Scrubs the color of surgical green, badge reading Dr. Patel, Trauma Unit.
Her face is carefully neutral—the kind of blank expression that could mean he’s going to be fine or I’m so sorry in equal measure.
My body goes cold. Numb.
“I need you to follow me,” she says.
I follow her like a condemned man being walked to his last rites.
Hallway after hallway, all of them identical—white walls, gray floors, that smell of iodine and electricity and grief that seems to seep from the paint itself.
My footsteps echo too loud.
My heartbeat echoes louder.
Every door we pass could be the one, every turn could lead to the place where I find out if I still have a brother or if I’m alone in the world for the first time in fifteen years.
Finally, she stops. Places her hand on a door handle. Turns to look at me.
“He’s in here. I need you to prepare yourself.”
She opens the door.
And Xavier is there.
Jesus Christ.
He’s barely recognizable.
The man lying in that bed—surrounded by machines, tangled in wires and tubes, chest rising and falling with mechanical precision—doesn’t look like Xavier King.
Doesn’t look like the man who built an empire from blood and cunning and sheer force of will.
Doesn’t look like the person who saved my life when I was too young to know it needed saving.
His skin is pale, drained of all the warmth that usually makes him look like the sun carved him from gold.
His lips are bloodless.
Bandages wrap his shoulder and side—thick, white, clinical—and beneath them, a faint red bloom is slowly spreading.
His chest rises. Falls. Rises. Falls.
Too shallow. Too uncertain.
I stop in the doorway.
Lungs refusing to work.
Legs refusing to move.
“He lost a significant amount of blood,” Dr. Patel says behind me, her voice gentle but clinical. “The bullet that entered his side nicked arterial tissue. We repaired what we could, but there was considerable hemorrhaging before he arrived. The shock to his system was extreme.”
My vision blurs. I blink, and something wet slides down my cheek.
“He’s going to wake up, right?” My voice splinters like dry wood. “Tell me he’s gonna wake up.”
She looks at the monitor. Then at Xavier. Then at me.