Day 265

                                    

                                          
The cafeteria's hum was distant, fading beneath the weight of Wren's pallor. Her skin had taken on a waxy sheen, and Trey noticed, before she did, the way her hand trembled around her fork. She hadn't eaten much, just pushed her food around in circles.
Gary leaned in, concerned. "Wren, you okay?" His voice was gentle, as if saying her name too loudly would shatter her. 
She nodded, but the nod was too quick, too forced, and then the color drained from her face. Her eyes widened just before the bile surged up. She didn't even have time to reach for anything—vomit splattered onto the tile floor, the sound of it wet and final. Her body convulsed, and then came the pain, deep and sharp, twisting in her abdomen. Sweat broke out across her forehead, and her mouth opened, but it wasn't words that came—just the low sound of agony.
Trey was by her side before the echo of the retch had even settled in the room. Gary, panicked, called for help, his hands hovering over her but not knowing where to touch. In seconds, there were nurses, hands pulling, voices commanding, and Wren was lifted onto a gurney, wheeled away from them, out of sight.
Gary and Trey followed like shadows, but at the double doors of the emergency wing, they stopped. They couldn't follow her through this. Not this time. The hospital lights hummed overhead, casting a pale, sterile glow over everything, over everyone, and they slumped into plastic chairs, waiting.
Trey's leg bounced, his hands fidgeting with the lighter. His mind spiraled, circling back to the past. What if this was his fault? They had been careful. Hadn't they?
Gary stared at the floor, a ghost of a man who'd lost everything once before and now stood at the edge of losing it all again. Neither of them spoke. What was there to say?
It felt like hours, but it wasn't. Time didn't move the same when you were waiting for answers that could change everything.
Dr. Scott emerged, her face lined with exhaustion, a face that had delivered too many truths to too many families. She approached them with the kind of practiced calm that only doctors knew how to wield.
"She's stable," Dr. Scott said, her voice like a small relief in a room full of dread. "One of the cysts on her kidneys ruptured. Mild infection, but we're treating it and we'll be monitoring her closely."
Trey and Gary moved like automatons down the hallway, following the doctor's crisp footsteps to Wren's room. 
There she was. Pale and still, swallowed by the bed, tubes and machines keeping rhythm for her, beeping in time with a life that had fought too many battles already. She looked smaller, fragile in a way that terrified Trey more than anything. He'd known pain, but this was a different kind of ache. 
Gary took her hand, staring at her like she was the only thing tethering him to this world. Trey stood on the other side, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, the only proof she was still here, still fighting. 
Wren's eyes fluttered open, and for a brief moment, she looked at them both. She tried to smile, but it was weak, a ghost of her usual grin. Before either of them could say anything, she was gone again, lost in the heavy pull of sleep.
Gary and Trey exchanged a look over her fragile form. Both of them knew the truth in that silence—there was nothing more to be done but wait. And the waiting, that endless, cruel waiting, was something neither of them had ever learned how to survive.