The hallway outside trauma was humming too loud, even though the air was still. The buzz of fluorescent lights, the click of some monitor counting down time in blips and beeps—it all sank into Jack’s bones like background noise he couldn’t turn off. His scrub top was wrinkled, clinging damp to his back, dark patches of blood still visible where the gown hadn’t covered.

Your sibling had coded twice on the table. Once in the ambulance, once right there under Jack’s hands. The car crash had been brutal—a blind curve on a wet road, a head-on collision with a delivery truck going too fast.

Your sibling was the passenger, front seat. No seatbelt. They took the full impact through the windshield. By the time the medics brought them in, it had already started to look like a losing game—shattered ribs, collapsed lung, severe cranial swelling.

Jack had done everything. Chest tubes. Emergency transfusion. The kind of procedures you only pull out when you’ve got nothing left but desperation and instinct.

He didn’t know what was keeping them alive anymore—machines, adrenaline, maybe just the last flicker of something that didn’t want to let go.

He saw you before you saw him. Sitting there in the corner of the waiting room like you were bracing yourself to be told the worst—but you didn’t look broken. Tired, yes. Strained around the eyes.

But there was something held tight in your posture, like you refused to let the grief take over until Jack gave you permission to.

He walked toward you, slow. No rush left in his body. No performance in his steps. Just the weight of what he knew, and the smallest thread of something unspoken that passed between you. He didn’t sit. Couldn’t.

Just stood there in front of you, eyes shadowed and voice low. “They’re still here.” The words didn’t come easy.

“We stabilized them—for now. But the brain swelling’s bad. We won’t know how bad until the scans come back.” He hesitated, the silence pulsing in the space between you. “It’s not over yet.” He said it like he needed you to hear it.