Page 38
Story: Wild Heart
The hospital room was dim and hushed, cast in the soft glow of a single bedside lamp.
The storm had finally passed, leaving the sky a pale, fragile gray outside the window.
Natalie lay in the narrow bed, half-reclined, her hair damp against her temple.
The baby, barely a handful, was curled against her chest, swaddled in a blanket the color of milk.
Her tiny mouth moved softly, her fists tucked beneath her chin as if she were dreaming already.
The monitors beeped quietly behind them.
The scent of antiseptic and newborn skin hung in the air like a lullaby.
Mason stood near the bed, one hand resting on the bedrail, the other gently brushing the infant’s cheek with the back of his finger.
He had barely blinked in the last hour, afraid to miss a second.
Her skin was so soft it felt like a breath.
Her eyelashes were translucent. Her breathing was slow and even, and each rise and fall of her chest hit him like a wave.
Davey sat nearby on a chair pulled close to the bed, elbows resting on his knees, watching the baby with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“She’s so small,” he whispered .
Mason nodded, his throat thick. “They’re always smaller than you expect.”
Davey shook his head, still stunned. “How does something that small have so much noise inside it?”
Mason smiled, just a little. “That’s a mystery.”
They sat there for a while, letting the stillness hold them. Outside the window, the clouds had begun to peel back, and a thin shaft of early light fell across the hospital floor.
“She was amazing,” Davey said, glancing at Natalie, who had begun to drift into the quiet haze of sleep. “Natalie. She didn’t scream or freak out. She just... did it.”
Mason’s heart squeezed. “Yeah. She did.”
He looked at her then, really looked. The way her fingers curled protectively around their daughter. The way her lips parted as she exhaled slowly in sleep. There was no armor left in her. No defense. Just a woman cracked wide open by love and strength and exhaustion.
“I’ve never loved her more than I do right now,” Mason whispered.
Davey didn’t say anything, but the look on his face said it all. For a few moments, everything was suspended. In this tiny, quiet room at the edge of the storm, the world had paused, just long enough for them to exist in peace. To marvel. To believe in everything good.
Then the knock came. Sharp. Urgent. Too loud for the quiet. Mason turned. A nurse stood in the doorway, a cellphone in her hand, her face drawn tight.
“There’s a call for you,” she said quietly. “It’s from the sheriff’s office.”
The air left the room. Mason took the phone, his hand already shaking.
“Hello?”
“Mason, it’s Deputy Kellerman,” came the voice, distorted slightly by static. “We’ve just been notified there’s been a landslide near Elk Run Trail. The western ridge gave out sometime in the last few hours.”
Mason didn’t breathe.
“The trail’s buried. The team that found it says a large portion of the slope came down. Trees, boulders. We don’t have full details yet, but… we found signs that two people were up there. A driver reported seeing them, Olivia and one of your volunteers.”
Mason’s knees buckled. He leaned heavily against the windowsill.
“No confirmation yet,” the deputy continued. “But it’s bad. Emergency rescue is en route. We’ll keep you posted.” The line clicked off.
Davey stood. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Mason turned slowly. His face had drained of color.
“There’s been a landslide,” he said. “Up by Elk Run.”
Davey’s eyes widened. “That’s where…”
“They think Olivia was up there. With a volunteer, probably Asha as she was on call.”
The room filled with silence, deep and immediate, like the hush before snowfall.
Natalie stirred, her lashes fluttering. “Mason?”
He went to her side, sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “Shh,” he whispered, brushing a hand over her hair. “Everything’s okay. Just rest.”
She frowned faintly, half-asleep. “Is it the baby?”
“No,” he said. “She’s perfect. You’re both perfect.”
And it was true. But it wasn’t all the truth. Natalie sighed, slipping back into sleep, the baby nestled against her chest. Mason stood and walked slowly back to the window, the phone still in his hand. Davey didn’t move.
“She’s not okay,” he said. “Is she? ”
Mason turned his back to the light and let the tears fall silently. “I don’t know.”
But he did know. He knew Olivia wouldn’t have left that wolf. Knew she would have kept going, because that’s who she was. Because she had told them, again and again, that the wild was her church. That saving something, even at a cost, was in her blood.
Davey sat down heavily. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to push the truth away. “She was supposed to come back.”
“I know.”
“She was supposed to meet the baby.”
Mason let out a sound, part breath, part sob. “I know.”
They didn’t speak after that. They just sat. The baby stirred, let out a small cry, then settled again against Natalie’s chest. Mason moved back to the bed, reached out and touched her tiny hand. Her fingers wrapped instinctively around his.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispered. “You’re going to love her, Liv. We’re waiting. Hold on. Don’t give up.”
Davey stood behind him, hand on Mason’s shoulder. Together, they watched the sun rise.
Not with triumph. Not with joy. But with reverence. For what had been lost. And for what had been born in the same storm.
The hospital room remained quiet. Mason sat on the chair beside the bed, his elbows braced on his knees, his head bowed.
Davey stood behind him, one hand resting gently on his father’s shoulder, his other arm curled across his stomach like he could hold the grief inside if he just pressed hard enough. Neither spoke.
The silence was thick with the weight of what hadn’t yet been said aloud.
They hadn’t received confirmation, it had been hours, no final word, no official statement.
But it didn’t matter. They knew. There were some truths that settled into the chest long before they were spoken.
Some absences that made themselves known in a way the world couldn’t understand.
Mason rubbed his eyes, already raw. His heart felt like it had been cracked in two, half still beating for the sleeping woman beside him and the tiny new life that rested on her chest, and half lying somewhere up in the mountains beneath wet stone and pine.
He thought of Olivia’s face, the way it lit up with firelight, the crinkle at the corners of her eyes when she smiled. He thought of her last words.
“Go. Don’t miss it.”
And now… she had.
Natalie stirred softly in the bed. The motion was small, a ripple beneath the blanket. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, groggy from the fog of exhaustion and joy. She looked down first, instinctively checking that the baby was still there, still warm and breathing against her chest.
She was. Still perfect. Still new.
Then Natalie turned her head toward the corner of the room and blinked into the blurry shapes of Mason and Davey, bent and crumpled in the hush of a new day, their shoulders bowed, Mason’s hand cupped to his mouth, Davey pressing his forehead into the crook of his arm.
“Mason?” Her voice was thin, dry.
He turned at once, rising to his feet and crossing to her side.
She took in the red rims of his eyes, the tension in his jaw. And then she looked at Davey who hadn’t moved but whose breath had hitched at the sound of her voice.
“Mason,” she whispered again, more urgent. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer at first. He reached down and touched the baby’s back, grounding himself .
Then he brushed a curl from Natalie’s damp forehead and sat beside her. “There’s been an accident.”
Natalie’s eyes darkened. “Who?”
His voice broke. “The ridge. Olivia was on the mountain. With Asha.”
The words hung in the air like frost.
Natalie swallowed hard. “Is she…?”
He couldn’t say it. He didn’t have to. Natalie closed her eyes, and her face crumpled. A breath escaped her like something vital leaving her chest. She held the baby tighter.
Davey finally moved. He stepped forward and stood at the foot of the bed, his hands open and shaking. “They haven’t found her yet. Not officially. But they found the ledge. The rocks. Her pack. The trail's gone.”
Natalie reached for Mason’s hand, and he folded into her, their foreheads pressed together, the baby a warm weight between them.
A small sound, a sob, escaped Natalie’s lips, muffled into Mason’s shoulder.
And Davey, he sat on the other side of the bed, head bowed.
His hands trembling. His lips parted like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to begin.
Then, a small movement. The baby’s tiny fingers curled around Mason’s index finger, holding it like a lifeline.
And on the other hand, reaching blindly, she grasped one of Davey’s fingers, too.
That’s how they stayed. The three of them.
Mason weeping quietly, Natalie holding her daughter to her heart, Davey watching the baby’s hand curl around his own with something like reverence breaking through the storm of grief.
They didn’t speak. There was nothing more to say. The world had changed shape again, sudden, brutal, irreversible. But somehow, in the center of that loss, there was also this.
A new life. A tether. A daughter. A sister. A light .
Mason kissed Natalie’s temple. “She’s holding both of us,” he whispered.
Natalie looked down, tears tracing her cheeks, her voice rough. “She’s holding all of us.”
Davey reached forward and rested his hand on the baby’s back.
And together, in that quiet hospital room where grief met grace, they breathed in what remained.
Outside, the clouds parted just enough to let a sliver of sunlight fall across the hospital floor.
Pale and gold, it stretched toward the bed like a reaching hand, catching the edge of the white cotton blanket and the curve of the newborn’s sleeping face.
Her hands were still wrapped around both Mason’s and Davey’s fingers, tiny fists holding tightly, like she could anchor them in that quiet, impossible space between joy and sorrow.
Natalie looked down at her daughter, the tears still fresh on her cheeks, her throat sore from holding back what her heart was trying to speak.
The baby moved softly against her chest, a warm breath, a flutter of lashes, a gentle flex of fingers.
“She’s so small,” Natalie whispered, more to herself than to anyone else. Her voice was thick with exhaustion and grief and something more fragile than hope.
And then Natalie exhaled. Long and slow. As if naming her sorrow would somehow ease it. She looked at the child, still unnamed, still new, and felt the heat rise again in her chest.
A memory passed through her, unbidden. Olivia’s voice, crisp and steady in her ear just weeks before: "Names matter. They tell the story before we get the chance."
Natalie touched the baby’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. Her lips trembled as she whispered, “Her name is Livvy.”
Davey looked up sharply. Mason blinked, and for a moment, he didn’t breathe .
“Olivia,” Natalie said softly, meeting Mason’s eyes. “But… Livvy. For what she gave us. For what we lost. And what we still have.”
The name settled into the room like it had always belonged there.
Livvy.
The baby stirred, her tiny brow furrowing just slightly, and then she yawned, her mouth opening in a perfect pink O before she nestled deeper into Natalie’s chest.
Davey let out a choked breath, his eyes wet. “It suits her,” he said.
“It’s perfect,” Mason added, his voice low, reverent.
Natalie nodded. “She’ll carry Olivia forward. In name. In spirit. In the way she moves through the world.”
For a long while, none of them spoke again. They just sat. Watching her. Holding her. Letting the weight of the name, the life, the loss, settle into something real. And outside the hospital window, the world, fragile, bruised, and beginning again, kept turning.
Table of Contents
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- Page 37
- Page 38 (Reading here)
- Page 39
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- Page 41