Chapter 4: The Price of a Truce

Chapter 4: The Price of a Truce

Jackson Ryder was a man of action. When a play went wrong on the field, he didn't stand around analyzing it; he called an audible, changed the formation, and forced a new outcome. He was discovering that fatherhood, at least in these terrifying early stages, was no different. His vow to Elara—I’m not going anywhere—wasn't a passive statement; it was a battle cry.

He arrived the next morning before the sun had fully risen, armed with a cardboard tray carrying two large coffees that didn’t come from a vending machine and a bag of bagels that weren’t pre-packaged. He found Elara exactly where he’d left her, asleep in the hard plastic chair, her neck at an uncomfortable angle, a thin hospital blanket draped over her shoulders. She looked impossibly young and fragile, and the sight sent another pang of guilt, sharp and unwelcome, through his chest.

“Ellie,” he said softly, touching her shoulder.

She jolted awake, her hazel eyes wide with a moment of disorientation before they settled on him. A complicated mix of relief and wariness flickered across her face.

“You’re still here,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep.

“I told you I wasn’t going anywhere,” he said, setting the coffee and bagels on the small ledge by the window. He gestured to the offering. “Thought you might need this.”

She stared at the food as if it were a foreign object. For the past several weeks, sustenance had been an afterthought, something grabbed between monitor checks and hushed conversations with nurses. Jax’s simple gesture felt… loud. It was a declaration of his presence, his intent to insert himself into the quiet, desperate rhythm she had established.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the coffee. The warmth seeped into her perpetually cold hands.

He watched her for a moment, then turned his attention to their son. He spent a long time just staring into the incubator, his jaw tight. He was memorizing the rise and fall of Leo’s tiny chest, the flicker of his eyelids, the way his fingers twitched. He was trying to cram a lifetime of missed moments into a few hours.

“I was on the phone all night,” Jax said finally, his back still to her. “I called my dad. He knows the chief of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins. One of the best neonatologists in the country. He’s going to consult, look over Leo’s charts. I’ve already authorized them to send everything over.”

Elara froze, the coffee cup halfway to her lips. The words hit her like a splash of icy water. I called my dad. I’ve already authorized. It wasn’t a discussion. It wasn’t a partnership. It was a takeover.

“You did what?” she asked, her voice dangerously quiet.

“I got him the best,” Jax said, turning to face her, his expression earnest, almost proud. He didn’t understand the storm clouds gathering in her eyes. “If there’s anything more that can be done, we’re going to do it. Money is no object.”

There it was. The Ryder solution. The cheat code he had always used to navigate the world. For every problem, there was a check that could be written, a powerful person who could be called. It was the very thing she had run from—the casual, crushing power of his family’s wealth that made her feel so small, so inadequate.

“This isn’t a football team, Jax,” she said, her voice trembling with a tightly controlled anger. “You don’t just get to trade up for a better player. There are amazing doctors here. Dr. Evans has been with him since the beginning. She knows him.”

“And now a guy who wrote the book on this stuff will know him, too,” Jax countered, his own frustration rising. Why was she fighting him on this? He was trying to help. “Why are you angry? I’m trying to save our son’s life.”

“You’re trying to control it,” she shot back, her voice now a fierce whisper. She was acutely aware of the other families nearby. “You waltz in here after a year of silence and think you can just take over? Pay for a few specialists and pat yourself on the back for being a good father? I have been here, Jax. Every single second. I have held his hand through every alarm, I have talked to every doctor, I have done everything. You don’t get to just buy your way into that.”

The accusation stung. He saw it as helping; she saw it as charity, a judgment on her ability to care for their child on her own. He took a deep breath, trying to rein in his temper. “That’s not what this is. You’re exhausted, Ellie. You need a break. You need to eat something that isn’t from a machine. Come on.” He nodded toward the door. “Let’s go to the cafeteria. We can’t talk in here.”

It was an order disguised as a suggestion. Reluctantly, feeling the eyes of a nearby nurse on them, she followed him out, the space between them crackling with unspoken resentment.

They found a small table in the corner of the impersonal hospital cafeteria, the air thick with the smell of stale coffee and disinfectant. The fluorescent lights were harsh, stripping away all pretense.

“Did you think I was just going to abandon him?” Jax asked, his voice raw. The argument about the doctors was just a symptom of the real disease between them. “Is that what you think of me? That I wouldn’t have been here from the start if I’d known?”

“I don’t know what to think, Jax,” she admitted, pushing around a limp-looking salad on her plate. “The only thing I know for sure is that you and I… we’re from different worlds. I told you that when I left. I knew I would only get in your way, that I’d be an anchor on your future.”

He slammed his plastic fork down on the table, making her jump. “And I told you that was bullshit! Do you really think my future, my career, is more important than… than him?” He gestured wildly back in the direction of the NICU. “Than you?”

“It’s not just about you!” she whispered fiercely, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. “It’s about your family, the coaches, the expectations! You can’t see it because you’re in the middle of it, but I could. I saw it all.”

“So you made a decision for both of us? For three of us?” The hurt in his voice was a palpable thing. “You didn’t trust me enough to let me choose.”

“I chose to protect you!”

“You chose to lie to me!”

Their quiet, vicious argument was cut short by a sound that sliced through the mundane clatter of the cafeteria.

A series of sharp, frantic beeps echoed from the hospital's PA system, followed by a calm, but urgent, female voice.

“Code Blue, NICU. Code Blue, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.”

The world stopped.

Every drop of anger, pride, and hurt evaporated in an instant, replaced by a pure, gut-wrenching terror that was colder and sharper than any they had ever known. Elara’s face went bone-white. Jax was already on his feet, his chair screeching against the tile floor.

Their eyes met across the table, and in that shared moment of absolute dread, the fight was forgotten. The price of their truce was suddenly, horrifyingly clear. It wasn’t about money or control. It was about him. Leo.

They didn’t speak. There was no need. United by the one thing that mattered more than their fractured past, they ran. Side by side, they bolted from the cafeteria, their footsteps echoing a frantic, desperate rhythm down the long, sterile hallway, racing toward the sound of the alarm and the terrifying silence that might follow.