Page 71 of A Wedding in a Week

I nod again, letting him know I’ve heard him—twice—and an old weight shifts in my own chest, lifting, and he’s right. It is easier to breathe when my lungs aren’t full of the fear for him that I’ve clung to.

“Here you go.” Lukas swings open a door. “We’ll be along with Noah just as soon as the team’s ready to move him.”

This side room is quiet, blessedly free of alarms and beeping. It also has a recliner that, after seventy-two hours of snatched naps, looks as luxurious as a five-star hotel fourposter. It’s also where I get to see what worrying for a brother looks like, or rather, what its absence shows me on Marc—his stress fades as soon as I close the door and he sits back.

Sleep takes him between blinks, and every tight line on his face loosens, each deep groove in his brow smoothing, and I want it to last. All I can do is stand guard for him as he catnaps, and for Noah, when he’s finally wheeled in later.

Marc shoots to his feet, disoriented, and I steady him as the team get Noah settled. His eyes are still closed, He’s still hooked to a daunting equipment array. Frankly, his drains scare the shit out of me, lifeblood still seeping from him.

Lukas does his best to set my mind at rest about them, and here’s more evidence that he’s right where he should be, not back at the farm wrapped in cottonwool or resting—he turns my fear into something productive. I’m reminded of Mum fishing that egg timer out of the dresser drawer at home the moment Lukas murmurs, “See here?” He points at the clear tubes beaded with fluid and keeps his voice low. “See how this effusion is a much lighter red today, yes? Kind of like a pinot noir instead of the deep burgundy it was at the start? There’s a lot less of it too. You watch, Stef. It’ll keep changing colour.”

I whisper, “Back to a darker red again?”

“No, even lighter, like a rosé.” He meets my eyes, his gaze holding. “Because that means he’s on the mend, Stef, healing on the inside, and this is how you can see it. Drop by drop. Shade by shade. So can you do that for me? Watch him getting better until you believe it?”

I nod. I can watch over Noah, and having something concrete to do feels better. So does my brother’s promise.

“He is making progress, Stef.”

Lukas may well be right, and Noah might be on the mend, but apparently my subconscious takes my brother’s order the same way that Jess does whenever I tell her to guard our lambs—no one gets past me for the rest of the day. Not the police again on the hunt for drug-running information, or Social Services wanting updates on the location of parents who are conspicuous by their absence.

They still haven’t shown their faces—Noah’s parents, I mean—and I’m not sure if I’m relieved or heartbroken for a kid who reminds me so much of Marc when I first knew him—a seedling trying to thrive with not enough light and apparently too little water. It means the next time I take a turn in the recliner, I pull Marc down with me and hold him. I can’t let go, but after days and days of terror, Marc stops holding himself together, and can’t seem to let go of me either.

He clings, and I hope he feels more than my good arm around him. My whole heart and soul also wrap him up, and I’d make a tent if I could. For all three of us. I don’t know why I say that last part aloud, but Marc melts against me, his lips brushing what’s a full beard, not scruff now. His head drops to my shoulder, his voice a low rumble. “Yeah, Stef?”

“Yeah.” I rumble too in a room that smells antiseptic rather than of where I want us. There’s no tang of sea salt here. No scent of first-cut pasture. “Up on the headland. The fresh air would be so good for Noah.”

“No,” Marc murmurs to a never-ending backing track of beeps, footsteps, and voices. “In the woods. Under our tree where it’s really sheltered.”

I shelter Marc then as his relaxation shifts closer to sleep. I also shift so I can see him better. He’s so like his brother—the same tilt to his nose, the same cinnamon freckles. Marc’s eyelids droop before rising, although that looks a struggle. We look at each other in silence, and I’ve never felt so connected to him, or so weighted by him, but not in a bad way. He’s heavy on my lap, heavier still against my chest, but that’s because he’s relaxed, and I must rumble again.

Marc wets his lips and I kiss them. It feels like a first after who knows how many days here that have merged from horror to hope, from non-stop stress to this moment where I get to take his weight, and he lets me.

Nurses come and go outside and so does my brother, only he doesn’t pass Noah’s room, and this had to happen.

I don’t know when he stopped in the doorway, but he’s there when I kiss Marc for a last time—his lips, his cheek, his forehead—before I pull back and see who watches.

I already told him that I love Marc, but that was during a high-stakes phone call. This is the first time he’s seen it. My hold must tighten on instinct—Marc lets out a soul-deep sigh that Lukas nods at.

“About time, you massive muppet.”

He wants to say more, I can tell, but he’s professional, checking Noah’s progress. He’s also a twat who flicks my ear hard on the way out and whispers, “Do it right this time,” which suggests none of this is a surprise to him. It’s also a reminder that he’s on both of our sides, not against us, just like the next day is a reminder that running a business long-distance is easier the more I share it.

I have no idea what day it is when I stand outside a hospital, bone-tired and rumpled after a night of watching and waiting, and I make myself beg for yet more Cornish favours, not all of them tied to the farm. Lukas joins me, wolfing a sandwich in huge bites, back to his usual nosiness while speaking around his mouthfuls.

“You’ll never keep a boyfriend if you make a habit of frowning like that. Very ageing. Who were you calling while looking so serious?”

“Carl Lawson.”

Lukas quickly swallows. “From Porthperrin? You thinking of ditching farming for fishing with him?” He pokes my belly. “He’ll need a much bigger boat.”

As if I’d ever leave my land.

But that’s what I’ve done, haven’t I? And here I am, hundreds of miles away from Kara-Tir, asking other people to help John run it in my absence, which I also know can’t go on forever.

For now I keep sending texts and making phone calls on behalf of someone I can’t face leaving. “No,” I admit. “I called him because Carl knows everything about fostering. And he knows Marc’s old situation.” I rush while Lukas is mid-bite and can’t interrupt me. “Thought he might put a word in with the social workers here. Tell them how he’d be a safe base for Noah.”

“Who? Carl?”

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