Chapter Text

What Stayed in Her Hands

1

Kayla Reyes died at 4:47 on a Friday afternoon.

Hana Kealoha was holding her left hand when it happened. That was not protocol. Protocol said you stood at the monitor and you watched the numbers and you called the time. But the husband had the right hand, and nobody was holding the left, and Hana had been looking at that empty hand for three days.

So she held it.

The line on the screen went flat. The alarm sounded. She reached up and silenced it without looking.

"Time of death, sixteen forty-seven," said Dr. Ibarra, very quietly.

Nobody moved.

The husband, Dylan, did not make a sound. He sat with his forehead on his wife's arm and his shoulders shook. He was thirty. He still had a hospital bracelet on his wrist from the first night, when he'd refused to leave.

Hana stood very still. Her hand was warm around Kayla's. It would stay warm for a little while longer. She knew that. She had known it a thousand times.

Twenty-nine, she thought. Twenty-nine years old.

Dark hair, a little curly, pulled back in the same messy knot Hana wore at work. A freckle under the left eye. Short nails, a chipped polish she'd never had the chance to fix. A thin gold band on her ring finger. The same kind of ring.

Hana had looked at that ring a lot, these three days.

A drunk driver had hit Kayla's bike on Kalanianaole Highway on Tuesday morning. She'd been riding to work. She had a helmet. The helmet had not mattered. By the time she reached the ICU, the scans had already said what the doctors didn't want to say, and for seventy-two hours the family had hoped anyway.

Hana had hoped too. That was the thing she would not say out loud. She had been an ICU nurse for seven years. She knew. She had hoped anyway.

Dylan lifted his head.

"Did she—" His voice cracked. He tried again. "Did she feel anything? At the end?"

Hana looked at him.

"No," she said. She said it softly, and steadily, and she meant to be true. "She was comfortable. She wasn't in pain. She wasn't scared."

It was most of the truth. It was the part he could use.

He nodded. He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. "Thank you," he said. "For being here. You were— you talked to her. All the time. I heard you."

"I did."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Hana, and her voice didn't shake.

She did what came next. She always did. She stayed while the family said what they needed to say. She called the chaplain and the organ donation coordinator, who had already been waiting in the wings. She washed Kayla's face with a warm cloth and combed back her hair and took out the IV lines, slowly, one by one. She folded the hospital sheet over her chest, and tucked it, as if she were cold.

At the door of the room she stopped and looked back.

She looks like me.

She turned off the light.

She finished her charting at 6:50.

Her friend Marcy, the charge nurse, leaned in the doorway of the break room and watched her type.

"You okay?"

"Yep."

"Hana."

"I'm fine. It's just a long day." She hit save. She closed the laptop. "Seven to seven. I'm going home."

"You want to sit for a minute? There's coffee."

"I'm good."

Marcy looked at her a moment longer. Then she nodded, because she was a good charge nurse, and she knew a closed door when she saw one.

"Go home," she said. "Eat something."

"I will."

She walked out of the unit, and down the hall, and into the elevator. The elevator was empty. The doors slid shut.

She stood very straight, hands at her sides, looking at her reflection in the brushed steel. A woman in navy scrubs. Messy knot. Dark eyes.

Twenty-nine.

The doors opened on the garage level. She walked to her car, got in, closed the door.

And she sat there.

Her hands were on the wheel. She looked at them. They were perfectly steady. They'd been steady all day. They had been steady for seven years.

She looked at the left one, and she could still feel the weight of another hand in it.

She started the car.

She drove home with the radio off.

2

Steve got home at ten past eight, and the house was too clean.

He stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand and looked at it. The kitchen counters were wiped. The floor was swept. A basket of laundry stood folded by the stairs, every towel in a perfect square. Even the spice rack had been turned so the labels faced out.

Hana was at the sink with her sleeves pushed up. She was scrubbing a pan.

Not scrubbing it the way you scrub a pan that needs it. Scrubbing it the way you scrub a pan because your hands need something to do.

"Hey," Steve said.

"Hey." She didn't turn. "There's rice. And some chicken. I didn't know when you'd be back."

"I ate at HQ."

"Okay."

He put his keys on the hook. He crossed the kitchen and kissed the back of her head, and felt her go very slightly rigid, the way a person does when they're holding something and don't want it jostled.

"How was your day?" he said.

"Long."

"Yeah?"

"It was a long day." She rinsed the pan. She turned it over, looked at it, and started again. "Seven to seven. You know. Anything on your end?"

"Pacheco's lawyer filed a motion. Danny wants to kill someone." He leaned on the counter, watching her. "Hana. That pan's clean."

She stopped.

For a moment she stood there with the sponge in her hand. The water ran.

"Right," she said. She set the pan on the rack. "Sorry. I'm just— I'm tired."

"Okay."

"I think I'll take a shower."

"Okay."

She dried her hands. She didn't look at him. She went upstairs, and a moment later he heard the water run, and run, and run. Longer than anyone needed.

Steve stood in the kitchen.

He knew this.

It took him a minute to place it. It wasn't Hana. Hana was warm and talkative, the kind of person who came home and narrated her whole day to the cat. It was the shape of it. The too-clean kitchen. The bright, even voice. The I'm fine, I'm just tired. The scrubbing.

He knew it because he had done it. A hundred times. After Afghanistan. After men he hadn't brought home. After anything that had weight, and no place to be set down.

Don't push, said the voice in his head that was very like Danny's. You'll get the wall.

Don't ignore it, said another.

He stood there with both voices arguing and the faucet dripping in the sink.

She came back down twenty minutes later in clean clothes. Soft shorts, an old T-shirt, her hair damp and twisted up in a towel. She'd put on the face, too. The calm, pleasant one.

"Did you eat?" she said.

"At HQ."

"Right. You said." She opened the fridge. Closed it. "I'm going to make tea."

"Hana."

"Do you want tea?"

"Sure."

She filled the kettle. She took down two mugs. She put them on the counter, moved them an inch to the left, and moved them back. The kettle rumbled. She stood with her arms folded, staring at it, as if it might say something.

Steve leaned on the table. "I'm not going to push," he said.

"I know."

"I want to ask one thing."

She waited. Her shoulders went up a fraction.

"Was it a bad one?"

A silence.

"I lost a patient today," she said to the kettle. "It happens. It's the job. I've done it a hundred times."

"Okay."

"I'm fine. It's been a long day. I'll be fine in the morning."

"Okay."

"I don't really want to talk about it."

"Okay."

The kettle clicked off. She poured the water. She handed him a mug and sat down across from him, and for a minute she held hers in both hands, looking into it, and said nothing.

She wasn't there. She was sitting at his table, and she was a thousand miles off. Her thumb moved back and forth over the rim of the cup. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She's not fine, he thought.

He knew it the way he knew a bad ridgeline, or a flat tire: with certainty and no evidence.

She'll go to bed. She'll lie awake. Tomorrow she'll scrub the oven. And by Monday it'll be set in concrete.

He had been that person. He knew what it took to get out of it. It wasn't talking. Nobody could talk their way out of that room. Somebody had to come in and drag you out by the collar.

He looked at the clock. 8:42.

He looked at the dark window. Beyond it, the lanai light, and the sand, and the ocean breathing.

It's the dumbest idea I've ever had, Steve thought.

He examined it from every angle, looking for the flaw. Every angle came back the same.

It might work.

He pushed back his chair.

"Put your shoes on," he said.

3

Hana looked up. "What?"

"Shoes. Or don't. Doesn't matter. Come on."

"Steve, it's almost nine."

"I know."

"It's dark."

"There's a moon." He was already at the back door. He pulled it open, and the warm night air came in, salt and plumeria. "And a floodlight."

"Where are we going?"

"Not far."

"I don't like surprises."

"I know." He held out his hand. "Humor me."

She stared at him. Something moved behind her eyes. Wariness, then, grudgingly, curiosity.

"Is this an intervention?"

"It's a field trip."

She put down her tea.

The beach behind their house was empty. A strip of pale sand, sloping down to black water, with the lanai floodlight throwing a yellow fan across it. The moon hung low and bright over the ocean. The waves came in slow, white-edged and quiet.

Hana stood on the bottom step with her arms folded.

"Okay," she said. "I'll bite. Why are we on the beach in the dark?"

Steve went to the storage box under the lanai. He came back with a battered brown football and tossed it from hand to hand.

She stared at it.

"Absolutely not."

"You haven't heard the rules."

"I don't need the rules. I know what a football is."

"Two minute drill." He gave the ball a spin. "I've got the ball. You have to take it. That's it."

"Take it from you."

"Yep."

"You're a Navy SEAL."

"I'll go easy."

"I'm five foot four."

"Five foot three and a half," Steve said. "I measured you once."

She opened her mouth, and closed it, and for the first time in hours her mouth twitched.

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"I know."

"You're going to hurt yourself."

"Probably." He backed up ten paces onto the sand, spun the ball on one fingertip, and grinned. It was a real grin, slightly lopsided, a little sheepish. He hadn't known he could do it on purpose. "Come on, Hana. Take it."

She stood there.

For a long moment he thought she would say no. That she'd turn and go back inside and wash the same mug until midnight.

Then she kicked off her slippers.

"If I get sand in my eye," she said, "I'm suing."

"Noted."

It started slowly.

She walked up to him like a woman approaching a strange dog. He held the ball out in one hand, loosely. She lunged. He lifted it, effortlessly, over his head.

She jumped. Missed by a foot.

"That's cheating!"

"It's called height."

"It's called being tall."

"It's a skill."

She jumped again. He lifted. She went around his left side; he spun, and the ball went with him. She made a noise of pure indignation.

"Hold still!"

"That's not in the rules."

"There are no rules!"

"There are always rules." He tucked the ball under one arm and started jogging backward across the sand. "You're losing, Hana."

"I'm not—"

She charged.

She actually charged, head down, low and fast. He saw it coming. He made a decision. As she went for his waist he caught her under the arms and lifted her clean off the ground.

She shrieked.

It was a wonderful sound. High and furious and absolutely helpless. She kicked her bare feet and pounded his shoulders.

"Put me down!"

"You have to take the ball."

"I can't reach the ball!"

"Then you'll have to work harder." He tossed her gently into the air and caught her again. "Come on."

"Steve McGarrett, I swear to God—"

He spun her around. Once. Twice. Sand flew from her heels. The sky and the ocean and the mountains whirled by. She was gasping, swearing in two languages, and somewhere in the middle of the second spin, she grabbed his collar, hooked an arm around his neck, and with a shout of pure triumph, ripped the ball out from under his elbow.

"HA!"

He staggered. He let go. They went down together in the sand, in a heap, and she landed on his chest with the ball clutched in both fists and her hair full of beach.

"I got it!" she crowed. "I got it! Did you see that?"

"I saw."

"I took it from a SEAL!"

"I let you."

"You did not!"

"I might have."

She was laughing. Really laughing, with her head thrown back and her whole body shaking. It was a wild, helpless, gulping laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere you didn't know was locked. She was on top of him in the sand with the football over her head like a trophy and tears of laughter running down her face.

Steve lay there looking up at her.

There she is, he thought.

4

Hana didn't know when the laughing changed.

One second she was gasping, the ball held up in both hands, the sand still warm under her knees and Steve's chest shaking under her. The next, something in her ribs caught. A small, tight snag, like a thread pulling.

She was still laughing. But it had gone thin. It had a crack in it.

She lowered the ball.

"Hana?"

"I'm fine." She was still smiling. It hurt. "I'm fine, I'm just—"

Her breath hitched.

Oh no, she thought, calmly, from a long way off. Oh no. Not here.

It came up from underneath. All at once, the way a wave comes in from behind you. She felt her face go. She put the football down on the sand, carefully, as if it might break. She put both hands over her mouth.

Steve sat up. He didn't say anything. He didn't ask. He just took her by the shoulders, very gently, and pulled her in against his chest, and she cried.

It was not pretty. It came out in great ugly gulps, her whole body shaking with it. She cried the way she hadn't cried at the bedside, or in the elevator, or in her car in the garage. She cried for Kayla Reyes's chipped nail polish and her messy knot and her thin gold ring. She cried for Dylan's hospital bracelet, still on his wrist. She cried for the empty left hand, and she cried because she had lied to him, a good lie, a kind one, she wasn't scared, and she did not know if it was true.

Steve held on.

He didn't tell her it was okay. He didn't rock her or hush her. He just stayed. His arms around her. His chin on top of her head. His breath steady and slow, so she could match it.

It lasted a long time.

When it eased, she was limp against him, exhausted, sand stuck to her wet cheeks. The ocean went on, indifferent and lovely.

"Sorry," she said hoarsely.

"Don't."

"I made a scene."

"It's a beach. Nobody's here."

"The Nakamuras' porch light is on."

"They're very focused on their television."

She laughed, wetly. It turned into a hiccup. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and left a streak of sand across it.

"Her name was Kayla," she said.

He waited.

"She was twenty-nine. She was on her bike. A drunk driver hit her on Tuesday morning and she was on the unit for three days." She looked at the ocean. "She looked like me. That's the stupid part. It's so stupid. I've lost patients. Kids. Old people. I've lost so many. But she had the same ring. And her hair was the same. And the husband— he's thirty. He wore his bracelet the whole time. He asked me if she'd been in pain."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said no." Her voice cracked. "I said she wasn't scared. I don't know if that's true."

"Do you know that it isn't?"

"No."

"Then maybe it was true."

"Maybe." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "I held her hand when she died. That's not protocol. I just— nobody was holding it. And I thought, if that were me, I'd want somebody to."

"Yeah."

"And I came home and I scrubbed a pan for ten minutes because I didn't want to think, and I couldn't stop, Steve, I couldn't stop."

"I know."

"You know?" She lifted her head. Her eyes were swollen and red and furious. "You keep saying that. How do you know?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"Because last year," Steve said, "after the thing in Bangkok, I came home and cleaned the garage for two days. Alphabetized the tools. Danny found me at midnight sorting screws by length."

She stared.

"I didn't say a word to anybody. For a week. Everyone thought I was just busy." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Then Chin threw me in the ocean. Fully clothed. Said I needed to do something with my body that wasn't scrubbing."

"Did it work?"

"I was furious for an hour." A small smile. "Then I cried. In front of Chin. In the water. It was extremely awkward."

She started to laugh again. Shakily. "That's the worst thing I've ever heard."

"I know."

"You came up with this football thing because Chin threw you in the ocean."

"It seemed safer."

"Than the ocean?"

"I figured you'd sue me."

She put her forehead against his collarbone. She was laughing and crying at once, a ridiculous, tangled sound, and he held her and let her.

"Thank you," she said into his shirt.

"You took the ball."

"I took the ball."

"From a SEAL."

"Shut up."

She breathed in. Out. The salt air filled her up.

"It's still going to be sad tomorrow," she said.

"Yeah."

"And on Monday I have to go back."

"Yeah."

"And I'll probably think about her for a long time."

"Probably."

"Is that okay?"

He tipped her face up with two fingers. His eyes were steady.

"It's allowed to be heavy," Steve said. "You're not supposed to put it down all at once. Just don't carry it alone."

She looked at him.

I'm not, she thought, with a kind of wonder. I'm not carrying it alone.

Her chest still ached. It would ache for a long time. But the weight had changed. It was the same weight, and it was different. There were two pairs of hands on it now.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay."

They sat there on the sand, under the moon, until the ache eased. Then Steve reached over and picked up the football.

"Rematch?"

She narrowed her eyes. She wiped her face. She stood, slowly, and brushed the sand off her knees.

"Two out of three," Hana said.

"You're on."

"And this time, no lifting."

"No promises."

She charged.

He caught her.

She shrieked.

Down the beach, a porch light came on. A curtain moved. Someone watched a grown woman get tossed into the air by a very tall man under the moon, and decided, on balance, to mind their own business.

The End.