The laughter from their shared memory of the "respectful turtle" lingered in the air for a moment, but as it faded, a shadow of curiosity crossed Annie's face. She looked at the door Ethan had just walked through, then back at Ellie.
The pieces she was recovering were colorful and warm- texts about silence, shared study sessions, and protective glares, but they didn't explain the man she saw four days prior. The man who looked like he'd been through a physical and emotional war.
"Ellie," Annie said, her voice dropping into a more serious tone.
"You said Ethan's been here the whole time. Seventy days. But he looks... different. He looks like he hasn't slept in years, and not just because of a plastic hospital chair. What was he really doing while I was... Asleep?"
Ellie's playful expression faltered. She began picking at a loose thread on the hospital blanket, her gaze suddenly fixed on her own sneakers. "Annie, honey... you really don't want to know what that boy was up to. Trust me. It wasn't exactly a highlight reel."
"Why not?" Annie pressed, leaning forward. "If he was here, he was here. What else could he have been doing?"
Ellie let out a long, slow breath. She was caught in a difficult position. The doctors had been very clear: Don't overwhelm her.
Annie still didn't remember the SUV, she didn't remember Margaret's betrayal, and she didn't remember the legal battle currently swirling around her family like a hurricane. To Annie, she was just in the hospital because of a "bad accident" she couldn't quite recall.
"Ethan doesn't do 'passive' very well," Ellie began, choosing her words with extreme caution. "While you were out, he wasn't just sitting there. He was... searching. He was running himself into the ground, looking for answers. He became obsessed with the 'why' and the 'how' of everything. He stopped eating, he stopped sleeping- long before the accident happened, and he basically turned into a ghost that only haunted these hallways."
Annie's brow furrowed. "Answers to what? It was an accident, wasn't it? The rain, the road..."
Ellie winced internally. She couldn't tell her about the investigation yet. She couldn't tell her that Ethan had spent his nights tracking down witnesses and his days staring at police reports, trying to prove that the "accident" was actually an attempted murder.
"He's a detective in training, remember?" Ellie said, offering a half-truth that tasted like ash. "He just couldn't accept that something so bad could happen to you for no reason. He spent weeks chasing his own tail, trying to make sense of the senseless. It made him frustrated. It made him angry. And honestly, Annie... it made him so incredibly sad. I've known Ethan a long time, and I've never seen him look so... broken."
Annie looked at her hands, her heart aching for the version of Ethan she hadn't seen. "He looks so tired, Ellie. Even after he showered and ate. It's in his eyes."
"It is," Ellie agreed. "And a lot of that came from the first five weeks you were in the coma. Those were the hardest on him."
"Because I wouldn't wake up?"
Ellie paused. This was the part of the truth that felt safest to share, even if it was only a fragment of the whole story. "No. Because for the first five weeks you were in here, he wasn't allowed to see you. There was... a ban. Family only. He wasn't allowed past the nurse's station."
Annie's eyes widened. "A ban? But we've known each other for ten years! Why would anyone keep him away?"
"Because the people in charge of your care back then didn't want him around," Ellie said, her voice sharpening with a flicker of the anger she felt toward Margaret, Dylan enforced it but everyone saw how much it effected him to see how much it effected his daughter.
"They claimed he was a 'distraction' or 'unrelated' to the family. Ethan fought it every single day. He would come to the hospital and sit in the waiting room for twelve hours at a time, just hoping a nurse would slip up and let him walk past the doors for five seconds. He was like a dog locked out in the rain, Annie. He could see the house, but he couldn't get inside. Not during normal hours atleast."
Annie felt a lump form in her throat. She imagined Ethan- the "brooding gargoyle," the boy who sent her silence, sitting in a sterile waiting room for thirty-five days, staring at a set of double doors he wasn't allowed to cross.
"He was alone out there?" Annie whispered.
"Mostly," Ellie said. "Dylan tried to help, but his hands were tied by... other stuff. Kyson tried too, in his own way. But Ethan was the one who felt it the most. He told me once, during week three, that he felt like he was losing his mind because he couldn't hear you breathe. He said the silence he sent you back in the fall had turned into a scream he couldn't stop. He was so frustrated, so tired of being powerless. That's why he's so intense now. He's making up for all the time they stole from him."
Annie looked toward the door again, her vision blurring with tears. She understood now why he gripped her hand so tightly. She understood why he looked at her like she might evaporate. He wasn't just happy she was awake, he was finally, after a month and a half of exile, allowed to be near her.
"He didn't give up," Annie realized.
"Ethan Hawthorne doesn't know the meaning of the word," Ellie said, reaching over to squeeze Annie's shoulder. "But that's why I'm telling you this. Don't be too hard on him if he's a little overbearing. And don't ask him too many questions about what he's been up to. He's finally found his peace because you're awake. Let him have that for a little while before you make him go back into the dark."
Annie nodded, her mind swirling with the weight of his devotion. She didn't remember the five weeks of his exile, but she could feel the echo of his loneliness in the way he spoke her name.
"I won't," Annie promised. "I just... I want to make it up to him. I want to give him a reason to sleep."
"Then do your physical therapy," Ellie said, shifting back into her lighter tone as she heard the familiar heavy footfalls of Ethan's boots returning down the hallway. "And maybe tell him he looks like a hobo. He usually listens to you."
The door opened, and Ethan stepped back in, carrying two cups of cafeteria coffee that smelled vaguely like burnt rubber. He looked at the two girls- Annie with her tear-stained but determined face, and Ellie with her usual smirk, and he paused, his eyes narrowing.
"What did I miss?" he asked suspiciously.
Annie looked at him, really looked at him- beyond the varsity jacket and the clean shave, into the depths of the man who had waited thirty-five days just to stand in the same hallway as her.
"Nothing, Ethan," Annie said, her voice soft and full of a new, profound warmth. "Ellie was just telling me that you're a terrible student and I should probably take over your history tutoring."
Ethan let out a breathy laugh, the tension leaving his frame as he set the coffee down. "She's not wrong. I'm a lost cause without you, Doll."
"You're not a lost cause," Annie whispered, reaching out for his hand. "You're just a man who's been out in the rain too long. Come here."
Ethan didn't hesitate. He moved to her side, his hand sliding into hers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He didn't know what they had talked about, but for the first time, he felt like Annie wasn't just looking at a childhood friend. She was looking at him.