Chapter 15: Raw Truth in Sterile Light
The beep of the heart monitor was the only sound for a full ten seconds after Catalina leaned back. It was a frantic, panicked rhythm, betraying the calm mask on Dominic’s face. He stared at the ceiling, his jaw working, absorbing the words she’d carved into the sterile air between them.
“‘Fucks his sister raw,’” he repeated, his voice low, stripped of any emotion. It was a flat echo, testing the shape of the obscenity.
“Yes,” Catalina said, the defiance in her whisper gone, replaced by a solid, unyielding truth. She didn’t look away.
His eyes slid to hers. The confusion was still there, but it had hardened into something sharper. “And the child. Mina.”
“Our daughter.” She held up her hand before he could speak. “And before you ask, no, there’s no doubt. I’ve never been with anyone else. Not like that.”
The monitor continued its agitated song. He let out a slow, controlled breath, a mechanic bleeding pressure from a over-stressed system. “You’re telling me I…” He stopped, unable to finish. His gaze cut to the door, paranoid. The words were too big, too damning, for this bright, public room.
“You loved me,” Catalina corrected, her voice softening. “It wasn’t just that. We loved each other. We built a life around it. A hidden one.”
A dry, humorless sound escaped him. He winced, his hand going to the bandages on his ribs. “A hidden life. Sounds like a lie.”
“It was the only truth we had.” She leaned forward again, elbows on her knees. “Dom, listen to me. The people who did this to you,” she gestured to his broken body, “they weren’t random. They were looking for us. For our family. Because of what we are, what we have. We’ve been running for two years. We let everyone back home, Mia, everyone, think we died in a wreck. To keep them safe. To keep this,” she placed a hand over her stomach, “safe.”
He was silent, processing. She could almost see the faulty connections trying to spark in his mind. “Mia. My sister.” This fact seemed to land with more certainty, a file pulled from a less-damaged cabinet. A flicker of pain crossed his face. “We made her think we were dead?”
“To protect her,” Catalina insisted, her own guilt a familiar, acidic taste. “From the truth. From the danger that comes with us.”
He looked at her, really looked, his eyes tracing the lines of stress and fear she knew were etched there. “You’re carrying twins,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“And that doesn’t feel… wrong to you?” The question wasn’t accusatory. It was genuinely bewildered.
Catalina’s smile was thin and tired. “It did. For years. It felt like the worst kind of wrong. And then… it just felt like us. Like the only thing that was ever right.” She shrugged, a helpless gesture. “I can’t explain it to you if you don’t remember. It just is.”
He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “My head is… it’s full of static. Engine specs. Torque curves. The sound of a ‘72 Hemi with a misfire.” He opened his eyes again, the blue of them clouded with frustration. “No faces. No… feelings. Just parts and sounds and roads.”
“Then start there,” she urged, seizing on it. “What’s the first car you ever rebuilt?”
“ ‘70 Dodge Charger,” he answered immediately, without thought. “Rust bucket. Found it in a junkyard in Barstow.” A flicker, a ghost of something, passed behind his eyes. “Took me… over a year. Every nut, every bolt.”
“We rebuilt it together,” she said softly. “I handled the wiring harness. You hated my solder points. Said they were messy.”
His brow furrowed. He stared at her, not seeing her, seeing a memory trying to form. “Too much flux,” he murmured. “The joints were weak.”
Catalina’s heart leapt. “You’d heat them until the plastic smoked and redo them yourself. Drove me crazy.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but it was movement. A crack. “Sounds like me,” he admitted.
The door opened, and Letty walked in, carrying two paper cups of vending machine coffee. She took in the charged atmosphere, the spiking line on the heart monitor, and froze. “Everything okay?”
Dominic’s eyes snapped to Letty. The guardedness returned, but it was mixed with a new, intense scrutiny. “Letty,” he said.
“Yeah, Dom. It’s me.” She approached cautiously, setting a cup down for Catalina. “You remembering stuff?”
“Fragments,” he said, his voice rough. “Catalina says we ran. That we’re hiding.”
Letty shot Catalina a look, then nodded slowly, sitting on the edge of the guest chair. “Yeah. We are.”
“From who?”
“Bad people,” Letty said simply. “The kind who don’t forget. We made a new life. We keep moving.”
“And you,” Dominic said, his eyes locked on Letty. “You’re here. Why?”
Letty didn’t hesitate. “Because you’re my brother. And she’s my sister.” She glanced at Catalina, a deep, unshakeable loyalty in her gaze. “That’s all there is to it.”
Dominic absorbed this. The loyalty, the absolute lack of judgement in Letty’s face, seemed to impact him more than Catalina’s confession. It was a fact from the outside world that supported the impossible truth.
He looked back at Catalina. “Twins,” he said again, as if trying the word for size.
“Twins,” she confirmed.
His hand shifted on the blanket, moving slowly toward her. He stopped, his fingers hovering. An instinct, a phantom limb reaching for its counterpart. Catalina didn’t move, letting him make the choice.
His fingertips brushed the back of her hand, where it rested on her knee. The touch was fleeting, dry and warm. He pulled back as if shocked.
“A storm,” he whispered, repeating his words from the night before. “You feel like a storm, and like… home.” He looked at Letty, then back at Catalina, a deep-seated conflict rising to the surface. “That can’t be right. It can’t be.”
“But it is,” Letty said, her voice firm. “Your head’s messed up, Dom. But your gut? Your gut always knew the score. Listen to it.”
A nurse bustled in then, a cheerful Swiss woman with a clipboard, breaking the spell. “Time for vitals, Mr. Ancel! And your midday meds.” She began adjusting his IV, her routine oblivious to the tectonic shifts that had just occurred in the room.
Dominic submitted silently, his eyes never leaving Catalina. It was a raw, searching look, as if he were trying to see through her skin to the truth of their shared history. He was a man stranded on an island of amnesia, receiving messages in a bottle from a life he couldn’t recall. Some of the messages were gentle—the feel of a soldering iron, the weight of a toy car. Others were like the one she’d just delivered: a tsunami, threatening to drown him in a reality he might never be able to accept again.
As the nurse finished and left, Dominic settled back, exhaustion lining his face. The brief moment of connection was gone, swallowed by medication and overwhelming fatigue. His eyelids grew heavy.
“Tej secured the house,” Letty said quietly to Catalina, while Dominic fought sleep. “We move as soon as Vogel clears him. A few more days.”
Catalina nodded, watching the man she loved disappear behind the veil of a drugged haze. She had thrown the whole truth at him, a hand grenade rolled into the quiet of his convalescence. Now she had to wait in the ringing silence to see what, if anything, survived the blast.
He was almost asleep when his hand moved again. Not toward her. His fingers plucked at the thin hospital blanket, his lips moving silently. Catalina leaned closer.
He was murmuring, his voice slurry with drugs and the edge of sleep. “...oversteer on tight corners…” A pause. His brow furrowed. “Gotta fix it… for the baby.”
Then he was gone, pulled under by the sedatives coursing through him.
Catalina sat very still. The words weren’t a memory of Mina. They were a new instruction, forged in the confused furnace of his injured mind. A mechanic’s instinct. A father’s promise, built from the wreckage.
Letty put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “See?” she whispered, her own voice thick. “He’s still in there.”
Outside, the Alpine morning was blindingly bright, washing the world in a clean, white light that felt like a lie. Inside, in the hushed, antiseptic gloom, Catalina clung to those six slurred words. They were a shard of him, sharp and real.
They were a shard of him, sharp and real.
Catalina held onto those words, folded them inside her like a secret, through the long afternoon. The Alpine light faded from clinical white to a dull grey, then disappeared into an early winter dark. Letty took Mina for a walk in the stroller, leaving Catalina alone with the hum and beep of the room. She watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, counting each breath as a small victory.
She must have dozed off in the stiff chair, her head tipped back against the wall.
A sound jolted her awake.
It was a low groan, ripped from somewhere deep. Not a sound of pain, but of profound, internal rupture. Her eyes flew open. Dominic was thrashing against the thin sheets, his head jerking side to side on the pillow. The heart monitor began a frantic, irregular chorus.
“Dom?” She was on her feet, her hand reaching for the call button.
His eyes snapped open. They weren’t blank or confused. They were utterly, terribly aware. They were full of a fire she hadn’t seen in weeks, a fire that instantly scorched away the last vestiges of the polite stranger. He stared at the ceiling, his body rigid, every muscle corded.
“Dom,” she said again, stepping closer.
He turned his head. He looked at her. Not through her, or past her. At her. The recognition was so absolute, so devastatingly complete, it stole the air from the room.
“Cat.” His voice was a ruined thing, scraped raw from the tube and disuse and now this.
It was the way he said it. Not a question. A statement, heavy with two decades of shared history. Her own name sounded like a key turning in a long-locked door. She froze, her hand pausing mid-air.
He looked down at his own hands, lifting them as if seeing them for the first time. He flexed his fingers, studying the scabbed knuckles, the familiar scars from countless wrench slips and engine burns. A tremor ran through him. He looked back at her, his gaze dropping to her stomach, still flat beneath her sweatshirt.
The dam broke.
“Barstow,” he rasped, the word a cough. “The Charger. I used a three-eighths snap-on on the manifold bolts. You handed it to me.”
Catalina’s breath hitched. She nodded, unable to speak.
“The wiring was a mess,” he continued, his eyes glazing, looking at a memory projected on the white wall. “You cried when I melted the insulation. I bought you a new harness from a ’71 parts car. Spent a week’s wages.”
“You did,” she whispered.
His face contorted, a spasm of anguish. He remembered the weight of the tools, the smell of the garage, the oil on their skin. He remembered her, bent over the fender, her tongue poking out in concentration. He remembered the forbidden turn it all took one sweaty, gasoline-scented night when they were nineteen, the world outside their garage doors ceasing to exist.
He remembered everything.
The first kiss by the tool chest. The frantic, guilty secrecy. The way their shared bed felt like the only real place in the world. The plan to run. The false documents. Letty’s steady, unjudging presence. The raw terror when Catalina’s pregnancy test showed two lines. The absolute, soul-crushing love for Mina the first time she wrapped her tiny fist around his thumb.
The crash. Vogel’s men. The gnawing fear that had been their constant companion for two years.
It all came back, not as a gentle stream, but as a flash flood. It tore through the temporary dams in his brain, obliterating the confusion, leaving the stark, terrifying landscape of their reality exposed.
“Mina,” he choked out, pushing himself up on his elbows, wincing at the stab in his ribs. “Where is she?”
“With Letty. She’s safe. She’s here.”
“The twins,” he said, his eyes wild, scanning her body as if he could see them. “You’re…”
“I’m okay. We’re okay.”
He collapsed back onto the pillow, a hand dragging down his face. It was a gesture so uniquely him, so full of exhausted, burdensome knowing, that Catalina felt her knees weaken. The stranger was gone. Her Dom was back, submerged in the cold waters of a remembered panic.
“They found us,” he stated, his voice suddenly clear and cold. It was the voice of the man who made the plans, who carried the weight. “The Clinic. It was a cleanup crew. Vogel’s competition.”
“We think so. Tej swept the car. He found a tracker, non-standard issue.”
Dominic nodded slowly, his mind already racing past the hospital room. She could see it in his eyes, the calculation returning. The assessing of threats, of exits, of assets. “Tej secured a house.”
“A bunker. In Grindelwald.”
“Good.” His gaze sharpened on her. “We need to move. Today.”
“Vogel said a few more days. Your ribs, the concussion protocol–”
“They know I’m here, Catalina,” he cut in, his voice low and urgent. “If they sent one team, they’ll send another. A cleaner one. They won’t stop. Not until they verify.” He didn’t need to say what. The proof of their transgression was asleep in the next room, and growing inside her.
The door opened. Letty walked in, steering the stroller with Mina asleep inside. She took in Dominic’s posture, the fierce clarity on his face, and stopped dead. Her eyes flicked to Catalina, a silent question.
“He remembers,” Catalina said, the words thick with relief and a new, more present fear.
Letty’s shoulders dropped a fraction. A slow smile touched her lips. “Took you long enough, shithead.”
Dominic almost smiled back. It was a grim, tired thing. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Letty didn’t argue. She just nodded. “I’ll get Tej. He’s in the cafeteria.” She turned to go, then paused. “It’s good to have you back, Dom.”
Once she was gone, Dominic held out his hand. Not the hesitant, exploring touch from before. This was a demand. Catalina took it. His grip was weak from the ordeal, but the intention in it was iron.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his thumb stroking her knuckles, a familiar, anchoring rhythm. “For leaving you alone in this.”
“You didn’t leave me.”
“I did.” He looked at their joined hands, then back to her face, his expression raw. “For a little while, I did. And you had to carry it all. The running. The fear. Her.” He glanced toward the door where Mina slept. “Telling me.”
“You’re here now.”
“I’m here now,” he echoed, his voice gaining strength. He pulled her hand closer, pressing it against his sternum, over his pounding heart. “And I remember why we fight. I remember what we’re protecting.”
The heart monitor had settled into a steady, strong rhythm. Beep. Beep. Beep.
It was no longer counting the hesitant beats of a lost man. It was the determined pulse of a man who had found his way home to a war. His eyes were clear now, fixed on hers, holding the whole terrible, beautiful weight of their forbidden world.
“Get me out of this bed,” he said, his gaze shifting to the door, already planning their next move. “We have a lot of work to do.”
“We have a lot of work to do,” Dominic said, his voice already shifting from weakness to command. He threw the thin blanket aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The movement was too sudden. A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he swayed, his knuckles turning white where he gripped the mattress.
Catalina was there instantly, her shoulder under his arm, taking his weight. “Easy. You’ve been flat on your back for weeks.”
“Don’t have weeks,” he grunted, wincing as his feet touched the cold linoleum. The pain from his ribs was a bright, sharp punch with every breath. “We need wheels, cash, and a clean route out of this country. Yesterday.”
Letty pushed the stroller with the sleeping Mina back into the room, Tej on her heels with a loaded duffel bag. Tej took one look at Dominic, upright and glaring, and a slow grin spread across his face. “Well, look who decided to join the party. Memory’s back online, I take it?”
“All of it,” Dominic said, his arm still draped over Catalina’s shoulders. He felt her solid strength holding him up, a familiar pillar. “Inconvenient timing.”
“Understatement of the fucking century,” Letty muttered, already pulling clothes from the bag—dark jeans, a heavy sweater, boots. “Vogel’s gonna have a stroke if you walk out of here against medical advice.”
“Let him stroke out.” Dominic accepted the jeans from her, his movements stiff and pained. “They knew about the Clinic. A cleanup crew isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s a protocol. They’ll send verification.”
He leaned heavily on Catalina as he stepped into the jeans, his breath hitching. The simple act of dressing was a monumental effort that left him pale and sweating. He looked at Tej. “What did you find on the car?”
“Subdermal mag-tag. Military-grade. Took it off, stuck it to a northbound freight train. Let them chase that for a while.”
“Good.” Dominic nodded, pulling the sweater over his head with a stifled groan. “House is ready?”
“Fortress,” Tej confirmed. “Generator, supplies, enough freeze-dried garbage to survive the apocalypse. Internet’s a ghost. Nearest neighbor is a mountain goat.”
“We go now. Before shift change.” Dominic’s gaze landed on Mina, peaceful in her stroller. His expression fractured for a second, a crack in the hardened mask. He saw the toy car clutched in her sleep-tight fist. “Oversteer on tight corners,” he murmured, almost to himself.
Catalina heard him. That tiny callback, that piece of debris from his fractured memory, solidified everything. He was back. “I’ll get the discharge paperwork distracted,” she said, her mind clicking into the old, familiar rhythm of problem-solving. Of running.
“No,” Dominic said, his hand tightening on her arm. “No paperwork. We ghost. Right now.” He looked at Letty. “You and Tej get Mina to the garage. Take the service elevator. We’ll meet you at the car.”
“You can barely stand, Dom,” Letty argued, her eyes flashing.
“I’ll stand long enough.” He fixed her with a look that brooked no argument, the same one that had led them through a dozen border crossings and narrow escapes. It was the look of the man in charge. “Go.”
Letty held his stare for a beat longer, then nodded. She and Tej maneuvered the stroller silently out the door, leaving Dominic and Catalina alone in the humming room.
The sudden quiet was heavy. The beep of the monitor was an accusatory clock tick. Dominic turned to her, his full weight leaning into her small frame. He was sweating, his skin clammy under her hands.
“This is insane,” she whispered, adjusting her stance to bear him more fully.
“It’s necessary.” He lifted a hand, his fingers brushing a strand of dark hair from her cheek. The touch was deliberate now, no longer exploratory. It was a reclamation. His thumb traced the line of her jaw, a path he knew by heart. “You told me everything. You laid it all out for a stranger.”
“You weren’t a stranger,” she said, her voice cracking. “Even when you didn’t know me. You were never a stranger.”
He looked at her then, really looked, his eyes drinking in every detail he’d been blind to for weeks. The fear, the exhaustion, the unwavering love that had held their crumbling world together. He saw the girl from Barstow who could rewire a distributor in the dark. He saw the woman who had borne their daughter and carried their secret twins. He saw his other half, scarred and magnificent.
He cupped her face, his palms rough and warm against her skin. The heart monitor’s rhythm shifted, not frantic, but strong and steady. He didn’t say anything else. There were no words for the canyon they’d crossed, for the terror of being lost and the perilous joy of being found.
He simply leaned in, ignoring the protest in his ribs, and kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It was desperate and grateful and ferociously alive. It tasted of hospital antiseptic and shared tears and two years of hidden, breathless love. It was a anchor thrown in a storm, a confirmation written in flesh and breath.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers. Their breaths mingled, ragged and syncopated.
“I love you,” he said, the words raw and unfiltered, vibrating into her very bones. “I remember. I love you, Cat. I never stopped.”
A sob escaped her, a release of a pressure held for too long. She kissed him again, a quick, hard seal on the promise. “I know,” she breathed against his lips. “Now let’s go home.”
He nodded, his arm tightening around her. Together, they took the first shuffling, painful step toward the door, toward their daughter, toward the next fragile chapter of their hidden life. The monitor beeped alone in the empty, sterile room.