She asked for him at seven in the morning.
The night had settled into the specific exhausted quiet of a hospital at four, five, six — the hours that existed between emergencies, when the ward ran at a lower register and the waiting families slept in chairs and the lights stayed steady and nothing happened except time passing.
He had not slept.
He had been awake in the way he was awake when something required sustained attention, when switching off was not an available option, running a quiet background process of: Seren's breathing, the corridor sounds, the nurses' schedules, the specific quality of stillness in the ward that meant stable.
He had drunk three cups of bad coffee.
He had watched Seren sleep with his head back and Mira's head on his shoulder and his face, in sleep, doing none of the management and all of the exhaustion.
He had thought about names.
About Eli, who had built something that outlasted him.
About what it meant to be handed that particular inheritance.
