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The fluorescent lights made everything look a little too stark and a little too tired, the way the morning sun can be cruel when you’ve been awake all night. Hen sat in the hard plastic chair anyway, one foot hooked around the base of Buck’s hospital bed to keep him from trying to climb out. She had perfected the stance over years of working ERs and rigs: casual, immovable.
Buck blinked at her from under heavy lids. The meds had turned his pupils into shallow pools, glassy and untroubled. He was puffed up under warmed blankets, left wrist in a brace, shoulder wrapped snug, a constellation of taped IVs and monitors dotting his arms. He’d cracked a rib when the deck gave out beneath him. The patient was fine—Hen had already checked twice, because that’s who she was—but Buck had caught the brunt of the fall. Nothing surgical, thank God. Painful, the doctor said. Manageable.
“Hen,” he said, like breath trying to remember it was allowed to be words. He squinted, his mouth curling—not at the IV pump or the hall noise, but at her. “Pretty.”
Hen, already bracing for whatever version of morphine-Buck was going to show up, lifted an eyebrow. “Sorry? You want—what—water, a bucket, a new nurse—”
“Pretty,” he repeated, with both hands. Or he tried to; the IV tugged, he made an offended sound, and then, triumphantly, he lifted one finger and tapped the tip of her nose. “Pretty pretty… big sister.”
Hen closed her eyes for one long, silent second. She opened them again to find Buck beaming at her like he’d remembered the answer to some important question. She stared. Then, despite herself, she laughed.
“Oh, no,” she said. “We are not doing this.”
“Doing what?” he asked, as though there weren’t a dozen witnesses—nurses choked up on giggles behind the curtain, Chim wheezing into his elbow near the door, Eddie leaning in with that particular brand of amused incredulity. “I’m just telling the truth.” He jabbed her nose again, lighter this time, a soft little tap, then whispered conspiratorially, “Boop.”
Buck’s attention immediately skittered away to the IV pole. He squinted at the roller clamp like it was a fidget toy and slid it a millimeter up, a millimeter down, fascinated by the tiny resistance. Then he discovered the pulse-ox clip and started clicking it open-closed-open-closed with the gravity of a man conducting an orchestra. A nurse cleared her throat in warning; Buck jumped, grinned, and—undeterred—mashed the bed controls so the head went up two inches, down one, up three. “It’s like an elevator,” he announced to no one in particular, delighted, and then pivoted right back to Hen and booped her again.
Hen smacked his hand away as gently as smacking can be. “Okay, first of all, stop touching hospital equipment. Second of all, I’m not the equipment, but I still mean it.”
“Yes,” Buck said, nodding solemnly, the motion making his curls flop. “You are my pretty pretty big sister.” He booped her nose again.
“Chim,” Hen said flatly, without moving her gaze from Buck. “If you keep laughing, I will make you switch night shifts for the next month.”
Chim made a heroic effort to compose himself. The effort lasted exactly one second before a snort escaped him. “I’m sorry, Hen, but—” He gestured helplessly at Buck, whose entire soul was currently expressed as one delighted smile. “—this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Eddie didn’t pretend to be sorry. He stepped fully into the room with two coffees, set one within Hen’s reach, and leaned an elbow on the rail. “How’s the rib?” he asked Hen, eyes darting to the monitors, as calm and focused as always.
“Dr. Rivera says a clean crack, no displacement. He’ll be sore for a while.”
“She tells my bones secrets,” Buck informed Eddie. “’Cause she’s my big sister.”
Eddie took a long sip of coffee to hide a grin. “Right. I’ll make sure she doesn’t blab to anyone.”
Buck reached out again. Hen swatted his hand. He pouted. “Pretty pretty big sister, don’t be mean to me.”
Hen sighed and patted the blanket near his knee. “I’m not mean to you, Buck.”
He brightened like a kid who’d just been told there would be sprinkles. He looked up at Chim, eyes wide, as if Chim might argue. “See?”
Chim lifted both hands. “I’m not getting between a man and his… big sister. I value my life.”
Hen took her coffee, the warmth seeping into her fingers. She should have been rolling her eyes harder than this. She should have been the picture of patient exasperation. But she was also—she could admit this in the privacy of her own head—soft at the edges. Buck’s voice had done something to her when he said the words. Not the “pretty,” though he dragged that out like taffy, all sugar and stickiness, but the “sister.” That one found an unguarded place to nest.
He hadn’t said it before. Not like that. He had called her partner and teammate and friend and the person he’d trust with anything sharp, which she maintained was actually a very high compliment. He’d leaned on her and deflected to her and, when necessary, allowed her to be the wall he bounced his brain against. But sister was different. It wasn’t a word she took lightly. It made her think of familiar hands on the backs of her shoulders and someone sighing, “Fine, but you owe me fries.” It made her think of Denny’s sleep-heavy head against her ribs and the way Buck had once spent an entire Sunday helping him make a solar system model out of skewers and grapes because “gravity shouldn’t be mean.”
She watched him now, watched him make a face at the saline drip like it had personally insulted his mother, and she let that word settle.
“Boop,” Buck said, reaching again.
“Do not,” Hen warned, leveling her best mom stare.
He froze, hand hovering midair. He blinked at his own finger like it belonged to someone else. “Boop?” he tried, smaller.
Chim took a step backward so he could brace himself against the wall, laughter stitched into his breath. “It’s the whisper that kills me.”
Eddie assumed the role of reasonable adult. “Let’s, uh, keep hands to ourselves, bud.”
Buck frowned, considered this, and then compromised by poking his own nose. “Boop.”
Hen pressed her lips together to stop them from smiling. She failed.
It didn’t stop after ten minutes. It also didn’t stop after the doctor’s second pass, nor after the nurse finished writing instructions with a flourish, nor after Eddie had gone to move the truck and come back with a bag of vending machine pretzels because Buck had seen a commercial for pretzels once and it had apparently altered his DNA. It became the rhythm of the room, the little private joke of the slowly ticking clock.
Every time Hen glanced at the chart: “Pretty pretty big sister.”
Every time she shifted in the chair: “Pretty.”
Every time she tried to sign the discharge papers that weren’t even for them—because she’d been the one to bring him in and someone had given her a clipboard, and you didn’t hand Hen a clipboard without expecting results—he’d lean forward, eyes bright, and whisper, “Boop,” as if he were casting a spell.
At one point, she turned to adjust the curtain and he reached the full distance of the bed to snag her sleeve, careful with the IV but not with her patience. She turned back, and he put his finger to his lips and then pointed to her nose. “Secret boop,” he confided.
She stared at him. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now,” Chim declared from the foot of the bed, where he’d pulled a rolling stool and was keeping a tally on a scrap of paper he’d scrounged from somewhere. He had labeled it, in all caps, “BOOP COUNT,” then underlined it three times. The number was already threatening to escape the margins. “We begin the record here.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Hen said.
Chim, in a perfect imitation of her tone but none of her moral authority, said, “Don’t encourage him.” Then he held up the paper so Eddie could see. Eddie choked on a laugh and had to pretend it was the pretzel.
Hen looked back at Buck, ready to shoot down whatever was about to come out of his mouth next, but what waited there wasn’t a joke. It was that soft, open look he got sometimes when he thought no one was paying attention. The one that said he hadn’t learned, not fully, that this wasn’t going to be taken away from him. His voice, when it came, was quiet.
“My sister,” he said. And not in the crackling way. Not with the glitter of the meds in it. Just… honest. “You stayed.”
She had the impression, bizarrely, of something clicking into place. Of a box getting labeled correctly in his brain, neat handwriting, lid closed. She swallowed. “Of course I stayed.”
He smiled again, that easy, shameless thing he only had around the people he trusted. Then the meds drifted him into sillier territory. He picked up her hand without asking and studied it like an artifact. “You have nice hands,” he said thoughtfully. “Sturdy. Pretty.”
“Uh-huh.” Hen reclaimed her hand before he could try to boop it.
“Eddie has dad hands,” Buck added, as if this were a research finding. “Chim has hands that look like they belong in a cooking show.”
Chim preened. “Thank you?”
“Bobby has the hands of God,” Buck said reverently, and then gasped. “Don’t tell him I said that. He’ll… he’ll… uh… make me peel potatoes until I learn humility.”
Hen’s mouth twitched. “And me?”
“You,” Buck said, eyes back on her, warm as a good fire, “have hands that catch the world and hand it back without the sharp edges.”
Chim and Eddie both went still, surprised into their own softness. Hen felt her laughter reroute itself into her chest. Good God, he was such a sap. They were doomed.
Then, as if he could sense he’d tipped them too close to sentiment, Buck reached out and—“Boop.”
Hen yelped. “You absolute menace.”
“Pretty pretty big—”
“Finish that sentence,” she warned, “and we’re having a conversation about appropriate behavior around medical equipment.”
He cut himself off, eyes going comically wide. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I would never disrespect your equipment.”
Chim nearly fell off the stool.
Eddie covered his mouth with his hand, shoulders shaking. “Oh my God.”
Hen pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “This is not what I mean when I say I want you to keep your hands to yourself.”
Buck reconsidered the rules. “Can I boop Eddie?” he asked, guileless.
“No,” Eddie answered at once, then added, “But… thanks for asking.”
“What about Chim?”
Chim pointed to Eddie. “What he said.”
Buck looked personally betrayed. He looked at Hen. “Only you then.”
And there it was again, that slant of sincerity that made it impossible to be annoyed with him for longer than it took to inhale. He wasn’t choosing mischief; he was choosing her. She sighed and shook her head and let the fondness spill out where he could see it, because Buck thrived on what you didn’t make him guess about.
“Drink some water,” she said, passing him the cup with the bendy straw.
He sipped obediently. “My pretty pretty big sister said so,” he told the straw, confiding in it like they shared a bond now. “I listen to her.”
Chim snorted so hard he squeaked.
Hen gave him a look. He held up his tally paper. “We’re at forty-six.”
“Forty-six boops?” Eddie asked, scandalized enough to be delighted. “In under an hour?”
“Record pace,” Chim said gravely.
Hen reached over, adjusted the bed slightly to keep Buck from rolling. He made a pleased sound, like she’d personally invented gravity for his benefit. He lifted his hand again, one more boop locked and loaded, and Hen—Hen did not dodge.
He tapped her nose gently. “Pretty,” he whispered. “Pretty pretty big—”
“Okay,” she cut in, before he could get her stuck in the loop again. She leaned forward, elbows on the rail, and softened her voice: “Buck.”
He stopped, obedient as a dog at the call of his name. He looked at her, so present in that moment it almost hurt.
She cleared her throat. “You want to know a secret?” she asked.
His eyes lit. “You have a secret?”
“I have many secrets. But this one’s yours.” She took a breath, marshaled all the teasing out of her tone, and let the truth sit there with them. “You’re my pretty, pretty little brother.”
She said it and then, before he could dissolve into anything feral, reached out and tapped his nose. “Boop.”
If she had expected him to immediately chirp something ridiculous, she would have been wrong. If she had expected him to grin, she would have been half-right—he tried—but the smile trembled and then his eyes flooded. It was like someone had turned on a faucet behind them.
His surprise was instantaneous and huge. He stared at her with those wet eyes, as if he couldn’t believe how much was suddenly inside him. Then the first tear slid out, and Hen felt something in her chest crack like spring ice.
“Oh, no no no,” she said, alarmed, leaning over the rail. “Buck, why are you crying?”
“You called me pretty,” he said, voice wrecked and awed at the same time. “No one’s ever done that before.”
Hen’s heart dropped through the floor. She didn’t think; she simply went, gathering his head against her shoulder as far as the rails and wires allowed, cupping the back of his skull with her palm. His breath shuddered against her collarbone. She felt him hold as still as he could, hands hovering, as if afraid to ruin the moment by touching it.
“Hey,” she murmured, all the jokes burned off until only warmth was left. “Hey. I’m sorry no one else did. They should have. But I’m telling you now and I’ll tell you again: you are.”
He let out a breath that sounded like the first safe sleep after a week of nightmares. “Pretty?” he asked, small like he was teasing and so far from teasing that it made her throat hurt.
“Pretty,” she promised, rubbing a soothing line at his nape. “Handsome, sure. Strong. Brave. Annoying.” She waited for his choked little laugh. There it was. “But also pretty. Inside and out. Anyone with sense can see it.”
Chim had stopped laughing. Eddie had, too. The laughter had not so much disappeared as rearranged itself into something brighter. Hen felt both of them turn away to give a semblance of privacy they knew was only half-needed; Buck wasn’t one to be ashamed of feelings, but even extroverted hearts deserve a little mercy.
Buck’s arms came up, finally, tentative but eager, looping around her back. She squeezed, careful of the rib, and he hummed like the hug had completed a circuit.
He sniffed, an inelegant, human sound. “Love you, Hen,” he said against her shoulder. “Don’t tell you enough but I do.”
The words were all breath and promise. They were also not new, not entirely—not in the way he made coffee for Eddie without asking how he took it, not in the way he put himself between danger and whoever needed a second to get their bearing, not in the way he let Hen hold all his panic in her steady hands and handed it back to him labeled with the steps to climb out. But hearing them—in this room, with his nose still chilly against her scrub top and his heartbeat visible in the monitor blips—made them something else.
“I know,” she said, and she did, and she still felt something unclench under her breastbone. “Love you too, little brother.”
He hiccuped a laugh. “Little? I’m taller.”
“By poor architectural choices,” she said. “Purely cosmetic. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He leaned back enough to look at her, damp lashes clumped, face earnest. “Never,” he vowed, and then, because he couldn’t be serious for more than thirty consecutive seconds, he whispered, “Boop.”
Hen couldn’t help it; she laughed into his hair and booped him back. Eddie made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh; Chim groaned like he was physically in pain from the sweetness.
“Okay,” Hen said finally, easing him back against the pillows, fixing the blankets around his waist. “Enough boops for one day. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not my doctor,” Buck pointed out.
“I outrank your doctor,” Hen said, with the kind of authority that made even the machines want to do right by her. “Now drink the rest of your water.”
He did. He obeyed every instruction like it was a dare. His eyes kept slipping shut, drifting, then snapping open because he remembered it was important to be awake for this. It was important to stay where she could see him.
Eddie stepped up on the other side of the bed, bracing an elbow on the rail in easy mirror. “Need anything?” he asked.
Buck considered. “A nap.”
“We can do that,” Eddie said, and smoothed a hand over the blanket near Buck’s knee. “You did good today.”
“That’s my crush,” Buck murmured, content—unguarded in the way only pain meds allow. The word landed, small and seismic. Eddie went very still, color rising from his collar to the tips of his ears; he ducked his head like he could hide the sudden, helpless smile that tugged at his mouth and pretended to adjust the blanket again. He didn’t say anything, just let his fingers linger a heartbeat longer than necessary, cheeks warm. Hen’s eyebrows climbed; Chim’s eyes went huge before he clamped his lips together, heroically swallowing every comment currently screaming to be born.
Chim waved his tally sheet in the air. “We’re topping out at fifty-four,” he announced, voice only a notch too bright.
Hen stared at him. “This is what you choose to memorialize?”
“I’m a historian,” Chim said briskly. “I can’t help it. Plus, when he wakes up and claims he only booped you once, I’ll have evidence.”
Buck looked scandalized. “I would never lie to my boop… repository.”
“That’s not the word,” Eddie said, thoroughly done.
“Boopository,” Buck tried.
Hen dropped her face into her hands. “I’m filing for medical retirement.”
“No,” Buck said, alarmed immediately. “You can’t leave. Who will be pretty? Who will—” His eyes fluttered, the next words slurring into a yawn. “Who will… boop?”
“I will carry the boop torch,” Chim said solemnly.
“Please don’t,” Hen said. “For everyone’s sake.”
“Okay,” Buck whispered, and then the last of his fight slipped out like the tide. He went heavy, head settling into the pillow, mouth soft. His breath evened. The monitors kept up their steady electronic lullaby. Hen watched his face smooth and felt something unclench in her spine.
“He out?” Eddie asked softly.
Hen nodded. “For now.” She pulled the blanket up one more inch because she could. “If you two ever tell him he cried because I called him pretty, I will deny your existence.”
“Absolutely not,” Chim said, offended at the implication. “I have tact. I will simply craft a supportive narrative about it.”
Eddie smiled, quiet and genuine. “We won’t make fun of him,” he said, and then, because he was Eddie, he added, “We’ll make fun of you.”
Hen turned a narrow stare on him. “Excuse me?”
“Pretty pretty big sister,” he said, testing the phrase like he was checking the weight of it.
Chim clasped his hands. “I’m thinking t-shirts.”
Hen pointed at the door. “Out.”
Chim made a production of collecting his things—his tally sheet, his dignity—and shuffled toward the hallway. “You can’t banish me. I’m essential personnel.”
“Out,” Hen repeated, but there was no heat in it. “Get us more coffee. The real kind, not vending machine tragedy.”
Eddie raised his hands as if in surrender. “We’ll be back. You want anything else?”
Hen looked down at Buck, watched his chest rise and fall. The ridiculousness of the last few hours had carved out a place that felt like breathing room. “No. I’ve got everything I need.”
They left. The room settled around her in a softer way. She leaned back in the chair, stretched her ankle until the joint popped, and let out a breath.
Buck shifted in his sleep, not quite waking, his mouth tipping toward a smile. Hen reached out and, because no one was around to keep score, traced one gentle knuckle over his hairline. She didn’t need to say the word again. It already lived between them, tethered to a stupid little tap of a finger and a look that had undone her.
If he remembered all of it later, she’d say it as many times as he needed until he believed it without thinking. If he didn’t—if the meds blurred the edges—she’d say it again anyway, while they were inventorying the engine, while he was trying to do push-ups with a healing rib and she was threatening to sit on him to force compliance, while Denny dragged him back into their living room for a rematch of a board game with too many pieces. She’d make sure it became as common as the way they said each other’s names.
Buck snuffled in his sleep. Hen smiled. She leaned forward, just once more, and—very carefully, very quietly—booped the air over his nose.
“Sleep,” she whispered. “Pretty little brother.”
In the hall, Chim’s laughter burst and broke like a wave as Eddie said something Hen couldn’t catch. She shook her head and let affection rise in her like a warm tide. Ridiculous, all of them. Necessary, all of them.
On the table, Chim’s tally sheet lay abandoned, the number fifty-four circled twice in triumph. Hen capped the pen and drew a neat heart next to it. Then she settled in, coffee at her elbow, one ankle hooked around the bed again, prepared to hold the line until Buck woke up and tried to boop her into infinity.
When he did, she decided, she’d let him. Maybe not infinity. But a while. Long enough to make a point.
He’d made his. She had hers.
Found family didn’t require the same last name or a blood test. Sometimes it just needed a ridiculous word, said often enough to carve grooves in your life that the laughter could run down. Sometimes it lived in fluorescent light and plastic chairs and too-warm blankets and a finger held up like a compass pointing home.
Hen looked at the sleeping idiot on the bed and thought, like a prayer, Mine.
Buck sighed, as if agreeing, and turned his face into the pillow. The monitor kept time. The hospital breathed. Hen sat watch, and for once, the world felt like it knew what it was doing.