Chapter 61: The Silence After the Storm
The lantern hissed and threw a weak circle of light across the kitchen table. Roy sat on the floor beside Rosa's cot, his knees drawn up, his back against the cabinets. He had not moved in over an hour.
The med room had been too small, too stale, too full of the smell of blood. Sandy had said she needed quiet, but the kitchen was quieter. The kitchen held the soft sound of Rosa's breathing, and that was the only thing keeping him from shaking apart entirely.
His hands were still stained. He had scrubbed them twice, but the water had run brown both times, and now he just sat with them curled in his lap, studying the crescents of dried blood under his nails. Rosa's blood. Fifteen walkers, and he had not been fast enough to reach her before the third one got its claws in.
Lee had come down twice, once with a mug of water and once with a blanket. Roy had taken the water but not the blanket. The blanket lay folded beside him now, untouched.
"I cleaned the cut," Sandy had said, her voice low and tired, her moss green eyes full of something Roy didn't want to name. "She lost a lot, but the artery's intact. She'll wake. She needs rest."
Rest. As if Roy could rest. As if he could close his eyes without seeing her crumple, without hearing the wet sound of her hitting the floor, without feeling the horror of being full-sized at last and still powerless to stop it.
He should have been there. He should have walked out of that common room the second he heard the first scream. Instead he had been lying on a metal tray, his bones burning, his skin crawling as the device pulled him apart and put him back together. Lee had held him down. Jason had been shouting something, something about the building, about Rosa, about walkers in the stairwell.
Roy pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and breathed through his nose, slow and deliberate, the way Rosa had taught him. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
He had not realized he was crying until the first sob shook his shoulders.
The sound was ugly, raw, the kind of sound he had not made since he was a child. He clamped his jaw shut, but the tears kept coming, hot and stupid, and he pressed his fists against his mouth to keep it quiet because Rosa was sleeping and she needed rest and Sandy had said so, and the last thing Roy needed was to be the one who woke her up with his pathetic, useless crying.
He felt a shift against the cot. A creak of canvas. A slow, rustling breath.
Roy froze.
He looked up. Rosa's eyes were open. Just barely, just slits against the lantern light, but open. Her good hand moved against the blanket, twitching, reaching for something she could not yet name.
Roy scrambled to his knees. His whole body trembled. He caught her hand before it fell off the edge of the cot, and she made a small, pained sound, and then her fingers closed around his.
For two full seconds, neither of them moved.
Roy lowered his head. He pressed her knuckles to his forehead, feeling the uneven ridge of the splint on her other arm from where she lay. Her skin was warm. She was alive. She was awake.
"Don't you ever do that again," he said, his voice cracking. "I can't lose you too."
The silence stretched. Rosa swallowed, a dry click, and her thumb moved across his knuckles.
"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered, barely a rasp. "Had to check on the noise."
Roy let out something between a laugh and a sob. He lifted his head, and he saw her blinking at him, slow and confused, her green eyes finally settling on his face.
She stared at him for a long moment. Then her gaze drifted down to his full height, his broad shoulders, his hand wrapped around hers.
"You're big," she said, softly.
Roy laughed, a wet, broken sound. "Yeah."
"Did it work?"
"Worked fine." He swallowed. "Worked a treat. The hen's restored too. Lee's writing it all down."
Rosa hummed, a sound she made when she was processing too many facts at once. Her eyes drifted shut, and Roy's chest seized, but she squeezed his hand.
"Good," she breathed. "Gonna need you big to carry the supplies back."
Roy shook his head, pressing her knuckles to his lips. He tasted salt and copper.
"Rest," he said. "We're not going anywhere."
Rosa drifted before she could answer. Her grip on his hand loosened by degrees, then firmed again in her sleep, a reflex he knew from every night she had ever kept him safe in her palm. Roy stayed where he was, kneeling on the cold tile, her knuckles pressed to his mouth.
The lantern burned low. He watched her chest rise and fall, counting each breath the way the med room counted her pulse.
Sandy came down twice more. The first time she brought a thermos of broth and stood over him until he drank half of it. The second time she brought more bandages and a quiet word.
"You need to sleep too, Roy."
"I will."
"When?"
He didn't answer. She sighed and left the bundle of gauze on the counter, and the kitchen went back to the hiss of the lantern and the soft rhythm of Rosa's lungs.
Minutes passed. Hours, maybe. Time had gone strange and sticky, the way it did when you were too tired to trust your own eyes. Roy checked her pulse with two fingers against her wrist, then her neck, then her wrist again. He memorized the flutter of it. He let it anchor him.
But exhaustion was a tide, and he had been swimming against it too long. His head nodded. His shoulders slumped against the cabinet. His eyes kept closing, and each time he forced them open, the lantern light seemed dimmer.
She's fine, a voice whispered. She's breathing. Lie down. Just for a minute.
"No," he said aloud, and caught himself, and pressed his fist to his mouth.
Rosa did not stir.
He watched her for another long stretch. The rise. The fall. The small furrow between her brows that meant she was dreaming something uneasy. He wanted to smooth it, but he did not want to wake her, so he just watched the furrow deepen and smooth, deepen and smooth, a tide of its own.
His back ached. His legs had gone numb from kneeling. The blanket Lee had brought sat folded beside him, and Roy looked at it, and looked at Rosa, and made a decision he was too tired to argue with.
He got to his feet. His knees nearly buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the cot and stood there, swaying, watching her face for any sign that she had noticed.
Nothing. Just the breathing.
Roy unfolded the blanket and laid it over her legs, tucking the edges around her bare feet. Then, very slowly, he lowered himself onto the cot beside her, the canvas creaking under his weight. He left a careful distance between them at first, afraid his full-size warmth might crowd her, might hurt her.
Rosa turned her head. Her good hand found his arm. Her fingers curled around his forearm, weak but deliberate.
Roy let out a shaky breath. He slid his hand under hers, turned it over, and pressed his palm to the back of her hand. Then he rested it on her stomach, feeling the slow lift and settle of her breathing under his touch.
The position was awkward. His long legs hung off the end of the cot. His shoulder pressed against the splint on her other arm, so he shifted, careful, until he found an angle that did not jostle her.
There. He could feel her ribs. He could feel her diaphragm. He could feel every breath she took, proof after proof that she was still here, still whole, still his.
"I'm here," he whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."
The lantern flickered. The kitchen darkened. Roy's eyes closed, and for the first time in hours, he let himself sink.
His hand never left her stomach. His palm kept time with her lungs, rise and fall, rise and fall, a vigil he would keep until she opened her eyes again.