Beyond The Fine Line

Chapter LXXV - Still Trying, Still Close, Still Slipping Apart

Warm air drifted in through open windows, heavy with the scent of sun-softened pavements and distant food stalls winding down for the day. The low hum of traffic bled into the building through the worn walls of the pro bono clinic. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a pale sheen over worn floors and tired faces as the weight of other people's lives settled into the corners of the room like dust.

Sean leaned back in his chair, massaging the tense muscles at the back of his neck. The tiredness in his posture was unmistakable, but so was the quiet satisfaction in his expression. As much as he loved his work at Anderson, Chambers and Partners, there was something about this small legal clinic that kept drawing him back. A tether to the place he came from.

The cases here weren't high profile or complex, but there was something deeply rooted in them – a kind of raw, unvarnished reality and struggles of people whose lives often felt like they were caught in the margins. Here, Sean saw how the law could shift the course of someone's life in a more direct, immediate way – whether it was securing basic human rights or ensuring someone's dignity wasn't lost in the bureaucracy. It wasn't that different from his usual work, but the impact felt more personal.

Sean glanced at the clock, surprised by how quickly the day had slipped away. He had spent so many weekends here lately that it no longer seemed an exception. Between the long hours at the firm and his growing commitment to the pro bono clinic, time with Jay had thinned out without him meaning it to. He became too busy to register the faint sense that something important was being quietly edged out by everything else.

Suddenly, it hit him that he was too absorbed in work and hadn't checked his phone all day. Sean dug it up from underneath stacks of documents, expecting the usual updates, but the last one was a few hours ago, then a missed call from Ethan. Sean didn't think much of it as it wouldn't be the first time Jay's phone had taken a dive into the sea, never to be seen again. He smiled faintly and called back.

The line barely rang once before it was picked up.

"Thank fuck," Ethan uttered, his voice tense with worry. "I was trying to call you... Jay is in hospital."

This single sentence knocked the air out of his lungs. His spine snapped upright, and his grip on the phone turned vice-like, knuckles whitening as if he could steady the world by holding on. For a second, the noise around him faded away, replaced by a low, pulsing silence in his ears.

"What..." he started, his voice low and uneven as he walked to the quiet side room. "What happened? Is he..." Sean hesitated, swallowing hard. "Is he alright?"

It wasn't just concern. It was fear, sharp-edged and laced through every syllable, the kind that only exists when you have imagined something terrible a hundred times and then wake to find it's no longer hypothetical.

"The hold snapped, and we're too high for an uncontrollable fall," Ethan started, deciding not to sugarcoat it. "On the way down, his knee smashed into a sharp rock, and Jay hit the water hard. He was bleeding badly, Sean... really bad. Plus, he's got some nasty abrasions on his arms and a mild concussion," he paused, letting him absorb everything. "They stitched him up, cleaned and dressed his arms, and now he's in MRI to rule out microfractures or any internal damage."

Sean didn't speak. He couldn't.

The realisation of how close he came to losing him was suffocating, but what hurt the most was knowing he should have been there. It hollowed him out. The kind of guilt that didn't come in sharp bursts but spread slowly and sickening, curling through his chest like smoke. His hand, still clutching the phone, trembled slightly.

"He's banged up, but overall okay," Ethan added when the silence stretched too long. "Even his brazen attitude didn't suffer."

Sean chuckled humourlessly. "Of course, it didn't..."