Page 69 of What You left in Me

“Consent,” he says, sliding a form onto a clipboard that looks too fragile for all it carries. “As his spouse and emergency contact, Mrs. Wagner, it falls to you. If you’re not in the right headspace, your son here can also sign as next of kin.”

“I’m always in the right headspace, don’t be ridiculous,” Mom says a little too fast, like she’s racing the possibility that she isn’t. “Give me the pen.”

Mom’s already skimming and initialing, reading out loud under her breath the parts that catch like bones:death,disability,blood transfusion,infection.She signs with a firm hand, returns the pen with a nod sharp enough to cut.

Dr. Patel glances between us. “Do you have any questions?”

“Just an order,” Mom says, though the brittle part of her voice cracks. “Please bring him back to me.”

“I will do everything in my power,” Dr. Patel says, and it lands like a promise that knows its own limits. “We’re going to take him now.”

He disappears down the hall. Nurse Lopez points us toward the family waiting area. It’s a rectangle of chairs that were comfortable for exactly ten minutes of the 1990s, a coffee machine that wheezes like it learned to breathe from YouTube, and a TV tuned to a morning show where a smiling woman chops cilantro with lethal cheer. There’s a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse on a side table no one has touched beyond opening the box, scattering the pieces, and realizing there are six thousand shades of blue.

We sit. Mom fails at sitting. Of course. She stands, paces three steps, sits again. She checks her watch; the wall clock checks back. The TV shows a cheerful segment about cilantro like it isn’t a weapon.

“Where is Julian?” she asks, like I’ve misplaced him in a coatroom.

“He’s gone,” I say. “He had to leave.”

She holds my gaze a beat, then nods, filing that away with all the other things we’re not unpacking this morning.

Dr. Patel’s first update lands twenty-seven minutes later: “They’ve begun. Bone flap off, good exposure, vitals stable.” Mom nods like she can bully stability into staying. I nod like agreement is oxygen.

Time loosens and tightens around us. The room does its waiting-room loop, whispered calls, a volunteer rolling a cart of magazines, a child crunching crackers like punctuation. Mom takes out a legal pad and titles itQuestions for Dr. Patelin tidy block letters, as if bullet points can hold back a tide.

“I’m going to step out for a minute,” Finn says quietly, already on his feet.

An hour drips by. The second update: “Clot evacuated. Pressure improved. Placing a drain.” Mom puts a check mark next topressure.I realize my shoulders have been up near my ears and force them down.

I look at the doorway. Finn doesn’t come back.

“I’ll go find Finn,” I say, and Mom just nods, eyes still on her list.

I check the hall by the elevators, the vending alcove, the chapel with its single lamp burning like a stubborn star. I take the stairs down one level, push through to the courtyard. Cold air bites my cheeks; the fountain throws mist; a pair of orderlies’ smoke in patient silence by the far hedge.

He isn’t anywhere to be found.

Chapter 21 – Finn - I Don’t Pray

I bail on the neuro floor because the air in that hallway feels like a glove over my face. Too many whispers, too many eyes, too much fluorescent mercy. I don’t wait for the elevator. I take the stairs. I’m not a fucking passenger while strangers decide how deep they’re going to cut my father.

Door bangs, stairwell echoes, and there’s concrete under my shoes. Two flights down to shake the ghosts off, two flights up because I need sky. I shoulder through the last crash bar onto the top deck of the parking structure. Wind hits me hard enough to sting. The town spreads out, flat roofs, stitched streets, that thin zipper of blue trying to pry the morning open.

I pat my jacket for the cigarettes I promised I don’t carry anymore. Muscle memory’s an asshole. I could light one but I refuse to give in to my desire.Huh, ironic.

Downstairs, they’re prepping my father for the saw and the suction and all the instruments they swear aren’t medieval. I try not to picture it. I try not to picture him small. I don’t pray. Fluorescents lie. Concrete tells the truth. I put my hands on the low wall and let the grit bite my palms until the itch under my skin has a shape.

The phone buzzes.

Unknown:I know what you did.

Well. Here we are. I’ve been receiving these texts for a while now but today, my focus narrows and two frames slide into place in my head without me asking for them.

Frame one: the neat sin. The one I engineered. Fabricated threads, believable enough to leave fingerprints. Flirty. Stupid. Exactly the kind of carelessness a man like Julian would thinkhe deserved to get away with. I paid for that. I signed off on the cadence, the typos, the timestamps. A perfect cut on soft meat. That doesn’t keep me up at night. I don’t regret solutions that fit.

Frame two: the basement. Wrong man, wrong night, wrong fucking angle. Not a plan. Not a show. Concrete is a bastard; it gives nothing back. That small, final sound a skull makes when it learns physics—no one writes a song about that. You feel it in your teeth. You don’t forget.

I had brought him downstairs because I wanted answers, not blood. He came willingly enough, mouth full of names and a grin he didn’t earn, like a man who believed he could sell me my own past at a markup. The basement smelled like damp paint and cold concrete. The bulb overhead buzzed and stuttered the way cheap lights confess. He had that look some men wear when they think fear is a coat that only fits other people.