“I said start them.”
His voice remained controlled, but beneath his mask his jaw trembled.
Hannah couldn’t die.
Not here.
Not after appearing again like a ghost dragged out of his past.
Not before he knew what had happened.
Not before he asked why she had disappeared.
Not before—
His eyes flicked toward the neonatal team.
Two babies.
Thirty-two weeks.
His mind betrayed him with the question again.
Could they be mine?
Impossible.
Five years had passed.
Unless—
No.
The dates didn’t make sense.
They couldn’t.
He forced the thought away.
“Bakri balloon.”
The resident handed it over.
They fought the bleeding for seventeen more minutes.
Seventeen minutes in which Ethan remembered every time Hannah had laughed at him for taking life too seriously.
Every morning she had stolen his coffee.
Every night she had fallen asleep with a book against her chest.
