Rhett approached him after Cross stepped away. "You should get that looked at," Eli said, pointing to the dried blood beside Rhett's eyebrow. Rhett almost laughed. "You sound like Mara." Eli examined his splinted-looking left hand, which Rhett had been protecting unconsciously. "And that, too."
"I'll go to the hospital," Rhett said. "I'll even let them tell me I'm an idiot." Eli's mouth twitched into a genuine smile. "They won't have to look very hard." It was the sort of answer Caleb would have given, and Rhett felt gratitude for the resemblance instead of grief.
Norah came closer and took Rhett's uninjured hand. "Thank you," she said. The words were inadequate, and both of them knew it, but she had carried too many explanations for too long to distrust a simple sentence when it was sincere. Rhett shook his head.
"Caleb started this," he replied. "You kept it alive. Eli brought it to the people who could help. We all finished the part in front of us."
At the hospital outside Cotter County, a doctor found three cracked ribs, extensive bruising, a cut requiring eight stitches, and a fracture in Rhett's left hand. The doctor asked how the injuries occurred, and Rhett answered plainly, describing the confrontation without pretending he had been more in control than he was. He cooperated with the official documentation because the investigation would need accurate medical records, not heroic stories about a man who did not feel pain. By the time he left the treatment room, exhaustion had settled into him so deeply that lifting a paper cup required attention.
Deak sat in the waiting room with a bandage on his shoulder and a cup of coffee that tasted terrible even by clubhouse standards. He looked at Rhett's wrapped hand, his stitched eyebrow, and the careful way he lowered himself into a chair. "You've looked better," he observed. Rhett took the coffee. "I've felt better."
They sat quietly while the sky beyond the windows changed from black to the dark blue of approaching morning. The hospital television showed weather maps and traffic delays, ordinary information for a world that had continued to function while theirs had been rearranged. Rhett watched an orderly wheel a tray down the hall and felt an unexpected envy for the uncomplicated destination of that small task. A tray needed to reach a patient, and someone was making sure it did.
"I should have known about the watch," Rhett said after a long silence. Deak looked at him. "Known what?" Rhett turned the empty cup slowly in his good hand.
"That Caleb marked it. That he wanted someone to recognize it. That he wasn't just asking me to remember him."
"He didn't need you to understand it five years ago," Deak replied. "He needed you to keep it safe until the person with the other half appeared. If he'd told you everything, Hale might've made you another target. The promise worked because you were willing to keep it without demanding a reason."