The Maker: Hollywood

The analog clock mounted on the pale yellow wall of the surgical waiting room had a secondhand that ticked with a loud, incredibly obnoxious mechanical click.

Daniel had been listening to that click for seven hours.

It was currently 4:17 in the morning. The harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cast long, washed-out shadows across the cheap linoleum floor. The rest of the hospital had settled into the quiet, eerie lull of the graveyard shift, but the surgical wing remained suspended in a suffocating, static tension.

Daniel was sitting in the same plastic chair he had occupied since midnight. His massive frame was hunched forward, his elbows resting heavily on his knees. He hadn’t moved to get coffee. He hadn’t checked his phone. He had just stared at the heavy, swinging double doors at the end of the hallway, waiting for them to open.

Florence was asleep. She was curled into the plastic chair next to him, her head resting completely against Daniel’s thick bicep, her breathing slow and even. She had stayed awake for the first five hours, holding his hand and whispering quiet reassurances, but the emotional exhaustion had finally dragged her under.

Margot was awake. She was sitting on Daniel’s right, holding a paper cup of lukewarm cafeteria tea that she hadn’t taken a sip of in two hours. She was staring at the floor, her thumb absently rubbing a slow circle against the side of the paper cup.

The silence was heavy. It was the kind of silence that made your ears ring.

At 4:22 AM, the heavy double doors at the end of the corridor finally pushed open.

Daniel’s head snapped up.

Dr. Aris walked through the doors. He still had his blue surgical scrubs on, but his cap was pulled off, held loosely in his hand. The front of his scrubs was stained with dark spots of blood. He looked completely, utterly hollowed out. His shoulders were slumped, his face was pale, and he looked like a man who had just spent the last seven hours in a physical fistfight for his life.

Daniel stood up so fast his plastic chair scraped violently against the floor.

Florence jerked awake, blinking blearily at the harsh lights, immediately sitting up and grabbing Daniel’s arm. Margot stood up right next to him, leaving her tea on the chair.

Daniel didn’t walk toward the surgeon. He couldn’t. His boots felt like they were cemented to the floor. His heart was hammering so hard against his ribs he felt physically sick. He just stared at Dr. Aris, waiting for the words that would either let him breathe or completely destroy him.

Dr. Aris stopped a few feet away. He let out a long, ragged exhale, looking at Daniel.

Then, the exhausted surgeon gave a very small, tired nod.

”He’s alive,” Dr. Aris said, his voice raspy and completely stripped of professional polish.

The remaining tension in Daniel’s body evacuated all at once, leaving him entirely hollow. His knees actually buckled for a fraction of a second, forcing him to grab the back of the plastic chair to keep himself upright. He let out a breath that sounded like a dry sob, dropping his head forward.

Florence let out a loud gasp, covering her mouth with both hands, the tears instantly spilling over her eyelashes again. Margot leaned heavily against Daniel’s side, burying her face in his shoulder, her shoulders shaking with pure, unfiltered relief.

”Tell me,” Daniel rasped, looking back up at the surgeon.

”It was... it was incredibly close, Mr. Miller,” Dr. Aris admitted, running a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. ”The rupture was massive. The abdominal cavity was completely flooded when we opened him up. We had to clamp the aorta above the renal arteries just to stop the bleeding so we could see what we were doing. We grafted a synthetic Dacron tube in place of the blown section.”

Dr. Aris paused, letting out another heavy breath.

”His heart gave out twice on the table,” the surgeon said quietly, looking Daniel directly in the eyes. ”We had to hit him with the paddles. We had to push epinephrine directly into his system. For about three minutes, I genuinely thought we had lost him. But...” The surgeon managed a faint, incredulous smile. ”The stubborn old man just refused to quit. His rhythm stabilized. His pressure came back up. We closed him twenty minutes ago.”

Daniel didn’t think about hospital protocol. He didn’t think about personal space, or boundaries, or the fact that he was a billionaire and this was an employee of the hospital.

Daniel stepped forward and wrapped his massive arms around Dr. Aris, pulling the exhausted surgeon into a tight, heavy hug.

Dr. Aris froze for a second, completely caught off guard by the sheer physical mass and the breach of protocol, but then he slowly brought his own arms up and patted Daniel’s back.

”Thank you,” Daniel whispered, his voice thick and rough. ”Thank you. Whatever you need, whatever this hospital needs. Thank you.”

”Just doing my job, Daniel,” Dr. Aris said, stepping back gently. ”But you need to understand, he is not out of the woods. The surgery was successful, but the physical trauma on a body his age is catastrophic. He is in a medically induced coma right now, and he is heavily sedated. We are moving him to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU). He’s on a ventilator until he can breathe on his own, and his kidneys took a massive hit from the blood loss. The next forty-eight hours are critical.”

”Can I see him?” Daniel asked immediately.

”Not right now,” Dr. Aris shook his head. ”The ICU team is getting him settled, hooking up the central lines and the monitors. It’s going to take them at least two hours. And frankly, Mr. Miller, you look like you’re about to drop dead yourself.”

”I’m staying,” Daniel said stubbornly, crossing his arms.

”Dan, no, you aren’t,” Margot stepped forward, putting a firm hand on his chest. She looked up at him, her eyes red but her expression absolute. ”You haven’t slept in twenty hours. You flew back from London yesterday, you were doing stunt work all afternoon, and you’ve been sitting in this freezing hallway all night. If you stay here, you’re going to crash, and then I’m going to have to ask Dr. Aris to admit you, too.”

”Margot is right,” Florence agreed gently, moving to his other side and wrapping her arms around his waist. ”He’s sedated, darling. He doesn’t know you’re here right now. Let the nurses do their jobs. We’re going home. You are going to take a hot shower, you are going to sleep for four hours in an actual bed, and then we will come right back.”

Daniel looked at the double doors, then looked down at the two women holding him. He wanted to fight it, he wanted to drag a chair into the ICU and sit by the bed until Stan opened his eyes, but the sheer, crushing weight of the adrenaline leaving his system was making his vision blur around the edges.

”Four hours,” Daniel conceded quietly.

”Four hours,” Margot promised.

The drive back to Bel Air was conducted in total silence.

The sun was just starting to peek over the eastern horizon, painting the smoggy Los Angeles sky in pale streaks of orange and grey. The streets were mostly empty, save for the early morning delivery trucks and street sweepers.

When they walked through the front doors of the estate, the massive house felt entirely different. Just eight hours ago, Daniel had been driving out of these gates to go share a bottle of scotch and celebrate a billion-dollar box office run. Now, he felt like he had aged five years in a single night.

He didn’t talk. He walked straight up the sweeping staircase to the master bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and stepped into the shower.

He turned the water on as hot as it would go. He stood under the heavy spray, letting the scalding water beat against his neck and shoulders, washing away the smell of hospital bleach and stale coffee. He leaned his hands against the slick tile wall, dropping his head, his chest heaving as the delayed shock finally started to ripple through his muscles. He stood there until the hot water started to run lukewarm, his mind completely blank, too exhausted to process the reality of how close he had just come to losing his grandfather.

When he finally stepped out, dried off, and walked into the bedroom wearing a pair of clean sweatpants, Margot and Florence were already asleep on the massive California king bed, completely tangled in the sheets, exhausted.

Daniel carefully climbed in next to them. He pulled Margot against his side, buried his face in Florence’s hair, and closed his eyes.

He slept for exactly three hours and forty-five minutes.

His internal alarm clock, wired by years of studio emergencies and early morning call times, woke him up at eight-thirty. He slipped out of bed without waking them, pulled a dark t-shirt over his head, and walked downstairs to the kitchen.

He turned the espresso machine on. As it was warming up, his cell phone vibrated on the marble counter.

It was Elena.

Daniel swiped the screen and put the phone to his ear. ”Morning.”

”I am so sorry to call you so early,” Elena said immediately, her usually sharp, professional tone softened considerably. ”I spoke to Marcus. He told me the surgery was a success. How are you holding up?”

”I’m awake,” Daniel said, pulling a ceramic mug from the cabinet. ”He’s in the ICU. I’m heading back there in an hour. What’s the situation out there?”

”It’s a complete madhouse, Dan,” Elena sighed, the sound of typing clicking rapidly in the background on her end. ”The TMZ article broke the internet last night. We have news vans parked outside the studio gates, they are lining the streets outside Cedars-Sinai, and my inbox currently has about four thousand media inquiries asking for a status update. The public thinks he’s dead because we haven’t said anything.”

”We need to put out a statement,” Daniel agreed, placing the mug under the espresso spout. ”Keep it short. Don’t give them his exact medical charts. No PR spin, no poetic nonsense about his legacy.”

”I have a draft,” Elena said. ”Listen to this: ’Late last night, Stan Lee suffered a sudden medical emergency and underwent a major surgical procedure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The surgery was successful. He is currently resting in the Intensive Care Unit and is in stable condition. We ask that the press respect his privacy and the privacy of his family during this recovery period.’”

”Send it,” Daniel said without hesitation. ”Post it on all official studio social media channels, and wire it to the major trades. Tell hospital security to have LAPD clear the sidewalks outside the entrance. I don’t want reporters harassing the nurses when they go on their coffee breaks.”

”Done. I’ll handle the press. Go take care of Stan.”

The statement went live at nine in the morning.

The global reaction was a massive, collective exhale.

The internet, which had spent the last eight hours locked in a state of frantic, terrified mourning, instantly shifted into a massive wave of cautious, overwhelming relief. The hashtag #StanIsAlive replaced the prayer hashtags within minutes.

But it was the fan community that truly took over the narrative.

Daniel saw it when he sat in the back of his SUV on the way back to the hospital, scrolling through his private social media feed. The toxic, argumentative side of the internet had completely vanished. Instead, the timelines were flooded with artwork.

Digital artists from all over the world, working through the night, had started posting incredible, poignant illustrations.

One image, which had already gathered two million likes, showed a beautifully drawn hospital hallway. Sitting on the cheap plastic waiting room chairs, drawn in their full, cinematic costumes, were Spider-Man and Captain America. Spider-Man was hunched forward, exactly the way Daniel had been, his masked head resting in his hands. Captain America was standing next to the door, his shield resting against the wall, standing guard.

Another piece of art showed Iron Man, hovering outside a hospital window in the rain, keeping watch over a sleeping old man in a bed.

The fans weren’t treating it like celebrity gossip. They were treating it like the creator of their modern mythology was recovering, and they were sending their heroes to protect him.

Daniel locked his phone screen and stared out the tinted window at the passing Los Angeles traffic. He felt a tight, hard knot form in his throat. Stan hadn’t just written comic books. He had built a global family. And Daniel was going to make damn sure that family knew their father was safe.

Four days later, the stark, sterile environment of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit had become Daniel’s permanent office.

The ICU was quiet, heavily regulated, and smelled overwhelmingly of harsh hand sanitizer and iodine. The room Stan was in was relatively small, dominated by the massive, highly technical hospital bed and a towering rack of digital monitors that beeped and hummed with a constant, rhythmic cadence.

Daniel was sitting in a tiny, uncomfortable vinyl chair tucked into the corner of the room.

Because he had spent months eating dry chicken and lifting heavy weights with David Goggins to prepare for the Captain America shoot, his physical frame was completely ridiculous in the context of the small hospital furniture. His broad shoulders spilled over the edges of the chair, his thick legs practically cramped against the side of the nightstand. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt and grey sweatpants, looking less like a billionaire executive and more like a private security contractor.

He had a sleek silver laptop balanced precariously on his knees, typing a response to a VFX vendor regarding the green screen composites for the train sequence with one hand.

His other hand was resting on the edge of the mattress, gently holding Stan’s frail, bruised hand.

Stan had been extubated the day before. They had taken the breathing tube out of his throat, much to the relief of the medical staff, but he had remained heavily sedated, drifting in and out of a deep, drug-induced sleep. His skin still looked pale, and his face was covered in an oxygen mask, but the terrifying grey tint was gone.

Daniel hit send on the email. He closed the laptop with a soft click and set it on the floor.

He leaned his head back against the wall, rubbing his tired eyes. He hadn’t left the hospital in four days. Margot and Florence had been bringing him clothes and forcing him to eat decent food from actual restaurants instead of the cafeteria, but they couldn’t force him to leave the room.

As Daniel rubbed his eyes, he felt a very weak, incredibly faint twitch against his palm.

Daniel stopped moving. He lowered his hands, his eyes snapping open and locking onto the bed.

Stan’s fingers twitched again. It wasn’t a random muscle spasm. His thumb weakly curled inward, pressing against Daniel’s palm.

Daniel instantly sat forward, the plastic chair creaking loudly under his weight. He leaned over the bed.

”Stan?” Daniel whispered, keeping his voice incredibly soft so he wouldn’t startle him.

On the bed, Stan’s eyelids fluttered. They were heavy, fighting against the lingering effects of the heavy painkillers and the sheer exhaustion of his body trying to heal a massive trauma. His brow furrowed slightly, a soft, dry groan vibrating in the back of his throat.

Slowly, agonizingly, his eyes opened.

They were blurry, completely unfocused, staring blankly at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. He blinked a few times, the bright fluorescent lights clearly bothering him.

”Stan. Hey. Look right here,” Daniel said gently, squeezing his hand.

Stan’s head rolled slowly on the pillow. His eyes tracked the sound of the voice, finally settling on the massive man sitting in the corner of the room. It took him a few seconds to process what he was looking at. His eyes darted around the hospital room, taking in the IV lines, the monitors, and the oxygen mask strapped over his nose.

He reached a weak, shaking hand up and weakly pulled the elastic strap of the oxygen mask down, letting it rest around his neck.

”Don’t pull that off,” Daniel warned, immediately reaching out to put it back.

”Leave it,” Stan croaked. His voice was an absolute ruin. It was barely a whisper, completely wrecked by the breathing tube that had been in his throat for three days. It sounded like dry leaves scraping against concrete.

Daniel hesitated, but he pulled his hand back, letting Stan breathe room air for a second.

Stan licked his lips. They were cracked and dry. He looked at Daniel again, his eyes finally finding focus. He took in the sheer size of Daniel sitting in the tiny chair, the tight black t-shirt, and the exhaustion on his face.

A very faint, weak smirk tugged at the corner of Stan’s mouth.

”Did I hire a bouncer while I was asleep?” Stan whispered, his voice cracking violently on the last word.

Daniel let out a massive, breathless laugh, dropping his forehead against the edge of the mattress. The sheer, overwhelming relief of hearing that familiar, sharp wit completely broke the last remaining tension in his chest.

”You’re an idiot,” Daniel said, his voice thick with emotion, lifting his head to look at the old man. ”You are an absolute idiot. Do you know that? You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

”Water,” Stan rasped, ignoring the scolding entirely.

Daniel immediately grabbed the small plastic cup from the rolling tray. It was filled with ice water and small, pink sponge swabs. He dipped a swab into the ice water and gently pressed it against Stan’s dry lips, letting him suck the moisture out without risking him choking on a full drink.

Stan closed his eyes, savoring the cold water, taking a slow, shaky breath.

”Where am I?” Stan asked quietly, opening his eyes again.

”Cedars-Sinai,” Daniel answered, setting the cup down. ”You’re in the ICU. You blew a tire, old man. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. It ruptured in your study. I found you on the floor.”

Stan frowned, his drug-addled brain trying to piece the memory together. ”I... I remember sitting at the desk. I was reading a script. And then... my stomach felt like it was on fire. I stood up, and the room just went black.”

”Yeah, well, you bled out internally,” Daniel said, keeping his tone light to hide how terrifying it had actually been. ”They had to open you up and graft a new tube in your artery. The surgeon said your heart stopped twice on the table. You gave the trauma team a hell of a night.”

Stan looked down at his own chest, then looked over at the monitors. He let out a slow, tired sigh. ”Well. I suppose I’m too stubborn to die quietly.”

”Apparently,” Daniel smiled softly.

Stan shifted slightly on the bed, wincing as the movement pulled at the massive line of staples running down the center of his abdomen. He closed his eyes, waiting for the pain to subside, before looking back at Daniel.

”How long?” Stan whispered.

”How long have you been out?” Daniel clarified.

Stan nodded.

”Four days,” Daniel told him. ”Today is Tuesday. The surgery was late Thursday night.”

Stan’s eyes widened slightly. ”Four days? Christ. The studio... who is running the shop? You should be working. You shouldn’t be sitting in a hospital room babysitting me.”

”The studio is fine,” Daniel said immediately, waving a dismissive hand. ”Elena is running the day-to-day operations. Tom is handling the post-production schedules. And I’ve been doing my emails from this chair. I haven’t missed a beat.”

Stan looked at him, his sharp eyes cutting right through Daniel’s casual dismissal. He could see the exhaustion. He could see the dark circles under Daniel’s eyes and the way his massive shoulders were hunched forward.

”You haven’t left this room, have you?” Stan asked quietly.

”I went to the cafeteria once,” Daniel lied poorly.

Stan let out a soft, affectionate huff of air. ”You’re a good kid, Daniel.”

”I’m technically your grandson, according to the legal death waiver I signed to get you into surgery,” Daniel smirked, leaning back in his chair. ”So, you owe me on the inheritance.”

Stan actually laughed at that, a dry, raspy sound that ended in a small coughing fit. Daniel immediately grabbed the oxygen mask and pulled it back up over Stan’s nose and mouth, pressing a button on the bed to elevate the back slightly to help him breathe.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes while Stan caught his breath, the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor filling the small room.

When Stan’s breathing settled, he pulled the mask down again. He looked at Daniel, a sudden spark of urgent curiosity lighting up his tired eyes.

”Thursday,” Stan murmured, doing the math in his head. ”If I went down on Thursday night... that means I missed the weekend.”

Daniel knew exactly where this was going.

”Yeah, Stan. You missed the weekend,” Daniel said, a slow, genuine smile breaking across his face.

”Tell me,” Stan demanded, his voice finding a fraction of its usual commanding energy. He wasn’t asking about his medical charts. He wasn’t asking about his recovery time. ”Spider-Man. The opening weekend. How did the kid do?”

Daniel leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. He didn’t look at his laptop. He didn’t need to check the spreadsheets. The numbers were burned into his brain.

”He didn’t just do well, Stan,” Daniel said, his voice dropping into a quiet, intense register. ”He completely broke the board.”

Stan’s eyes widened. ”Records?”

”All of them,” Daniel nodded. ”Biggest opening weekend in cinematic history. The mid-week holds are unprecedented. The audience isn’t just going once; they’re going back on Tuesday, on Wednesday. The theater chains are practically begging us for more digital prints because they are selling out matinee screenings in the middle of the work week.”

Daniel paused, letting the silence build for a second before delivering the absolute final blow.

”On Sunday afternoon,” Daniel said softly, ”Spider-Man officially crossed one billion dollars at the global box office.”

Stan stared at Daniel.

A billion dollars.

For a comic book character that had been created decades ago, a character that industry executives had once told Stan would never work because ”people don’t like spiders.” A character that had been mocked as too grounded, too weak, too relatable.

Stan didn’t cheer. He didn’t smile. He just lay there on the hospital bed, the magnitude of the cultural impact settling over him like a heavy, warm blanket.

”A billion,” Stan whispered, shaking his head slightly against the pillow. ”Unbelievable.”

”It’s not unbelievable,” Daniel corrected him gently. ”It’s exactly what you wrote. You wrote a hero that people actually understand. But the money isn’t the best part of the story.”

Stan looked up, his brow furrowing. ”What do you mean?”

Daniel sat back in his chair. He looked at the old man, knowing that this was exactly what Stan needed to hear to heal.

”When the movie crossed the billion-dollar mark, the backend performance bonuses triggered for the principal cast,” Daniel explained, his voice low and steady in the quiet room. ”Stephen had a massive percentage point negotiated into his contract. The deposit hit his checking account on Monday morning. I guess he had his banking app set up on his phone, because he saw the number drop in real time.”

Stan listened intently, completely captivated, ignoring the throbbing pain in his abdomen.

”The kid completely panicked,” Daniel laughed softly, remembering the phone call. ”He thought Elena’s payroll department had made a typo. He thought they accidentally added a few zeros to his check. He called me, hyperventilating, begging me to pull the money back before he got arrested for bank fraud.”

Stan let out a weak chuckle. ”Poor kid. He’s never seen that kind of money.”

”Never,” Daniel agreed. ”I had to explain to him that it was real. I had to tell him that he earned it. And then I told him to hang up the phone, drive over to his mother’s house, and tell her the news.”

Daniel paused. He looked down at his own hands, his voice dropping into a much quieter, more emotional space.

”You remember his mom, Stan,” Daniel said softly. ”You remember the diner she worked at. You remember what he wrote in that letter all those years ago. How she was breaking her back working double shifts just to keep the lights on, while he was getting shoved into lockers at school.”

Stan nodded slowly, his eyes already starting to shine with unshed tears. He remembered the letter perfectly.

”Stephen told me he drove to the house,” Daniel continued, narrating the story exactly as Stephen had tearfully relayed it to him later that night. ”He walked into the kitchen. His mom was standing by the stove, cooking dinner. He didn’t give a speech. He just sat her down at the kitchen island, slid his phone across the counter, and showed her the bank balance.”

Stan’s lower lip trembled slightly.

”He looked at her,” Daniel said, his own throat feeling tight. ”And he told her that she was done. She never has to go back to the diner. She never has to clean another office. He retired his mother, Stan. Right there in the kitchen. He bought her freedom. The kid who used to read your comic books by the light of an open oven door just changed his family’s lineage forever.”

The hospital room was dead silent, save for the rhythmic beep... beep... beep... of the heart monitor.

Stan lay flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

A single, heavy tear broke over his lower lash line and tracked slowly through the deep wrinkles on his cheek, disappearing into the white pillowcase.

Stan didn’t care about the billion dollars. He didn’t care about the box office records, or the studio stock prices, or the media coverage. He cared about the people. He cared about the fact that the stories he had written in a cramped office decades ago had actually reached out into the real world, found a struggling, desperate kid in Queens, and completely saved his life.

Stan slowly turned his head to look at Daniel. His eyes were entirely red, filled to the brim with tears.

He reached out his frail, bruised hand. Daniel met him halfway, wrapping his large hand around Stan’s, holding it firmly.

Stan squeezed Daniel’s hand with whatever weak, pathetic strength he had left in his body.

”They love my boy,” Stan whispered, his voice cracking violently, a wet, broken sob catching in the back of his throat. ”They actually love my boy, Daniel.”

”They love him, Stan,” Daniel confirmed, a tear finally escaping his own eye, tracking quickly down his jawline. ”The whole world loves him. Because you made him human.”

Stan closed his eyes, the tears flowing freely now, crying with a profound, overwhelming sense of validation. It was the ultimate culmination of his life’s work. To know that his creation wasn’t just a piece of corporate intellectual property, but a beacon of genuine hope for people who needed it.

They sat there for a long time, holding hands, two grown men crying quietly in the middle of a sterile intensive care unit, entirely unbothered by the medical equipment surrounding them.

When the tears finally subsided, Stan let out a long, shuddering sigh. He opened his eyes, wiping his face weakly with his free hand.

He looked at Daniel, his expression sobering, filled with a deep, uncompromising pride.

”You did good, kid,” Stan said, his voice stronger now, anchored by the emotional release. ”You protected the legacy perfectly. The universe... it’s in exactly the right hands.”

”I had a good teacher,” Daniel deflected quietly, wiping his own face.

”Don’t give me that,” Stan scolded weakly, a tiny spark of his usual bluster returning. ”I just wrote the words. You built the machine. You’re the one dealing with the budgets and the headaches.”

”Well, the machine is running fine,” Daniel said, pulling the oxygen mask back up and slipping the elastic strap over Stan’s head. ”But I need the architect back on his feet. So, you are going to stop getting sappy on me, you are going to listen to Dr. Aris, and you are going to heal.”

Stan grumbled under the plastic mask. ”I hate hospitals.”

”Too bad. You’re staying here until they say you can leave,” Daniel ordered, standing up from the tiny plastic chair, his knees popping loudly in protest. ”Besides, you need to recover quickly. Joe Johnston is locking the final cut of Captain America in a month, and I absolutely refuse to sit in a screening room and watch it without you.”

Stan’s eyes lit up immediately behind the mask. ”How did the footage look? Did the costume look ridiculous in the daylight?”

”The footage looks incredible, and the costume looks like a soldier,” Daniel smirked, picking his laptop up off the floor and tucking it under his arm. ”But you’re going to have to wait to see it. I’ll be back in a few hours. I’m going to go down to the cafeteria and get a coffee that doesn’t taste like battery acid.”

Stan gave him a weak wave, his eyes already starting to drift shut again as the painkillers pulled him back under.

Daniel turned and walked out of the ICU room.

He pushed through the heavy wooden door and stepped out into the busy hospital corridor. The fluorescent lights were just as harsh, the nurses were just as frantic, and the smell of bleach was just as strong.

But as Daniel walked down the hallway toward the elevators, he felt completely different.

The suffocating, crushing weight that had been sitting on his chest for the last four days was entirely gone. The panic was gone. His grandfather was going to live.

Daniel hit the call button for the elevator, a quiet, genuine smile on his face. The crisis was over. It was time to get back to work.

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A/N: Read ahead on my Patreon: /AmaanS