The hallway voices came in pieces.
Alex drifted somewhere between waking and sleep, not quite in his body, not quite out of it. The ceiling above him had blurred hours ago into a soft, indistinct white; now he mostly felt it as brightness against his eyelids. The beeping at his side ticked along, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always there.
Beyond the half-closed door, footsteps stopped. Cloth rustled. Someone cleared a throat.
"…very close now."
Dr. Carter's voice was low and controlled, the same even tone she'd used the first time she'd said lymphoma, as if choosing each word from a shelf and setting it down gently so it wouldn't shatter.
He'd learned to recognize that carefulness. It meant whatever came next wasn't something you could fix with a change in dosage.
"We'll keep him comfortable," she continued, her words blending with the hum of the ventilation. "Things are… winding down. It could be tonight. I'd recommend you all stay."
Silence, then a sound he knew was his mother's—an inhale that caught halfway and tried to turn into something steadier.
"Thank you, Doctor," Tom said. His father's voice was rougher, like gravel turned low. "We… appreciate you being honest."
The phrase "being honest" wobbled in the air. Alex tried to turn his head toward the door, but the effort stalled halfway. His neck felt like it belonged to someone who had already been asleep for a long time.
He didn't need to see their faces to know what they looked like. He'd seen that expression in mirrors, on other families in other rooms. Eyes red but dry. Mouths set in a thin line, the shape people made when they'd already cried and were trying not to start again.
The door whispered open. The quiet voices moved back into his orbit.
"Hey, baby," Maggie said softly. "We're here."
Of course you are, he wanted to say. The words tangled somewhere between his chest and his throat and came out as a faint exhale.
They'd been here as much as they could—driving hours from Cleveland, juggling work and bills and a son who'd flown too high and then fallen straight into a hospital bed.
Tonight felt different, though. He could taste it in the way the air changed when they came in, thicker, like a storm pressing at the windows.
Emily's voice came next, lighter but tight around the edges.
"I brought more stuff," she said, a forced cheerfulness in the words. "Your wall of fame was looking a little bare."
He heard the scrape of plastic as she moved around the far side of the room, the faint tap of tape against the wall. Something crinkled—a photo being smoothed flat.
"Look," she murmured. "Us at Cedar Point. You and Josh on that stupid roller coaster you made me ride. And… this one."
Her voice softened further.
"Uncle Dave at the grill," she said. "You're in those ridiculous boots. Mom's yelling at you to get out of the smoke."
Alex's lips twitched. He could see it without opening his eyes—the backyard, the cheap boots, Dave laughing with a spatula in his hand.
"And here," Emily added, "your FCW thing. The publicity shot. You look all serious and sweaty. Very intimidating."
A small, involuntary noise slipped out of him, halfway between a sigh and a laugh.
"Intimidating in a good way," she said quickly. "Like… 'don't mess with me, I'm on TV at two in the morning in Florida.'"
Josh hadn't spoken yet. Alex could feel him more than hear him, a nervous presence against the far wall. His little brother had always been quieter in person than online—bolder behind a keyboard than in a hospital room.
Now there was the faint click of a phone case in restless fingers, then a shuffle of sneakers on the floor as he edged closer.
"Hey, man," Josh said eventually, voice cracking on the first word. "Mom made me come. I told her I was busy moderating your fan page but she didn't buy it."
Alex managed a ragged breath that might, generously, be called a chuckle.
Something cool and clammy brushed his hand. Then, after a hesitation, fingers slid around his, careful, like Josh was afraid he might break him just by holding on.
Alex squeezed back as hard as he could. It wasn't much. His grip had been strong once—able to hoist people up for a fireman's carry, to snap off a suplex without thinking. Now it barely closed around his brother's hand.
Josh held on anyway.
Tom moved into his peripheral vision, a solid shape near the end of the bed. Alex felt the faint shift of weight on the mattress as his father's hand settled on his ankle through the blanket.
It was a simple touch—no stroking, no absent patting. Just the warm, heavy pressure of a palm resting there, anchoring him in place.
When Alex had been a kid and woken from nightmares, it had always been Tom's presence that calmed him—the creak of the chair by his bed, the shadow in the doorway, a big hand on his foot that said without words, You're safe, I'm here.
Now the nightmare wasn't something outside his body. But the hand was the same.
Maggie took the opposite side, near his head. Her fingers carded gently through his hair, pushing it off his forehead like she had when he came home muddy from football practice in high school. She smoothed the edge of his blanket every few minutes even when it hadn't shifted, a small, repetitive motion that seemed to keep her from unraveling.
"Your hair's getting long again," she murmured, more to herself than to him. "Should've nagged you about a trim."
He wanted to tell her he liked it this way, that he'd planned to grow it out for TV, get that perfect wrestler look. The thought flickered and faded, too tired to make the jump to his tongue.
Nurse Jason slipped in with the soft efficiency of someone who'd practiced entering rooms without disturbing their center of gravity.
"Evening, Knight family," he said quietly. "I'm just gonna check a few things."
He moved around the bed with practiced care, adjusting the lines, checking the monitor. The machines answered him in beeps and numbers, cold and precise. He responded with warmth where he could—tucking the blanket a bit more firmly around Alex's legs, straightening the pillow behind his shoulders.
His hand rested on Alex's shoulder for a second, a light squeeze.
"You got a full house," Jason said. "Main event crowd tonight."
Maggie let out a faint sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.
"We're not leaving him," she said.
"Good," Jason replied. "He's in the right hands, then."
He stepped back, positioning himself near the door but not in it, like a referee who knew when to back out of the shot.
The TV played on in the corner, volume turned low. Alex couldn't make out the words anymore, just the cadence—the rise of commentary when something big happened, the bass of the crowd swelling and falling. It wove together with the rhythm of the monitor, creating a strange kind of music that hummed through the room.
Wrestling had always been noise and color in his life. Now, at the edge of things, it had become a kind of lullaby.
Time lost its shape. Minutes or hours—it was hard to tell.
Voices came and went around him, soft and halting, more about tone than content.
"Remember when he tried to jump off the garage roof?" Emily said at one point, her laugh half-strangled. "Uncle Dave almost had a heart attack."
"That was you and Dave's fault for showing him that ladder match," Maggie said, mock-scolding worn thin by exhaustion.
"He was eight," Tom added. "He built a 'ring' out of couch cushions. I should've known we were in trouble then."
Josh made a small, choked sound that might have been a laugh. His thumb brushed over Alex's knuckles, back and forth, a tiny nervous rhythm.
Through it all, the hands stayed.
Tom's on his ankle, fingers sometimes tightening when the monitor skipped or Alex's breath hitched.
Maggie's on his forearm or his hair, adjusting, smoothing, fussing.
Emily's occasionally resting on the bedrail near his shoulder, nails clicking softly against the metal as she talked.
Josh's wrapped around his own, held like a lifeline.
Alex's world shrank to those points of contact.
He was aware, distantly, that his chest rose and fell more shallowly now. Each breath felt like pulling air through damp cloth. His limbs were heavy in a way that no amount of cardio or conditioning had ever prepared him for.
This is the part of the match where you stop hearing the crowd, he thought. Where all you feel is the mat and the ref's hand and the person holding you down.
Except no one here was holding him down. They were trying to hold him in place.
He wanted to tell them things—little things, big things. That he was proud to be their son, their brother. That he was sorry they'd had to watch him fade like this. That he still remembered the first time Emily had driven him to Coach Dalton's gym, the way Josh had sat up half the night refreshing websites the day his FCW signing got released.
He wanted to tell Maggie he could still feel the last squeeze of her hand that other night even when consciousness had slipped away.
The words lined up and then dissolved, washed away by the simple weight of their hands.
Maybe they already knew.
Jason checked the monitor again at some point. The beeps were farther apart now. He didn't say anything; his face said enough. He stepped in briefly, adjusted a drip, then retreated, shoulders tight beneath his scrubs.
No one asked for numbers. There was nothing left numbers could change.
At some point, his vision narrowed.
The edges of the room went soft, like someone had smeared Vaseline over the corners of his eyes. The fluorescent lights overhead, which had once been painfully bright, diffused into a hazy glow that made everything look washed in pale color.
He focused on the things that were still sharp.
Maggie's hand in his—she'd taken over from Josh at some point, her palm smaller but no less firm. Her thumb traced tiny circles on the back of his hand, the same absent motion she'd used when he was a child with a fever lying on their old couch.
Tom's grip on the bedrail, fingers wrapped around the metal so tightly the knuckles whitened. Every now and then, his other hand would shift to Alex's foot, as if to remind himself there was still a person attached to the numbers on the machine.
Emily's voice murmuring something about a school story, Josh's answering laugh breaking and reforming, like glass trying to hold together under pressure.
The TV, turned almost all the way down, still spilled out faint sounds. A referee's cadence, excited but controlled. The distant roar of a crowd reacting to someone's hope spot or cutoff or comeback. He couldn't tell which. It all blended into one swell of human noise.
The monitor beeped in counterpoint, slower now. Beep… beep… beep…
His fear, surprisingly, had dulled. It wasn't gone—fear never truly left—but it had receded to the back row, pushed out of the front row seats by exhaustion and the overwhelming presence of the people around his bed.
If this was the finish, at least he wasn't taking it alone.
His thoughts slid sideways, unmoored, images flashing quick and bright behind his eyes.
Uncle Dave's hand in his in front of a flickering TV.
Leo's grin as he wrote "storm vibes" in a shaky scrawl on his notepad.
Regal's chop echoing in a hot warehouse ring.
The FCW banner.
The boots he'd worn until the soles started to peel.
His name on a contract.
His name on a hospital chart.
The ceiling's glow brightened, or maybe his eyes were just giving up on separating light from color. The boundary between the overhead fixture and the white tiles bled together until it was just one field of soft, endless brightness.
Maggie's fingers tightened around his.
"We're here, Alex," she whispered. "We're right here."
Tom's voice came from somewhere near his feet, thick but steady.
"You did good, son," he said. "You did… real good."
He wanted to nod. To squeeze back harder. To say thank you. The effort felt like trying to kick out at three when your body had nothing left.
His chest rose. Fell.
The TV crowd roared one last time, then smoothed into a low, continuous hum. The monitor's beeps stretched farther and farther apart until they weren't beeps anymore, just part of that same sound.
Hands on his skin, warmth in a world that was fast becoming light and air.
He let his focus rest on that—the feel of his mother's thumb on his hand, his father's grip on the bedrail, the faint pressure of Emily's shoulder against the mattress, Josh's presence close by, fidgeting but refusing to step away. The quiet strength of all of them holding on while he slipped.
The fear loosened its hold.
If there was anything beyond this light, he would carry them with him. He'd carry Leo and Uncle Dave and the noisy Florida warehouse and every promise he'd made in between.
The white above him expanded, gentle and relentless, until it filled everything.
Alex exhaled.
The world dissolved into brightness.