. Now his future, not just his life, was hanging in the balance.
Ryan came back after someone found him clothes. Maybe some teammate who understood that Cade’s blood on him had become its own kind of wound.
