The first sound Naomi Blake registered was not the squeal of ambulance brakes or the shouted handoff that usually came before trauma doors burst open. It was barking, hard and urgent and sharp enough to ricochet off the concrete and glass around the emergency entrance like a chain of fire alarms going off all at once. She was in the middle of tugging on a fresh pair of gloves when the automatic doors flew apart and a rush of damp Texas night air rolled through the bay, carrying with it the smell of rain, gasoline, and blood. Two paramedics came in fast with a gurney between them, their sneakers squeaking against the polished floor as they angled toward the trauma rooms. The man on the stretcher looked to be in his thirties, broad-shouldered even in collapse, dressed in a ripped tan sweatshirt darkened by blood across one side of his torso. His face was streaked with grime and abrasion, his jaw locked so tight it seemed his body had refused to surrender even in unconsciousness, and one of his hands remained partly curled as though it had been gripping something until only a moment earlier. Pressed so close to the moving gurney that his shoulder brushed the metal rail was a German Shepherd wearing a battered tactical harness. The dog’s eyes were bright in a way that was not fear but focus, not panic but intent, and the power in the animal’s body was held with such taut control that Naomi understood instantly this was no ordinary pet dragged into a crisis. One of the paramedics tried in a strained voice to soothe him and said they were helping, but the dog did not soften. He tracked every hand that came near the man on the stretcher. Each time a nurse stepped closer his lips lifted to show teeth, not in blind chaos but in a measured warning that said he was making decisions and would act if he had to. Naomi had seen plenty of dogs brought in with injured people over the years, frightened animals snapping from confusion or grief, tiny ankle-biters and bulky guard breeds alike, but this was different in a way she felt before she fully understood it. This dog was not unraveling. He was on duty.

Charge Nurse Elena Morales called across the bay asking who the patient was, her clipboard already in hand and her voice pitched to cut through rising commotion. One paramedic answered as he steered the gurney, saying the patient was a male in his mid-thirties found at the scene of a rollover off Interstate 10. He explained they had found no wallet or standard identification, only a patch on the dog’s harness marked U.S. Army, and added that the dog had stayed with the man the entire time and had refused to be separated. At the word Army the Shepherd’s ears flicked with such precise attention that Naomi felt a small pulse of recognition strike somewhere deep in her chest. Morales began to protest that they could not have a working dog loose in the emergency department during trauma intake, but Naomi stepped forward before the sentence finished leaving the charge nurse’s mouth and said softly that they also could not afford delay. The patient’s chest was moving with the wrong rhythm, shallow and uneven, and one of those breaths snagged midway in a way Naomi had learned never to ignore. She looked hard at the dog then, not at the bared teeth but at posture, harness, movement, and restraint. The tactical rig was scarred with use rather than purchased for appearance. A handle ran across the back. The fasteners were practical, clipped tight and functional. On one side, faded from wear but still readable, was a stitched name. TITAN. As her eyes settled on those letters, memory struck her with unnerving force. She saw not the clean fluorescent brightness of the ER but a wash of dust, rotor thunder, smoke, and heat. She remembered kneeling in grit beside a wounded soldier years earlier when she had still worn a medic patch, remembered another Shepherd with the same burning focus planted between his handler and everyone else, remembered the six words that had opened a narrow corridor between instinct and trust. She had not consciously thought about that day in years, but the knowledge of it was still alive in her body. Her heartbeat turned heavier, steadier. She asked the paramedics for vitals. The answer came back quickly and badly: blood pressure ninety over fifty and still dropping, heart rate in the one-thirties, probable internal bleed, skin pale and cooling. They were losing him. Naomi told them to move to Trauma Room Two now, and the gurney surged forward with the dog pacing it like a shadow stitched to the frame.

The moment the respiratory therapist stepped in with an oxygen mask, Titan’s head snapped toward the approaching hand and a low growl rolled out of him, deep enough that even Security, already moving from down the hall, altered direction toward the sound. Naomi put up a hand sharply and told them to wait. Morales stared at her as if she had made a catastrophic decision in plain sight and began her name in warning, but Naomi told her she had it, even though certainty was only partial and what she truly had was instinct sharpened by old training. She moved into Titan’s visual field without trying to box him away from the stretcher. She did not square off against him and she did not stare at his mouth. Instead she slowed down with conscious effort, because years in trauma had taught her that the body’s urge to hurry could sometimes destroy the very trust needed to save a life. She said the dog’s name in a quiet voice, and Titan’s eyes locked onto hers immediately. Naomi bent at the knees until she was closer to his level, her shoulders loose, her hands open and angled away so he could see everything about her posture. She could feel every person in the room watching and could sense Morales’s tension like a wire pulled too tight. None of that mattered once she committed. In her mind she was back under foreign skies beside a wounded service member, understanding once more that a working dog did not think like a frightened animal but like a partner with a mission. She leaned in until Titan could feel the warmth of her breath and whispered six words that came from memory before thought: “You’re safe, Titan. I’m his medic.” The change was immediate and absolute. The growl did not fade by degrees or dissolve into uncertainty. It stopped cleanly, like a mechanism disengaging. Titan kept his ears up and his body ready, but his lips settled back over his teeth and the line of tension in his muzzle eased just enough to matter. He held Naomi’s gaze for a long second that seemed to stretch the entire room thinner around them, then he stepped half a pace away from the gurney. It was not much, but it was enough. The respiratory therapist slid in at once and fitted the oxygen mask over the patient’s face. Titan tracked the movement with severe focus, yet he permitted it. Naomi finally released a breath she had not realized she was holding. Morales whispered harshly, demanding to know what Naomi had done, but Naomi had already turned back to the patient and pressed fingers to his wrist, feeling the frantic, fluttering pulse under skin turning too cool. She told the room to work, and the ER obeyed.

They cut away the torn sweatshirt, and the sight beneath it made Naomi’s stomach tighten. Bruising spread across the man’s side in dark blooming color, his ribs lifted at angles they should not have held, and the architecture of his chest and abdomen told the familiar story of blunt trauma with internal damage. Morales called for the trauma team, labs, type and cross, chemistry panels, everything at once. Naomi got the first IV in with the speed that came from repetition so deep it felt like reflex, while another nurse moved in on the opposite side for a second line. Titan shifted closer to the patient’s head and stayed there, not interfering now, merely overseeing with a watchfulness that made it feel as though his permission had been narrowly earned rather than freely granted. A resident asked if they had a name, and the paramedic who had come in with the gurney said there had been no wallet or driver’s license, only dog tags tucked under the man’s shirt which they had removed so the chain would not bite into him during transport. He handed them over. Naomi glanced down at the metal and read the stamp. REEVES, EVAN T. O POS. CATHOLIC. The name brushed against memory like a hand moving through smoke. Not a face yet, not a fully formed recollection, but something old turned toward her in the dark. She said the name quietly, testing it in the air. Titan reacted at once, turning his head as if the identity on the tags had anchored his handler more firmly to the room. His tail did not wag, but some minute measure of strain loosened out of his body. Naomi swallowed and told them to get an ultrasound. The resident hesitated for a fraction of a second, probably because Naomi was an ER nurse and not the attending physician, but there was an older authority in her tone that had very little to do with current rank. He nodded and moved. When the probe touched Evan’s abdomen and the image resolved on the screen, Naomi saw the dark pooling she had feared. The resident’s face blanched as he recognized free fluid where none should exist. Naomi named it aloud: internal bleeding. Morales was already on the phone calling surgery. Evan’s blood pressure dropped again, alarms sharpened, and his skin went visibly grayer under the fluorescent lights. Naomi looked at Titan and heard herself telling him softly that they were taking Evan to surgery and not leaving him. Titan kept staring at Evan’s face. Then he did something that almost broke Naomi’s composure. He laid his chin gently on Evan’s shoulder, as though trying to tether him to the world by contact alone.

The trip to the operating suite felt impossibly bright, all white light and polished surfaces and rushing people whose speed still somehow felt too slow for the damage unfolding inside Evan’s body. The gurney rolled through double doors while anesthesia, transport, and surgical staff joined the procession in stages. Titan kept pace at the side with his nails clicking lightly against the tile, never crowding the wheels and never drifting away. Dr. Sameer Patel met them outside the OR already wearing a scrub cap and an expression shaped by long familiarity with urgent decisions. Naomi gave him the summary in clipped terms: positive FAST, unstable pressure, likely splenic or hepatic injury, fractured ribs. Patel’s eyes moved to Titan and immediately he said they could not bring the dog into the operating room. Titan’s ears shifted backward just enough to show he felt the tension if not the words themselves. Naomi’s mind raced through the possibilities. If someone tried to seize Titan and drag him away by force, the room would become chaos, and chaos was the one thing they could not afford while Evan was dying. Naomi crouched beside the dog again and told him quietly that he had done his job and now he needed to let her do hers. Titan’s stare did not soften. Naomi reached into her pocket and pulled out a short black paracord lanyard clipped to the trauma shears she carried, an old habit from medic days she had never abandoned. She looped the cord through the handle on Titan’s harness, not quite a leash and not quite symbolic either. She told him she was staying right there. Titan lowered his nose and sniffed the cord once. Then, with visible deliberation, he sat. It was not submission so much as consent. Security had arrived and stood nearby uncertainly, and Naomi handed them the paracord while telling them not to tug and not to crowd him, only to remain with him. One guard nodded like he had just been entrusted with something solemn. Naomi pressed gloved fingers briefly against Evan’s hand and whispered that he was not dying in her hospital. Then the operating room doors shut.

Time afterward moved like bad weather, dragging itself across the hospital in dense, exhausting increments. Naomi stayed in the surgical waiting area with dried blood on her scrubs and adrenaline wearing down into bone-deep tension. Morales tried twice to send her home, and twice Naomi refused without raising her voice. Titan remained planted near the operating room doors, body so still he seemed almost carved from dark stone, eyes fixed on the exact place Evan had vanished. Staff passed around him in wider arcs than necessary. Every so often Naomi caught someone stopping to look at the pair of them, at the nurse who would not leave and the dog who would not move. Another nurse eventually set a cup of water near Naomi and asked if she was all right. Naomi answered yes because it was easier than the truth, but inside her mind kept circling the same question. Why did Evan Reeves feel familiar in a way that would not quite resolve? Her phone buzzed with an unknown number. She nearly ignored it, then answered anyway. The man on the line identified himself as Detective Marco Ortega with San Antonio Police and asked if she was the clinician with the rollover victim. Naomi said Evan was in surgery. Ortega told her they needed to speak because the vehicle from the crash had been reported stolen and officers had recovered a firearm from the cab. Naomi’s eyes jumped instinctively to Titan, who remained motionless except for the slightest turn of one ear. She answered more sharply than intended that a stolen vehicle did not make the patient a criminal. Ortega said he was not claiming that, only noting that there were complications, then added that someone at the scene had reported the rollover did not look accidental. Naomi felt cold move under her skin. She asked if he was telling her someone had tried to kill Evan. Ortega replied that his instincts told him something about the case was wrong. Naomi lowered her voice and explained that Titan was not just a pet but a military-trained working dog who had refused to allow treatment until she had spoken to him in a way he recognized. Ortega immediately asked what she had said. Naomi hesitated before telling him she had used a phrase that meant something to the dog. The detective went quiet for a beat and then said he was coming in person.

When Dr. Patel finally emerged from surgery, fatigue showed around his eyes even though his voice remained steady. He told Naomi they had controlled the bleeding. Evan had suffered a ruptured spleen, fractured ribs, and a small pneumothorax, and he had lost a dangerous amount of blood, but he was alive and stable enough now for the ICU. Relief hit Naomi so abruptly that her knees threatened to soften under her. Titan sprang to his feet the instant Patel appeared, all stillness gone and hope flooding visibly into the rigid lines of his body. Patel looked from the dog to Naomi and admitted that whatever she had done outside his OR had prevented a second disaster from unfolding. Naomi asked if Titan could see Evan. Patel hesitated because ICU rules existed for reasons no one enjoyed bending, but Naomi’s expression hardened and she said the unit would cope. Patel gave in with the tired pragmatism of someone who had already had a long enough night and allowed five supervised minutes. Naomi walked with Titan toward the ICU, and she did not pull him because she did not need to. He kept perfect pace beside her as though they had rehearsed the route. Inside the room the lights were low and the monitors hummed softly. Evan lay pale against the white bed, threaded with tubing and wires, breath assisted, skin washed nearly colorless under fluorescent spill. Titan froze at the threshold. For one stretched second Naomi feared the fragile unfamiliarity of ICU equipment would trigger him into panic or desperate motion. Instead he stepped forward with exquisite care, each paw placed as if he understood the room itself required gentleness. He approached the bedside, lowered his head, and sniffed Evan’s hand. Then a sound came out of him that was not a bark and not a growl, but a broken, aching whine that seemed to tear at the room more effectively than any human cry could have done. Naomi felt her eyes sting. Titan rested his head against the mattress beside Evan’s arm and stayed there. Naomi leaned close and whispered that Evan was alive because Titan had kept him that way. As she said it, her eyes moved over Evan’s face and suddenly caught on details that memory had been circling all night without naming: the faint scar along the cheekbone, the shape of the brow, the specific calm even in injury. The old half-memory flared into full recognition. She had treated him once before, years earlier in a field hospital overseas after an IED blast had shredded a road and filled the air with smoke, shouting, and dust. She had been twenty-two, terrified, and refusing to let that terror matter. He had been wounded but controlled, holding pressure on himself while helping another man. And there had been a dog beside him then too, covered in grime and intent on keeping the world back until the right voice reached him. Titan.

Naomi said Evan’s name again, and as though the sound had traveled through him from some deep place, his fingers twitched. His eyelids fluttered and opened a fraction, then farther, his gaze bleary and trying to assemble the room around him. The first thing he found was Titan. The smallest smile appeared at one corner of his mouth as he rasped out the words good boy. Titan’s tail thumped once against the floor, a single decisive beat. Then Evan’s eyes drifted toward Naomi. Confusion crossed his face first and then something else, uncertain recognition struggling up through pain medication and trauma. He whispered her name like it had been buried somewhere in him all along. Naomi answered softly that it was her. Evan blinked slowly and asked if he was dead. Naomi let out a laugh so shaky it almost broke on the way out and told him not tonight. He let his gaze move from the monitor to Titan and back to her again, then asked what had happened. Before she could answer, the ICU door opened and Detective Ortega stepped inside followed by two men in tailored suits. One was tall and smooth-faced, his smile polished and entirely at odds with the coldness of his eyes. The other was shorter, more compact, and carried himself with the blunt impatience of someone accustomed to forcing compliance. Naomi felt the muscles along her spine tighten immediately. Ortega’s voice held strain as he said these men claimed to be with a private security contractor working in coordination with the Department of Defense and that they were looking for Sergeant Reeves. Evan’s face changed on the instant. The fog left his gaze and something hard and dangerous slid into its place. Titan lifted his head and a low growl started in his chest. The taller man said with synthetic courtesy that they had been trying to reach Evan. Evan told him not here. The man responded that here was preferable and far less complicated, and then he mentioned property Evan had supposedly been transporting. Evan answered in a rough but adamant voice that he had not been transporting anything and had only been trying to get home. The shorter man dismissed Naomi with a glance and said the room needed to be cleared because the subject matter was sensitive. Naomi stepped forward before she consciously decided to, telling them Evan was a patient and they did not get to dictate his care environment. The taller man looked at her badge and said her name aloud as if he already knew it, thanked her for her service with hollow politeness, and then tried to move the conversation back into his control. Ortega’s hand shifted subtly nearer his belt. Evan’s breathing changed, growing shallower, and Naomi recognized not medication or pain this time but fear sharpened by recognition. Titan’s growl deepened. The taller man held up his hands in a gesture of peace that convinced nobody and said Sergeant Reeves had the drive. Naomi felt her pulse spike at the word. Evan’s eyes cut sharply to hers, and in them she saw the whole message before he spoke it. They followed me. They didn’t want me alive. Her medic instincts slammed into place with the force of old armor settling onto familiar shoulders. She did not know the entire story yet, but she knew enough. These men wanted something badly enough to walk into an ICU and take it from a man who had nearly died reaching safety. Titan understood it too.

The taller man took a step toward the bed, and Titan moved with astonishing speed. He did not leap or bite. He simply placed himself between Evan and the intruder, body rigid, head low, teeth visible, every line of him communicating exactly what would happen if another step came. The room froze. For the first time the taller man’s smile faltered. Ortega told him to back up now, his voice flat with steel. The shorter man snapped that the dog needed to be removed. Naomi said quietly, in a tone far more dangerous than shouting, that Titan was not going anywhere. The taller man turned his attention back to Evan and said he was making matters harder than necessary. Evan answered that the difficulty had begun when someone tried to kill him. Silence hit the room with physical force. Ortega’s eyes narrowed immediately and he asked him to repeat that. The suited man recovered just enough to claim Evan was confused and medicated. Evan said he was neither confused nor willing to hand anything over. Ortega told both men they needed to leave and that if they had legitimate federal business they could process it through proper channels instead of trespassing in a critical care unit. The taller one looked at Evan one more time and said softly that this was not over. Then they left. Ortega stayed behind, jaw set hard. Naomi realized only then that her hands were shaking. Titan did not relax until the door latched. Evan breathed out slowly and then coughed, pain cutting visibly across his face. Naomi moved at once to adjust him and settle the lines, telling him not to strain and tear anything open. He whispered that they had found him. Ortega told him grimly that he now needed the complete truth. Evan’s eyes flicked to Naomi, and she knew before he said a word more that the crash on the interstate had never been just a crash.

Sedation pulled Evan under again soon afterward, and Naomi stayed anyway, charting at the workstation with one eye on the room and the other on the hallway beyond the glass. Ortega drew her aside and said she knew him, not phrasing it as a question. Naomi admitted she had treated him overseas years earlier but had not recognized him until now. Ortega nodded toward Titan and said the dog too. Naomi explained that Titan was military-trained, possibly retired, possibly still on some ghost of active status, but certainly not a casual companion. Ortega rubbed his jaw and said the men in suits had provided the name of a company that sounded legitimate, which in his experience usually meant very little. Naomi lowered her voice and reminded him Evan had said they tried to kill him. Ortega said he had heard. Together they looked through the ICU window at Evan lying pale and still while Titan sat guard beside the bed with the immovable devotion of carved stone. Naomi asked why, if the men wanted Evan dead, they had come to the hospital instead of simply disappearing and waiting for him to die of his injuries. Ortega answered that because they believed Evan possessed something, they could not risk letting distance open between them and the objective. Naomi repeated the word drive, and Ortega nodded. She asked what they were supposed to do now. He answered that first they kept the patient alive, and second they figured out what he was protecting that frightened armed adults badly enough to walk into an ICU and make threats in broad view of witnesses. By morning Evan was more awake, exhausted but coherent, and when Naomi entered with ice chips she found him staring at the ceiling like he expected answers to be written there. Titan lifted his head the instant she came in. Evan looked at her and said slowly that she was really Naomi Blake. She managed a small smile and said, as far as she knew, yes. He gave a weak laugh that immediately turned into a wince and said he had thought she might be a hallucination. Naomi told him he was welcome and then, more gently, asked how he felt. Evan said like he had been run over by a truck. Naomi narrowed her eyes and said that technically he had been run over by physics. That earned the shadow of another smile. His gaze moved to Titan and he said the dog had not let her touch him at first. Naomi admitted that was true. Evan asked what she had said, and Naomi told him exactly. Surprise crossed his face, followed by recognition. He explained that in the field there had been a verbal protocol used by handlers and medics with dogs like Titan. If the dog locked down around an injured handler, the medic had to identify properly or there was no safe access. Naomi admitted she had not even realized she still remembered it. Evan told her it looked like she remembered just fine.

Then Naomi asked the question that had been waiting since the men in suits first appeared. Who were they? Evan’s jaw hardened. He said they were the reason his truck had rolled. He explained that after leaving active service he had taken contract work in private security and training, the kind of work many veterans slipped into because it paid well and required skills civilian life did not know how to value. Naomi had seen enough of that pipeline to understand it immediately. Evan went on. One company had not merely been bending rules; it had been corrupt all the way through. They skimmed funds, falsified reports, and did far worse than either. The worst part, he said quietly, was illegal weapons movement. Arms were being diverted to destinations they were never authorized to reach. He had found proof in the form of files, communications, and transfer logs and copied everything onto a drive. Naomi asked if they had discovered what he knew. He nodded once. They had followed him, and he had not had time to vet who among federal channels could be trusted, so he had tried to reach home and hide the evidence somewhere safe. Naomi asked where the drive was. Evan’s gaze sharpened with immediate caution as he answered that it was not on him. Naomi began to ask where it was instead, but before he could answer there was noise in the hallway outside the ICU: hurried voices, shoes moving too fast, a rise in tension that made the entire unit seem to inhale. Titan’s ears shot forward. Evan looked toward the door and said that it was them. Panic hit Naomi fast. Evan reached weakly toward Titan, and the dog leaned into the motion without hesitation. Evan told Naomi to listen carefully and then insisted that if those men got inside, she could not let them take Titan. Naomi started to protest, but Evan made her promise. She nodded because there was no time left for anything else. He closed his eyes for one exhausted second and then said the words that rearranged the entire situation. Titan was carrying it. Naomi froze and stared at the dog’s harness with new understanding. The scuffed side pockets, the utilitarian pouches, the slight irregular bulge she had dismissed as supplies or field gear all changed meaning at once. Her stomach dropped so suddenly she almost felt dizzy. Titan looked back at her with perfect calm, as if the mission had simply progressed to its next obvious stage.

The ICU door opened hard enough to jar the frame. Security stepped in first, tense and badly prepared for what followed. Behind them came the taller suited man from the night before, his thin smile restored but more brittle now that pretense was wearing down. He greeted Evan in the smooth voice of a man who believed language itself could be used as a weapon. Naomi moved in front of Titan before she consciously thought through the motion. The man’s gaze flicked from her to the dog and back. He said she again, with the kind of false familiarity that made skin crawl. Naomi told him Evan was still a patient, still in intensive care, and still under protections the man did not seem inclined to respect. Ortega appeared in the doorway behind the suits and positioned himself there like a barrier made human. The suited man said national security allowed them to go where needed. Ortega answered that not on his watch it did not. The room settled into that dangerous quiet that comes when nobody is bluffing anymore. Then the man looked directly at Titan and said the dog belonged to the government, and so did what he was carrying. Naomi felt all warmth leave her blood. They knew exactly where the evidence was hidden. Evan said in a low, worn voice that the man did not get to call it government when the real loyalty was to profit. The smile fell entirely from the intruder’s face. He said Evan was injured and disoriented and they could avoid unpleasantness if he cooperated. Titan’s growl started again, deeper this time, almost subsonic in its warning. The man advanced one step. Ortega drew a sharp line in the air with his command to stop, his hand settling onto his weapon. The man obeyed the command but not the spirit of it, because his eyes stayed locked on Naomi. He asked if she understood the risk she was taking by standing between them and something that did not belong to her, for a wounded man she barely knew and a dog she had no claim to. Naomi answered that she understood enough. He told her this would not end in a hospital room. Fear came into her chest then, real and undeniable, but it lit something older rather than extinguishing it. She had held pressure on arterial bleeds, worked codes in alleyways, delivered babies in the backs of cars, and treated soldiers under indirect fire. She knew what being frightened felt like, and she also knew it did not automatically confer obedience. She told him to get out. He stared at her for a long time before putting the false smile back on like a mask and saying for now. Then, as he passed Titan, his hand flashed toward the side pocket of the harness with thief-fast precision. Titan reacted faster. Teeth snapped through empty air inches from skin with enough force to stop the attempt dead. He did not make contact because he did not need to. The message carried perfectly: one more try and blood would be the price. Ortega stepped in immediately and told the man he was done and needed to leave before arrest became the only remaining option. Rage burned visibly in the man’s eyes, but he backed out. When the door shut, Naomi realized adrenaline had made her fingers numb. Evan let out a long unsteady breath. Titan sat back down as if he had merely confirmed perimeter security. Ortega looked from one to the other and said they were moving Evan at once. Naomi asked where. He answered that there was a secure medical wing arranged through a federal contact he trusted, somewhere those men could not simply walk in and start issuing threats.

Two hours later the transfer was underway. Naomi had not planned to continue beyond the end of shift. She should have gone home, showered off the blood, and slept until the world felt less sharp. But when she looked at Evan, bruised and battered and still fighting, and at Titan gliding beside the gurney like loyalty made visible, leaving no longer felt possible. Ortega did not challenge her decision. He only nodded as though he had recognized her type from the beginning: the kind of person who, once responsibility attached itself, could not easily set it down. They used a back corridor most staff never noticed, one of those hidden functional arteries in large hospitals through which the true machinery moved. Naomi walked close to Titan with one hand near the harness, not grabbing, not claiming control, only staying ready. Titan looked up at her once with steady eyes that seemed to hold full comprehension of the stakes. Naomi bent her head toward him and whispered that they were going to finish this.