EOE -71 Hours

  The New Mexico autumn didn’t ask permission; it just stole the heat from the day and left a sharp, clean chill behind.

  Christine sat on the back porch swing, her knees pulled to her chest, wrapped in a thick wool blanket that smelled faintly of cedar and laundry soap. The swing moved only when she nudged it with the tip of her socked foot, small, careful motions, because anything bigger answered back with a hot, insistent pull low in her belly.

  Forty-eight hours.

  That was all it had been since her surgery.

  She rested her palm over her abdomen, not pressing, just checking. Like her hand could confirm what her mind didn’t want to hold steady: the heavy muscle that had lived there her whole life was gone. The ache underneath the fleece was blunt, swollen, real.

  The surgeons successfully cut the carcinoma out of her, but they left a different kind of void behind. They saved her life, but left her a future that could no longer carry a child.

  She stared out into the yard where the darkness swallowed the lines of the fence and the scrub and the pines. Beyond that, the Manzanos rose as a darker shape against the sky. Above them, the stars were so bright they looked sharpened.

  Her throat still felt scraped raw from the tube. When she swallowed, it reminded her she’d been unconscious while strangers did careful violence to keep her alive.

  A soft hush came from behind her as the sliding glass door opened.

  “You’re escaping,” Nathan said, voice warm with the house behind him. “I turn my back for thirty seconds, and the patient goes AWOL.”

  Christine didn’t turn right away. “It’s not AWOL if I can still see the living room.”

  “It is if you’re out here in the cold like you’re auditioning for a sad country song.”

  She finally looked over her shoulder. “I wanted to see the night sky.”

  Nathan stood in the doorway in his faded Lobos hoodie, the one with the frayed cuffs he refused to retire, holding two mugs like they were precious cargo. Steam rose past his hands and face. The stubble was a few days past neat, the kind that accumulates when a man has time off work.

  He nudged the door shut with his hip and stepped into the chill.

  “Hot chocolate,” he announced, as if presenting evidence. “Also: the marshmallows were compromised. Had to eat one. For quality control.”

  “Hero,” she said, but her voice came out thinner than she meant.

  Nathan’s eyes flicked to her face, then down to the blanket, then to the way her shoulders were braced like she was trying not to be fragile. He didn’t comment on any of it. He just sat beside her carefully, close enough that their knees could touch if she shifted, but not so close he’d jostle the swing.

  He handed her a mug.

  She wrapped both hands around it. The heat bled into her fingers immediately. The smell... vanilla, chocolate, a little cinnamon... felt like a memory.

  “It’s too cold out here, you should be inside,” he said.

  “I am inside,” she countered. “Inside the porch perimeter.”

  Nathan made a sound that was half laugh, half sigh. “How’s the pain?”

  It wasn’t a casual question. It had a timer behind it. He’d been setting alarms like a nurse, except his version came with a spreadsheet he pretended wasn’t a spreadsheet.

  “Manageable,” she said. “Like… a dull roar.”

  “Like a stadium?” he asked.

  “Like a stadium that hates me.”

  He nodded once, simply accepting it. “And your throat. Is it better?”

  “Nope. Like I swallowed a cactus.”

  “That’s my girl, we’ve progressed from swallowing glass,” he said softly, then lifted his mug. “To cactus throat.”

  She almost smiled. Almost.

  The quiet drew out between them. The swing creaked. Somewhere in the yard, crickets kept working like it was their job, indifferent, relentless, doing what they were made to do. The night air had sharpened, that particular high desert cold that arrives without warning and settles into your bones. The sky was enormous and clear, the kind of clear you only get at altitude, salted with stars. The moon was nearly full, not quite, a day or two from completion, and it lit the yard in pale silver like something out of a dream neither of them had earned yet.

  Christine took a sip and felt the warmth land in her chest. It didn’t fix anything, but it was delicious and still helped.

  Her gaze drifted down the hall through the glass, past the kitchen light and the darkened living room, toward the spare room they’d painted last spring. That yellow had felt cheerful then. Now it felt loud.

  “Nate,” she said.

  “Mm?”

  “I was thinking about the yellow room.”

  Nathan didn’t answer immediately. The pause told her he’d been thinking about it too, just not out loud.

  “We can repaint,” he said. He kept his tone even, like he was offering a practical solution to a broken cabinet hinge. “Make it an office. Or a library. Or that gym you swear you’ll use.”

  “I don’t want an office.” Her throat tightened. She cleared it without meaning to. “I don’t want a gym.”

  Nathan’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, you hate gyms.”

  Christine ignored his tease. “I don't want anything quiet," she continued, the words coming faster now like she'd been holding them behind her teeth. "I want chaos. I want toys on the floor and fingerprints on the glass. I want to raise a child, Nathan. I want noise that means something.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Nathan looked at her, really looked. Moonlight caught the silver starting to thread his beard. He’d taken the week off without blinking, trading blueprints and site visits for pill schedules, soup, ice packs, and a level of gentleness she didn’t see in him at work.

  He set his mug on the railing and turned his body toward her.

  “Okay,” he said. One simple word, but it wasn’t a fix. It was permission. “What do you have in mind? Adopt a baby? Surrogacy?”

  Christine swallowed again. “There are so many kids,” she said quietly. “The system is overflowing. Fostering. Adoption. An older kid, maybe. Someone who’s been waiting instead of… someone brand-new.”

  Nathan exhaled through his nose like he was weighing it, not because he didn’t want it, but because he wanted to do it right. That was him. If a bridge was going to hold, he needed to know every bolt.

  “You mean skipping diapers and going straight to back-talk and tuition?” he said.

  She huffed a laugh, which immediately pulled at her stitches and wiped the laugh right off her face.

  “Easy,” Nathan said, and his hand was there, light on her shoulder, steadying her and not coddling. Just anchoring. “Sorry, I’ll stop being funny.”

  “I mean skipping the biology and going straight to parenting,” Christine managed. “I’ve still got the skillset.”

  Nathan’s eyebrows lifted. “Skillset.”

  “I can triage a skinned knee at fifty paces.”

  He gave her a look. “You’d run this house like a unit clerk. Shifts. Charts. Vital signs at breakfast. “Welcome to the Reeves household: please sign in, take a number, and do not approach the nurse.”

  Christine let the smile stay this time. It didn’t feel wrong. It felt earned.

  Nathan’s fingers brushed her blanket, pulling it higher around her shoulders with a gentleness that made her throat sting for a different reason.

  “You’re allowed to want it,” he said. “All of it. The noise. The mess. The hard parts. I want it too.”

  She stared at his hands, at the little calluses and the faint scratches that never fully went away. Builders’ hands. Steady hands.

  “I feel stupid," she admitted, the confession slipping out before she could stop it. "Cervical and uterine cancer. From HPV. Like I'm a pamphlet. Like I'm exactly the statistic they warned you about in a waiting room poster." Her jaw tightened.

  Nathan’s head tipped slightly. “Hey.”

  She looked up.

  His face tightened... not angry, not at her. Protective. “Don’t do that.”

  “I was stupid,” she whispered.

  "I know." His voice was low. "But you caught it. You fought it. And you're sitting here with me now." He paused. That’s not stupid. It’s life.”

  Christine blinked hard and stared back at the yard so he wouldn’t see too much on her face.

  Nathan didn’t push. He let the silence hold, but he stayed close.

  After a minute, he bumped her shoulder gently with his. “Also,” he said, tone shifting back toward lighter ground as he deliberately put a hand on the wheel, “if we’re going into the trenches with an older kid… we need a game plan.”

  Christine’s mouth quirked. “Go on.”

  “We will have to have code names,” he said, almost dead serious.

  She turned to him, suspicious. “Are you trying to turn adoption into a mission briefing?”

  “It is a mission briefing,” he said. “High stakes. Unknown variables. Basically, a hostage negotiation but with homework.”

  Despite herself, Christine let out a genuine laugh. It tugged at her incision again, but she didn’t care as much this time.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m in.”

  Nathan’s eyes brightened. “Okay. You first.”

  Christine sat a little straighter. “I’m Red Leader.”

  He blinked. “Of course you are.”

  “I run triage.”

  “You literally just had surgery,” Nathan pointed out.

  “Red Leader is currently on restricted duty,” she allowed. “But still.”

  Nathan nodded slowly, like he accepted the chain of command. “All right. Then I need a call sign.”

  “Yes,” Christine said, savoring it. “You absolutely do.”

  Nathan’s gaze drifted as if the answer might be written in the wood grain of the porch railing. He wasn’t the quick one; he was the planner. He liked solutions that came with measurements.

  “Uh,” he said.

  Christine waited, eyebrows raised.

  “Erm… Blue… Lando.”

  For half a beat, the whole world seemed to pause: the swing, the air, the crickets. Christine stared at him.

  “Blue Lando?” she questioned, processing the reasoning. She was simply trying to map the title to the man, looking for the rogue behind his tired eyes.

  Nathan lifted his hands in surrender. “Come on now, it was on the fly. You took the iconic one. I panicked.”

  “Lando,” Christine said slowly, testing it. “As in…the cape guy? Does that mean I’m going to go by Red Lando instead?””

  “He’s smooth,” Nathan insisted. “Roguish. Charismatic. You can keep Red Leader, I’ll bring the Blue sly.”

  “You change lightbulbs with gloves on,” Christine said, leaning her cheek on her shoulder to look over at him.

  “That’s not a quirk, Red Leader, that’s structural integrity,” he said, entirely unashamed. “Besides... it adds a certain rogue-ish mystery.”

  “It’s perfect,” he said, leaning into it now. “Red Leader and Blue Lando. Fighting the system. Saving a kid. Sounds like an adventure.”

  Christine looked at him, this sturdy man who’d been holding her up, quietly, for years. Who’d taught her facial cues the way she learned patient’s tells. Who hadn’t once made her feel like a problem to solve.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “Fine. I like it.”

  Nathan’s grin was quick and boyish, like he’d won something. “See? Dashing.”

  “In a confused sort of way,” she agreed.

  He scooted closer so their shoulders touched fully. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just… right.

  The cold had found the edges of the blanket. It crept in at her collar, at her wrists, patient and persistent the way desert nights are. Her incision had settled into a low, steady complaint. She was almost done. Almost ready to go back inside, be warm, medicated, and horizontal. Almost.

  Then Nathan tipped his chin toward the sky. “Look.”

  Christine followed his gaze.

  The stars were thick overhead, whole constellations you don't notice in the city lights. The Milky Way ran across the dark, dusting the spine of the Manzano Mountains. But low on the eastern horizon, just above the black saw-tooth line of the pines, something hung that didn’t match the rest of the sky.

  It was pink.

  Not a soft, sunset pink, but a violent, chemical magenta. It looked out of place, like an artist's spilled smudge on a painting.

  “Venus?” Christine asked, though the word felt heavy and wrong in her mouth as soon as she said it.

  Nathan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Too bright,” he murmured. “And wrong place. Venus sets in the West.”

  “Plane?”

  “It’s not moving.”

  Christine stared at it, drawn in despite the cold seeping through her socks. It didn’t flicker like starlight. It looked hard. Solid. And it wasn’t round. Squinting against the dark, the shape sharpened. It was elongated and tapered at both ends, like a spear tip dipped in neon paint and then dragged across a velvet canvas.

  “Maybe a comet?” she whispered.

  Nathan shifted, trying for dismissive, but it didn’t land clean. “Maybe, or a satellite.”

  “It’s pulsing,” she said.

  It was. The light didn't blink on and off; it throbbed and had a rhythm.

  Christine’s grip tightened around her mug until her knuckles turned white. A cold sweat prickled at the back of her neck. She wanted to look away. She wanted to go inside to the warm house and the smell of more hot chocolate. But she felt pinned to the swing.

  “Okay,” Nathan said, his voice a little too loud, a little too forced. He sat back, slapping his thighs as if to physically break the trance. “Blue Lando orders you back inside. Your meds are due in...” He glanced toward the kitchen clock through the glass, pointedly ignoring the thing in the sky. “...nine minutes ago. Red Leader does not miss meds.”

  Christine didn’t move immediately. She couldn’t unsee the spear. It sat there, an unnatural, unidentified, violent object, ruining the perfect dark.

  “Chris?” Nathan said, softer this time.

  Finally, she nodded, more to herself than to him. “Okay.”

  He stood first and held out a hand.

  She took it, and for a second, the simple act of standing felt complicated… pain, weakness, the way her body protested gravity. Nathan didn’t rush her. He braced, letting her weight transfer without making a big deal of it.

  As Christine stepped toward the door, she stopped. She couldn’t help it. She glanced back one last time.

  The bright point on the horizon was still there. It hadn’t moved. It hadn’t blinked. But it looked… larger.

  “Nate,” she said, her voice hollow.

  He stopped, his hand on the sliding door handle. “Yeah?”

  “Is it...” She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “Is it getting bigger?”

  Nathan didn’t look back. He just slid the door open, letting the heat of the house rush out to meet them. “Inside, Red. Come on. Let's check the news in the warm house.”

  She tightened her fingers around his hand and went inside, carrying the hollow in her center and the warmth at her side.

  The house was warm, the chocolate was sweet, but the sky was bleeding magenta. It wasn't just watching. It was arriving.

  The Crossing (Working Title: Subject N-42).