Chapter 28
The sound of the door opening snapped Tabitha’s head up. Her heart leapt—Please let it be someone with news. But it was just more police officers, their uniforms crisp and irrelevant. She turned away, her breath catching as disappointment pulled her back under.
A coat settled over her shoulders. She didn’t know whose it was. Her mother gently urged her to change out of the blood-spattered dress.
“No,” Tabitha rasped, her voice brittle and dry. “What if Ramzi wakes up and can’t find me?”
No one said anything. They didn’t argue. They just sat with her, silent and helpless.
Because they weren’t family. Not technically. Not on any official document. And since no one thought to explain that she was his fiancée, the hospital staff wouldn’t tell them anything.
“Is there a Tabitha here?” someone called out above the hum of the emergency room.
Tabitha shot to her feet, the coat sliding to the floor unnoticed. “I’m Tabitha!” she gasped, then again, louder, to be heard over the chaos. “I’m Tabitha!”
“Come with me,” the nurse said briskly, motioning toward the double doors.
Tilda gave her daughter’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Go on, honey. We’ll be fine.”
Tabitha nodded once, then practically ran toward the woman who’d appeared like a lifeline.
“How is he?” she asked, breathless with hope and dread.
The nurse looked at the clipboard, her expression unreadable. “I’m not authorized to share medical information with non-family.” Her voice softened just slightly. “But his people said you might be able to help.”
Help? Tabitha’s pulse pounded in her ears. That didn’t sound good.
They rounded the corner, and Tabitha spotted two of Ramzi’s bodyguards flanking a pair of glass doors. A privacy curtain hung inside the room but had been drawn back.
She didn’t wait. “How is he?” she asked, not realizing she was crying until her voice wavered with the weight of it.
The taller of the two men stepped forward—Brant, she thought, but wasn’t sure.
“He’s still unconscious,” he said carefully.
Tabitha’s breath caught. “How?” she whispered.
“He hit his head when he dove for you. Smashed it against the corner of a table. He also took the knife to the arm, but the doctors stitched that up.” His jaw clenched. “He should have woken up by now. That’s what’s got them worried.”
Another guard tried to speak but his voice broke. A third one, eyes rimmed with red, stepped forward. “Please,” he said. “Talk to him. We think your voice might bring him back.”
Tabitha nodded, her knees trembling as she stepped inside.
Ramzi lay pale and still against white sheets, his face too quiet. Monitors beeped steadily, too steadily. Wires and IVs snaked across his chest and arm. It didn’t seem possible that this was him—the man who had made her laugh, made her feel alive, made her fall in love.
She stood frozen for a moment. Then she stepped to the side of the bed and gently picked up his hand, curling her fingers around his.
“Ramzi…” she whispered.
And then everything broke loose.
“Damn it, don’t you dare die on me!” she hissed, lowering herself into the chair beside the bed. “You’re not allowed to do this. Not after everything. Not after last night.”
His hand was warm, but motionless. She pressed it to her cheek.
“You missed the cake,” she murmured, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. “I’m not even sure what flavor it was. Stacy loves lemon, but she’s an ice cream person, really. John’s a chocolate guy. He probably gave in because he’d do anything for her.”
She kept talking. Rambling, really. About cake. About the way the fireflies would be coming out soon. About how Stacy’s uncle had gotten tipsy and tried to sing Bon Jovi.
She didn’t know if her words meant anything. But she couldn’t stop.
The steady beep-beep-beep of the monitor filled the silences between her breaths, each one a cruel reassurance that he was still alive… but not with her.
A nurse came in, checked his vitals. A doctor followed a few minutes later. Tabitha asked every question she could think of, but the woman only shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We can’t discuss his condition unless you're family. His next of kin is on the way.”
And then she left, just like that.
Tabitha sat beside him, fury and fear knotting inside her.
“Damn it, won’t you please just wake up and tell me what’s going on?” she demanded, her voice cracking as she leaned closer. “You’re the only one who will be honest with me, and I’m getting desperate.”
Still, nothing.
But then—
His lashes fluttered.
Her heart stopped.
“Nurse!” she screamed, lunging for the call button.
The moment Ramzi stirred, his bodyguards surged into the room, their tense expressions revealing just how much they’d been holding back. Seconds later, a nurse rushed in behind them.
“I think he’s waking up!” Tabitha called, barely able to believe the words even as she said them.
The nurse moved quickly to his side, adjusting monitors and checking vitals, only to immediately step aside when the doctor entered. The tension in the room felt like it could snap a steel beam in half.
The doctor flicked a penlight across Ramzi’s eyes.
He flinched.
A collective exhale echoed around the room. Someone muttered, “Thank God.”
Tabitha couldn’t move. She was afraid that if she blinked, she’d miss something important.
“Tabby…” Ramzi’s voice was hoarse, low, but it was unmistakably his. Her heart swelled as he turned his head slightly, wincing at the movement.
“I’m here,” she whispered, her fingers wrapping around his hand as she pressed it to her chest. “I’m right here, Ramzi.”
His eyelids fluttered halfway open, his gaze dazed. “Don’t leave me,” he murmured.
Then he was asleep again.
Not unconscious—just sleeping.
Recovering.
Tabitha stayed perfectly still, barely daring to breathe. His words circled in her head like a whisper on the wind. Don’t leave me. Her eyes stung, but she held it together.
The doctor scribbled something on the chart and murmured instructions to the nurses. She spoke briefly to the guards before exiting as swiftly as she had entered, like a ghost slipping out of a room still haunted by fear.
Tabitha didn’t glance away from Ramzi, her fingers still wrapped around his. Her thumb brushed gently along the edge of his knuckle, as if she could coax him back with touch alone.
One of the guards quietly offered to update her parents. She nodded without looking at him, and he disappeared.
After that, the world blurred—just a hazy mix of nurses moving in and out, soft voices exchanging medical details she wasn’t allowed to know, and the steady, rhythmic beeping of machines that had become her entire universe.
It was a blur of hope. Of fear. Of aching desperation wrapped in prayers that he’d wake again and say her name.