Chapter Four: Prep

LENA

Leo went into prep at 6:45. I watched the doors swallow his gurney and made myself stay standing.

"Nice gown." He tugged at the collar on the way in. "Very breezy. Very me."

I laughed because he needed me to. He always made the joke first. Before anyone else could look too sorry for him. I saw his hands shake once. Just once. Before he tucked them under the blanket where I wasn't supposed to notice.

The waiting room chairs were the wrong kind of orange. I sat in one anyway. I pressed my thumbnail into my palm. Counting the tiles on the floor instead of the minutes on the clock.

At 7:15, Landon walked in with two coffees and a paper bag. He didn't ask if he could sit. He just did, in the chair beside mine. He set one coffee in my hand before I could refuse it.

"You don't have to be here."

"I know." He opened the bag and set a muffin on top, untouched. "You shouldn't sit here alone, though. Nobody should."

My mother came out from the vending machines a few minutes later. Still in her scrubs from the night shift she hadn't slept off. She looked at Landon for a long moment. Longer than a hello required. Then she took the muffin off the bag without a word. She sat down to watch the doors again.

That was all the space she gave him. It felt like more than I expected.

The surgery ran past the estimate the nurse had given us. Then further past it. I stopped counting tiles. I started counting my own breaths instead. In for four, out for four. The way Leo's cardiologist had once taught me, for exactly this kind of morning.

When the surgeon finally came through the doors, his mask was down. His face gave nothing away yet.

"His heart stopped." His voice was steady, clinical. "Eleven minutes. We brought him back. He's stable."

The room tilted, just slightly. Landon's hand covered mine on the armrest. He didn't say anything. He just held on, steady, for thirty seconds that felt longer than the eleven minutes had.

"He's going to be fine." The surgeon added it like an afterthought.

My mother's shoulders came down from somewhere near her ears.

I didn't cry until the surgeon walked away. Landon didn't let go of my hand until I was ready to.

They let us see Leo that afternoon. Groggy but talking, already complaining about the jello flavor they'd given him. I stayed until visiting hours pushed us out. Then I went home to shower and grab clean clothes for my mother.

My laptop sat on my desk where I always left it. Except it wasn't quite where I always left it. The angle was wrong, turned two inches toward the window. The charger cord looped the other way around the leg of the desk.

I sat down slowly and opened it. A prompt asked for my password again. Like it had logged itself out sometime in the last few hours. I checked the login history without fully deciding to.

Access logged at 9:43 AM. While I'd been sitting in an orange chair, watching hospital doors.

My hands went cold. I opened the folder that had been accessed. Leo's medical documents. My scanned copy of the contract.

I called Landon before I'd finished thinking it through. "Someone was in my laptop this morning. While Leo was in surgery."

Silence on the other end, longer than it should have been.

"Landon."

"I need to tell you something." His voice dropped lower than I'd heard it before. "And I should have told you before you ever signed anything."

"Tell me now."

"Not on the phone." A breath, careful, like he was choosing each word before he let it out. "Tomorrow. I'll explain everything."

I sat on the edge of my bed with the laptop still open. The folder still exposed on the screen. I thought about how carefully he'd chosen every word since the moment he'd walked into my practice room.

Everything, he'd said. That word sat heavier than it should have, given how little of everything he'd actually told me so far.

I closed the laptop and sat there a long while, the room dark around me. My mother's clean clothes waited folded on the chair by the door, still not delivered. Leo was stable. Leo was fine. The surgeon had said so, and I trusted him more than I trusted anyone else in this story right now.

Someone had been in my house while I sat helpless in a hospital chair. That fact stayed with me longer than anything else that day. Longer than the eleven minutes. Longer than the relief that came after them.

I thought about Dana Marsh, the girl from chemistry. She'd borrowed my notes twice. She'd never once returned the favor. I didn't have proof yet. Just a cold, specific feeling that someone close enough to know my schedule had used it against me.

I texted my mother to lock the front door twice that night. No explanation attached. She didn't ask why. Some questions were easier answered in daylight. We'd both learned that the hard way, in different hallways.

Landon's promise sat unopened in my head, like a folder I wasn't ready to read yet. Tomorrow. I'll explain everything. I turned the words over until they lost their shape. Until they were just sounds waiting to be understood.

Leo slept two floors above me, stable and unaware of any of it. For one more night, I let him have that. Whatever waited tomorrow could wait until morning. Until he woke up laughing about jello again. Safe in a way none of the rest of us quite were yet.