Page 64 of Anchor
Reid let out a slow breath. It wasn’t surrender so much as the day finally sagging his shoulders. “Four hours,” he muttered.
“That’s the spirit.” Tuck clapped him once on the shoulder with a hand that carried both concern and steadiness. “I’ll wake you myself if I gotta. But you’re not breakin’ on my watch.”
For the first time all night, Reid allowed himself to turn away from the rack. Not relief or peace. But the first step toward it.
TWENTY-TWO
ICU – 0425 HOURS
Reid snapped awake in the lounge chair beside her bed, heart pounding. He must have fallen asleep mid-watch. The clock on the wall confirmed it—four hours, on the nose.
The monitors ticked steadily. Then a shift. Claire’s lashes fluttered, slowly and unevenly. Her chest strained against the ventilator rhythm.
Reid was out of the chair instantly, leaning over her, his hand wrapping hers. “Claire,” he breathed, “easy. Don’t fight it. Breathe with the machine. I’m here.”
Her eyes opened just enough, glazed but searching. They caught his, locking for a heartbeat. She tried to speak, but the tube blocked it. Her fingers tightened weakly around his.
He bent closer, his forehead nearly brushing hers. “You’re safe. You hear me? Safe.”
Her chest hitched once more, then her strength faltered. The monitors steadied as sedation and exhaustion pulled her under again. Reid stayed bowed there long after, hand still coveringhers, whispering promises she couldn’t hear but he meant like steel.
The door opened with a soft hiss. Pete Walter stepped in, scrub cap shoved into his pocket, dark circles etched under his eyes but his presence steady as stone. He glanced at Reid first, then at the monitors. “Tuck’s down. I sent him to rack out.”
Reid straightened but didn’t let go of her hand. “She tried to wake up. Fought the vent.”
Pete moved to the bedside, reading the monitor feeds with the calm precision of someone who’d spent a lifetime in trauma wards. He checked the rhythm, the pattern of her breaths slipping over the machine’s cycle. Then he looked at her chest rising, shallow but self-driven.
“Good girl,” Pete murmured, more to her than to Reid. “She wants to breathe on her own.”
Reid’s grip tightened slightly. “What does that mean?”
Pete adjusted a line, eyes on the waveform. “If she keeps triggering the vent, meaning her body keeps taking its own breath before the machine forces it, for another two hours, I’ll pull the tube.”
Reid swallowed hard. “Two hours.”
Pete gave a faint nod. “But only if she’s strong enough. You keep her calm. No fighting. No panic. She needs steady, not rushed.” He looked at Reid fully. “That’s your job, soldier. Hold her steady.”
Reid dipped his head once, hand still locked around hers. “I can do that.”
Pete rested a hand on Reid’s shoulder for a beat, then stepped back into the quiet hum of the room, leaving him there to steady her.
The monitors whispered their rhythm in the low light. Reid hadn’t moved except to shift his chair closer, forearm braced along the mattress, his hand still cradling hers. For two hours,he counted each rise of her chest, each faint defiance against the ventilator’s rhythm. She was steady now—weak, but steady.
The door eased open. Pete returned with Foley at his side, both of them scrubbed, faces tight with fatigue but sharpened with focus.
Foley moved straight to the monitors. “She’s still doing it?”
Reid nodded once. “Every breath. Didn’t stop.”
Pete leaned in, checked the chest movement against the waveform, then exchanged a look with Foley. The surgeon gave the smallest nod.
“All right,” Pete said softly. “She’s earned it.”
“We’re going to take the tube out, Claire,” Foley said as though she could fully hear him. “I want you to stay with us. Keep breathing on your own. No fighting.”
Reid bent closer, his voice just above a whisper. “I’m right here. Don’t stop now.”
Pete disconnected the ventilator tubing, steady hands guiding the lines clear. Foley’s fingers worked with quiet precision, deflating the cuff, sliding the tube smoothly and quickly from her throat. A faint gag, a rasping cough, then nothing but the raw, human sound of her own breath.
