Keifer's POV
Healing, it turned out, didn't arrive in some big cinematic moment. It crept in sideways, in tiny scenes that would have looked ordinary to anyone else.
Like the morning Jay shuffled into the kitchen on her own for the first time in weeks, hair a wild halo, hoodie swallowing her frame. She didn't say anything at first, just stood there, watching the kettle steam. I froze mid-stir, spoon hovering over my mug, afraid that if I moved too fast she would bolt back to the bedroom.
"Coffee?" I asked quietly.
She considered, then nodded. "Half sugar. No lecture about sleep."
The fact she cared enough to specify made something ease in my chest. "Deal."
I made it exactly how she liked—half sugar, a little too much milk, hot but not scalding. When I slid the mug toward her, her fingers brushed mine. A few weeks ago, she would have flinched. Today, she didn't. She wrapped both hands around the warmth, lifted it to her lips, and took a slow sip.
Her shoulders dropped a fraction.
"Good?" I asked.
"It's coffee," she said. "I'm not writing it a love letter."
But there was the ghost of a smile tugging at her mouth.
She perched on the stool by the counter instead of retreating to the couch. We didn't talk about the bridge. We didn't talk about the baby. We didn't talk about "how are you" in the way that demanded a full emotional inventory.
We talked about the plant Grace had brought over.
"It's leaning toward the window," Jay said, squinting. "Is that normal?"
"It's doing better than I would in that tiny pot," I replied.
"Rude," she muttered, but she slid off the stool, shuffled over, and turned the pot gently so the stem straightened.
Another small thing. Another little click of the world shifting.
Later that week, she surprised everyone by showing up to therapy without me. She kissed my cheek at the door and said, "I want one session just for me. You're not my emotional support hamster."
"Rude," I echoed.
"See? We're improving," she deadpanned, pulling on her jacket.
I waited outside the building, pacing, fighting the urge to text every five minutes. When she finally emerged, eyes red but steady, she walked straight into my arms.
"It wasn't magic," she said into my chest. "But I told her about the bridge. And the baby. And how I felt like a defective person."
"What did she say?"
"That grief is not a test I failed," she murmured. "And that love doesn't vanish with someone just because their body does. It changes shape."
I swallowed around the knot in my throat. "Do you believe her?"
"Not yet," she admitted. "But I wrote it down. For later."
Nights were still hard. There were evenings when she stared at the ceiling, fingers twisted in the duvet, breathing too shallow. On those nights, I didn't try to fix it. I just lay beside her, one hand on her back, tracing slow circles between her shoulder blades.
"Number?" I'd ask quietly.
"Seven," she'd say sometimes. "But not bridge-seven. Just… heavy-seven."
On those nights, someone from Section E usually appeared with snacks or bad jokes or both. Percy started bringing over board games that required too much concentration to make room for spirals. Felix instituted "no phone after ten" on bad days, physically confiscating devices and tossing them onto a high shelf.
"This is a dictatorship," Jay complained once, curled up under three blankets.
"Yep," Felix said. "Complain when you're eighty."
One evening, Rakki barged in with a box. "Project," she announced, dropping it onto the coffee table.
Inside were beads. Hundreds of them. Blue, white, gold, tiny silver charms shaped like stars and little mangoes. Jay blinked at them.
"What's this?"
"Grief bracelets," Rakki said. "Not for sale. For us. For anyone who's lost someone. You design the first one. We'll wear them as long as it takes."
Jay's fingers hovered over the beads, then picked up one small white one with a barely-visible swirl through the middle. She turned it between thumb and forefinger.
"This one looks kind of like an ultrasound," she said softly.
"Then use it," Rakki replied, voice gentle for once.
They spent the next hour threading in mostly silence. Every so often, Jay would slide a bead aside, swap one out, knot and re-knot the cord. In the end, the bracelet she made was simple—blue and white alternating, with that one swirl bead in the center and a tiny silver star charm beside it.
"For them," she said.
"For them," we echoed.
She tied it on her own wrist, next to her ring and the woven band Serina had given her. I didn't miss the way her eyes softened when she looked at it. It was grief, yes. But it was also connection.
A week later, she turned up at Section E HQ with a small box under her arm.
"What's that?" Denzel asked.
She lifted the lid. Inside were ten more bracelets. "For anyone who needs them."
We didn't say who "anyone" was. We didn't have to.
Bit by bit, she started stepping back into pieces of her old life. She answered one work email. Then two. She sat in on a Zoom call for the business, camera off the first time, on the second. She refused to go near anything baby-related, and nobody pushed. There would be time, if she ever wanted to. Or not.
One afternoon, months after the hospital, we took a slow walk by the Thames. Same river. Different bridge. I watched her closely, ready to pull her away at the slightest sign of spiraling.
She stopped at the railing on her own. Rested her hands on the metal. Looked down at the water.
My heart climbed into my throat.
"Jay," I started.
She shook her head. "I'm not going anywhere," she said. "I just… want to see it from here. With you."
I stepped up beside her, close enough that our shoulders touched.
"It's weird," she murmured after a long moment. "Same river that made me think about ending everything. And now, it's just… water again."
"Just water," I agreed.
"It still hurts," she said. "It's going to, for a long time. Maybe always."
"I know."
She turned her wrist, beads catching the light—our old bracelet on my arm, her new one on hers.
"But when it hurts now," she continued, "I don't just see the hospital. Or the bridge. I see this." She nodded back toward where we'd come from, where the outline of our flat just barely peeked between other buildings. "You. Them. The stupid plant I'm trying not to kill. The therapist who doesn't flinch when I say ugly things."
She drew a slow breath. It wasn't easy, but it was full.
"It's still heavy," she said. "But I don't feel like it's trying to push me off the edge anymore. More like…" She searched for a word. "Like a backpack. One I didn't ask for. One that sucks. But one I can maybe carry if I have enough people to help me adjust the straps."
"Good," I said softly. "Because we're not going anywhere."
She leaned into me then, resting her head briefly against my shoulder.
"I know," she replied. "That's why I'm still here."
The wind tugged at her hair, the river moved on beneath us, indifferent and constant. For the first time since the loss, standing there didn't feel like a threat. It felt like a strange kind of victory.
Not because everything was suddenly okay.
Not because the future was clear again.
But because she had stood on the edge once and now chose, step by shaky step, to walk beside it instead of into it.
Later that night, back at the flat, she grabbed the remote before anyone else could.
"No sad movies," she declared. "No hospital scenes. No dead dogs. I'm calling a moratorium on emotional damage."
"What do you want?" C-in asked.
"Something stupid," she said. "Explosions. Bad jokes. I want to laugh at things that don't matter."
As the opening of some over-the-top action movie blared and she let out an honest, unforced laugh at a ridiculous stunt, I felt it again—that subtle shift. That little bit of weight sliding off her shoulders, redistributed among all of us.
It wasn't a happy ending.
But it was a beginning where happiness could exist again, between the cracks.
And sitting there, her leg pressed against mine, grief bracelet glinting next to her wedding ring as she stole popcorn from my bowl, it felt—for the first time in a long time—like maybe, just maybe, we were going to be okay.