Chapter 479: Not an Heir

The surgical waiting room at Rohan General had the kind of chairs designed by someone who’d never actually sat in one for six hours straight, and Nate had tried all four models along that wall by the time the clock crossed the fourth hour without a single update.

Dr. Osei had explained it plainly before they wheeled Mikaella back. The valve defect had been slowly wearing down the surrounding tissue since childhood, decades of a heart working around damage instead of through it, and the repair meant operating within millimeters of vessels that didn’t forgive a shaking hand. Most surgeons wouldn’t attempt it at all. Osei had built a technique specifically for cases exactly like this one, and even she’d put the odds at something Nate didn’t like repeating out loud.

"Six hours isn’t unusual for this kind of repair," Julian said, sliding a second cup of coffee across the low table even though the first one sat untouched. "Osei told you that herself. Long doesn’t mean bad."

"Long means anything could be happening in there right now and I wouldn’t know until someone decides to tell me." Nate didn’t reach for the cup. "I keep watching that door like it’s going to open on its own if I stare hard enough."

"It’ll open when it opens." Julian sat down across from him instead of pacing, which Nate suspected was intentional. "You don’t have to sit here white-knuckling it by yourself. I flew out here for exactly this reason. Use me."

"I know why you’re here."

"Then act like it. Talk to me, complain at me, whatever gets you through the next hour. Just don’t do the thing where you go silent and pretend you’re fine." Julian nudged the coffee another inch closer. "You’ve done that before. I’ve watched you do it. It doesn’t actually work."

Nate finally picked up the cup, more for something to hold than to drink from. "Alex would’ve known what to say right now. He always did."

"Alex isn’t here. I am." Julian didn’t dress that up with anything gentler. "What’s actually going on in your head besides the surgery?"

Nate turned the cup slowly, watching the door instead of Julian. "You ever think about how different this would look if it were you sitting here instead of me? Or Arianne? People would already be calling ahead, clearing floors, flying in a second surgeon just in case the first one needed backup."

"That’s not how it works and you know it."

"Maybe not for you specifically. But you’re an heir to something, Julian. So was Alex. So is Arianne, whatever she gave up to get here. I never had that. Warren made sure of it the first year I was old enough to understand what the word meant." He said it without heat, the old fact worn smooth from handling. "My brothers got told they mattered before they could walk. I got told I was lucky to be fed. Kids figure out fast what that means for how they’re allowed to treat you, and mine figured it out early."

"You’re talking about the bullying." Julian didn’t phrase it as a question.

"I’m talking about growing up knowing exactly where I ranked in that house, and it wasn’t anywhere close to the top." Nate exhaled, some of the rigidity finally leaving his shoulders now that it was out loud instead of sitting behind his teeth. "Mikaella’s the only one who never made me feel like an afterthought. She used to sneak into my room when Warren was in one of his moods and just sit there so I wasn’t alone in it. Ten years old and she was better at reading a room than half the adults in that house."

"And now she’s the one behind that door."

"Now she’s the one behind that door." Nate’s jaw tightened. "If I lose her too, there isn’t anyone left in that family who ever actually chose me back."

"You’re not losing her." Julian said it flatly, without room in his voice for any other outcome. "And even if the worst happens, which it isn’t going to, you’d still have five people who chose you plenty. Me included. I didn’t fly out here because Gilbert asked nicely."

Nate managed something close to a laugh, thin but real. "You flew out here because you like amusement parks and told your son you’d bring back presents."

"That too." Julian’s mouth curved. "Doesn’t cancel out the first reason."

The door opened at the five-hour-forty mark, and Nate came out of the chair before his body had finished deciding to move, every version of the news he’d been dreading lined up behind his teeth in the half-second before Dr. Osei pulled her mask down.

"She did well." Osei said it before Nate could ask, reading the room correctly. "Better than well, actually. The repair held exactly the way we hoped it would. She’s in recovery now, and if the next twenty-four hours go the way I expect them to, I’m optimistic about a full recovery."

Nate sat back down because his legs asked him to, one hand braced against his own knee while the rest of him caught up to what he’d just heard.

"Go call your people," Julian said, already reaching for his own phone to text Ellie the same news secondhand. "They’ve been waiting on this as long as you have."

Nate’s hands weren’t entirely steady dialing the number, but Arianne picked up before the second ring finished. "She’s out," he said, before she’d even said hello. "The surgery worked. Osei says she’s going to be fine."

The sound Arianne made on the other end wasn’t quite words, and behind her he could hear Franz asking a question he didn’t wait to hear the end of. "Thank you both," Nate said, the words arriving rougher than he meant them to. "For all of it. I mean that."

"You don’t have to keep thanking us," Arianne said. "Go be with your sister. That’s the only thing that matters right now."

Nate hung up and sat there a moment longer, Julian beside him saying nothing at all, which turned out to be exactly the right amount of company for a man who’d finally stopped waiting for the worst.