The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 348

His movements ground to a halt.

He reached out, gingerly picking up the book.

It was brand new, obviously a recent purchase, yet the first dozen pages were covered in dense, meticulous notes.

Sloane's handwriting was earnest and neat, much like her personality—graceful at first glance, but harboring an underlying, resilient strength upon closer inspection.

She was... studying for the SATs?

Suddenly, Garrison was struck by the memory of her question from yesterday afternoon: "Will I be able to swim again?"

At the time, he hadn't fully processed the profound anxiety and fear layered beneath those words.

How could he have missed it?!

A twenty-one-year-old college student wakes up only to realize she's lost ten years of her life. She lost swimming. She lost her enrollment status. She lost every single pillar her identity was built upon.

Everyone she ever knew had grown up, gotten married, and had children. She was the only one left standing perfectly still, trapped in a frozen timeline.

She hadn't thrown a tantrum. She hadn't cried. Instead, she had just quietly opened an SAT Prep Guide—because it was the only lifeline she had left.

That was why she was memorizing vocabulary until 2:00 AM. She was desperately trying to earn back a degree, to find a job.

To survive.

He had been so obsessively focused on her treatment protocols, consumed by the mechanics of curing her physical body, that he had entirely neglected to check on what was breaking inside her mind.

The harsh overhead lights were flipped off, leaving only the warm, dim glow of the desk lamp.

The nurses filed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone in the quiet space.

He sat perfectly still in the bedside chair. His lab coat was completely wrinkled, a layer of dark stubble dusted his jaw, and his eyes were heavily bloodshot.

But he hadn't slept a wink. Every thirty minutes, he stood up to check her temperature, blood pressure, and pupillary response, meticulously recording every single data point in the medical log.

Sloane was deeply asleep.

Now that Vitas-1 was circulating through her system, her immune response was working in tandem with the drug, demanding absolute rest to repair the catastrophic toll the pain and seizures had taken on her body.

Her breathing was light and steady, her eyelashes casting two soft, fan-shaped shadows in the morning light. Garrison pulled her blanket up a little higher. Taking the hand resting outside the covers, he gently tucked it back into the warmth, his fingers lingering against her skin for a second—her hand was still cold, but vastly improved from last night.

Right at that moment, his phone buzzed violently in his pocket.

He scrambled to silence it, swiftly walking out of the room and pulling the door mostly shut behind him. Standing in the hallway, he glanced down at the caller ID—Quinn Foster.