GRAYSON LAID MAILAH DOWN with more care than he had ever given anything.
The mattress dipped under her weight, and for a moment Grayson simply stood over her, watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
The tremors had stopped. The bleeding at her fingernails had clotted. Dr. Morrison would call this a medical crisis requiring monitoring, fluids, a controlled recovery environment.
Grayson pulled the blanket over her and turned off the light.
He sat at the edge of the bed, forearms braced on his knees, and stared at the wall for a long time.
Seventy-three hours. He had written the protocol with a variable. A blank space. Someone. The word had cost him nothing when he put ink to paper eight months ago, because someone had not yet existed. There had been no face to assign to the 40%, no specific set of hands he'd have to watch bleed into greenhouse soil.
