The Climb Back

The air in the sterile waiting room hung heavy, thick with the scent of disinfectant and unspoken regrets. Ashley traced the worn pattern on the plastic chair beneath her, her breath catching with each tick of the wall clock. Beside her, Anthony’s hand lay open on his knee, his knuckles white with a tension that mirrored her own. This wasn’t a place they’d ever imagined themselves in, not like this, not with the sterile smell of judgment clinging to the very walls. This was the threshold of something they’d both dreaded and, in the darkest corners of their hearts, perhaps even craved: a reckoning.

“You think they’ll… you think they’ll let us see them?” Ashley’s voice was barely a whisper, a fragile thing easily lost in the quiet hum of the building. The words felt like stones in her mouth, heavy with the weight of what they’d done, of what they’d lost.

Anthony didn't look at her, his gaze fixed on a scuff mark on the linoleum floor. “We have to hope, Ash. That’s all we have right now.” His voice was rough, like sandpaper on wood, but there was a steadiness there, a flicker of the man she’d fallen in love with, the man who’d sworn to protect her, to protect *them*.