Page 38 of Priest

“I see it.” I lean closer, listening to the breath, watching the rise that does not match the effort. “Prep for a chest tube. Keep pressure on the lateral wound.”

Deacon’s body jerks, and the monitor starts to climb in jagged warning.

“Pressure’s dropping,” Lila says, her voice tight but even.

“More blood,” I answer. “Now.”

A nurse repeats the order and moves. Someone calls out a number I hate. The room narrows to skin, blood, breath, and the stubborn line between alive and gone. I press where anatomy tells me to press. I cut where the body gives me room. Fear circles the edge of my focus, hungry and useless, so I shut the door in its face.

“Stay with us,” I tell him, my voice low near his ear. “You made it this far. You can keep fighting.”

His mouth twitches like he hears me. Then his body bucks hard, and the monitor screams.

“He’s crashing,” Evan says.

“I know.” I reach for control before the room can lose it. “Start compressions. Epi. Charge.”

Lila moves without hesitation, moving into position as someone else takes over pressure. Her hands lock over his sternum, and every compression lands with brutal precision. Her face has gone white, but she does not stop. She looks nothing like the friend who drinks bad coffee with me after shift, nothing like the woman who laughs at Evan’s commentary. She looks like someone dragging a man back by force because she has waited too long to see him again just to lose him under her hands.

“Come on, Jackson,” she mutters. “You don’t get to do this.”

“Clear,” I call.

The shock snaps through him, ugly and violent. The monitor answers with nothing worth trusting.

“Again.”

The second shock lands. For one breathless stretch, the whole room hangs on that thin green line.

A blip appears. Then another.

Evan exhales. “We’ve got him.”

Alive. Barely. The difference matters anyway.

“We keep him,” I say, rougher than I intend. “Chest tube, blood, pressure. Move.”

No one argues. No one wastes time. The bay becomes motion again, controlled and furious, until the bleeding finally slows enough to feel like a door cracked open instead of one slamming shut. His numbers wobble, ugly but present. Present is enough to build on.

When the team starts prepping him for surgery, I step back because I have to, not because any part of me wants to. My gloves are slick. My forearms ache. Lila stays near his head a second too long, her fingers brushing his hair back from his forehead before she catches herself. Our eyes meet over the bed, and the story between us sits there, waiting with its teeth bared.

“Later,” she says.

I nod. “Later.”

At the sink, I scrub until my skin burns. Only then does the shake find me, starting in my fingers and climbing into my wrists. I curl my hands around the edge of the basin and force myself to breathe.

Through the glass, Priest stands with both hands braced against the wall, head bowed. Blood dries on his knuckles. Deacon’s blood. Maybe his own. For once, he has no command to give, no rule to enforce, no way to bend the room around his will. He has to wait like everyone else.

When his head lifts, our eyes meet.

The pull is immediate. Unwanted. Familiar enough to hurt.

I lift my chin and let him see the answer before he ever asks the question. This is my hospital, my patient, my ground. If Priest wants to come apart, he can do it somewhere else.

Right now, he waits.

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