His fingers pressed into my skin with a strength that should have been impossible for a man who had not moved for six months. His eyes, black and unfocused at first, fought through the haze of whatever world he had been trapped inside. They fixed on me with terrifying effort.
I opened my mouth to scream for help.
His grip tightened.
“No,” he breathed.
The heart monitor betrayed him, racing in frantic green peaks across the screen. The room flashed red with backup lights, thunder rolling over Chicago like something enormous dragging chains across the sky.
“Nicholas,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “You’re awake.”
His gaze cut to the door.
Only then did I understand.
The guards.
The cameras.
The men outside who had never smiled and never asked a question they did not already know the answer to.
He moved his lips slowly, painfully.
“Read.”
My pulse hammered in my throat. I looked down at the book on the floor, then at the monitor, then at his face. His eyes were no longer blurred. They were sharp now. Not fully alive, not fully well, but aware in a way that chilled me.
He was not asking me to comfort him.
He was giving me an order.
With trembling fingers, I reached down, picked up the book, and opened it to a random page.
My voice came out thin.
“The soldier returned to a house that no longer knew his name…”
Nicholas released my wrist.
The marks of his fingers remained in pale crescents against my skin.
I read louder, fighting to steady myself. My eyes darted to the door every few seconds. The storm disguised the tremor in my voice, but nothing could hide the monitor’s alarm if it kept rising.
Nicholas’ eyes flicked toward the machine.
I understood enough.
I forced myself to move like a nurse instead of a terrified girl standing beside a man who should not have been able to speak. I silenced the alarm, checked his leads, and adjusted the sensor on his finger, pretending to fix a false reading.
“Bad connection,” I said aloud, as if someone might be listening. “It’s okay, Mr. Castellano. Just a storm.”
His mouth twitched.
Not a smile.
Something colder.
I kept reading.
A minute later, the door opened.
One of the men in suits stepped inside. His name was Enzo, though no one had told me that officially. I had heard another guard say it once while arguing over a phone call in the hall.
He had silver at his temples and a pistol-shaped bulge beneath his jacket.
“Problem?” he asked.
I did not look at Nicholas.
“Power flicker disrupted the monitor,” I said, proud that my voice did not crack. “It happens. His vitals are back within range.”
Enzo walked closer to the bed.
Too close.
Nicholas lay still again, eyes closed, mouth slack, his body arranged in perfect helplessness beneath the white sheet.
I stared at the monitor because I was afraid my face would betray us.
Enzo looked from Nicholas to me.
“You always read to him?”
My fingers tightened around the book.
“Sometimes,” I said. “It helps pass the night.”
“He can’t hear you.”
“No,” I replied. “But I can.”
For a moment, Enzo said nothing.
Then he gave a small laugh without humor.
“You nurses are strange.”
He turned and left.
The door clicked shut.
I waited five full seconds before breathing.
Nicholas’ eyes opened again.
“You need a doctor,” I whispered.
“No doctors.”
“You’ve been in a coma for six months.”
“Three,” he rasped.
I froze.
“What?”
His lips barely moved. “Aware… three months.”
The book slipped in my hands.
My stomach turned.
Three months.
Every word I had spoken in that room came back to me at once. Every confession. Every tired complaint. Every little joke. Every secret I had said aloud because I believed the man in the bed was nothing but a body with a heartbeat.
He had heard me.
All of it.
The night I cried because a loan company called me six times in one day.
The night I told him my mother thought nursing was beneath my potential.
The night I whispered that I was lonely in a city full of people.
The night I called him terrifying.
His eyes watched my face as the realization hit.
“You heard me?” I asked.
A faint pause.
“Yes.”
Heat rushed up my neck despite the cold room.
“Oh God.”
“Not God,” he breathed. “Clara.”
