Chapter Twenty #2
Sirens.
The sirens start as a distant thread of sound, thin enough that I almost convince myself I imagined it, and then they grow, swelling through the quiet street until they feel like they’re inside my chest, vibrating against my ribs.
“I can hear them,” I tell the operator, my voice shaking so badly the words blur together.
“Yes. Stay on the line until they reach you.”
The sound becomes unbearable and miraculous all at once. Red light pulses through the kitchen window in rhythmic flashes that make the broken glass glitter like something theatrical instead of catastrophic.
“They’re here,” I whisper, because saying it out loud feels like sealing something into place.
A moment later, there is the heavy slam of doors, the quick, purposeful thud of boots on the front steps, and then voices, low and controlled, moving through the house with the confidence of people who have done this a thousand times and cannot afford to feel every version of it.
“Paramedics!”
“In here!” The shout tears out of me before I know I’ve drawn breath.
“I’m going to disconnect now,” the operator says gently. “You’ve done everything right.” The line clicks dead.
For a second, the silence roars louder than the sirens did.
Then they are in the doorway.
Two paramedics move into the kitchen with the focused urgency of a storm contained inside human form. One kneels beside my father, already working, while the other turns to me with steady calm.
His attention shifts downward. “Where’s the blood coming from?”
For a second, I don’t understand the question. Then I follow his gaze and see it, the streaks across the floor, the red under my feet, as if it belongs to someone else.
“It’s nothing,” I say, like it barely exists. I wave a hand, already moving aside. “Glass or something. I’m fine. Just, please, look at him.”
He watches me for a second, measuring something. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll deal with him first. Then we deal with you. I’m Aaron. What’s his name!”
Is he British? He sounds British.
Wait, he asked me something. Name. ‘What’s his name!’
“Jonas,” I manage. “Jonas McClane.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t know. I heard a crash. Maybe… maybe five minutes? Ten?”
“That’s okay. You did the right thing calling.”
His reassurance lands somewhere far away from where my body is currently operating.
They move fast, efficiently, with the kind of speed that isn’t frantic because it doesn’t need to be.
Equipment appears from bags like conjured objects.
A blood pressure cuff tightens around Dad’s arm.
Electrodes are pressed to his chest. Oxygen hisses into the air with a sound that feels too loud for how quietly everyone is speaking.
“Jonas, can you hear me?” the kneeling paramedic says, his voice pitched low but firm.
My father’s eyelids flutter, and his mouth moves.
“That’s good. Stay with me, mate.”
Mate.
The word does something small and devastating inside me.
“What medications is he on?” Aaron asks, already writing.
I list what I can remember, stumbling over names, over dosages, over the reality that I should know this better.
“That’s okay,” he says again. “You’re doing fine.”
The other paramedic looks up briefly. “We’re going to get him onto the stretcher.”
The room fills with controlled motion. The scrape of metal legs extending. The rustle of fabric and the coordination of hands that trust each other completely.
“Miss, I’m going to need you to step back a little.”
I don’t remember moving, but suddenly I am against the far counter, my fingers gripping the edge so hard my knuckles ache.
They lift him onto the stretcher. He makes a small, uncertain sound, and it slices through me more cleanly than anything else tonight.
“I’m here,” I say, though I don’t know if he can hear me.
They secure straps, adjust oxygen, and call out numbers that blur together.
I feel like I am outside my body, slowly drifting away.
“Hold still,” Aaron suddenly says, drawing me back into the here and now, and I realize a second too late that he’s crouched in front of me, my foot in his hand.
Something cold drags across my skin, making me flinch uncontrollably, a quick swipe that stings sharper than it should.
He wipes again, more deliberate this time, clearing away the blood, his grip steady and unhurried.
There’s the brief pressure of gauze, firm fingers wrapping it tight, like this is just another task in a long line of them.
The sting registers somewhere distant, as though it belongs to someone else.
I don’t look down.
I don’t move.
By the time he straightens, his coworker has my father secured, lifting the stretcher, adjusting lines, voices sharpening back into focus around me.
“We’re transporting,” his coworker says.
Aaron smiles at me, stepping back into motion like he was never separate from it. “You can follow us in your car. Do you feel okay to drive?”
I nod before my body has decided whether that’s true.
“Good. Bring any medications and his ID if you can.”
I move automatically, gathering things with the numb efficiency that kicks in when your nervous system decides shock is easier to survive than emotion.
By the time I reach the front door again, they are already loading Dad into the ambulance, the interior a bright, clinical rectangle of light against the dark street.
Aaron’s coworker looks up as I approach. “We’ll take care of him.”
I nod again, because words feel like a luxury I can’t currently access.
The doors close, the sirens rise, and everything I thought was solid shifts into a new, terrifying shape.
The ambulance pulls away, its lights already strobing against the dark, and I follow in my car, my coat half-buttoned incorrectly and the wrong shoes on my feet, the left one rubbing hard against the cuts on my soles with every press of the pedal.
I register the discomfort distantly, as if it belongs to someone else.
It is two forty-seven in the morning.
By the time I reach the hospital, the world has narrowed to fluorescent light and antiseptic air. I give my name and sign forms I do not read. I follow a nurse whose shoes squeak against the linoleum in a rhythm that becomes the only steady thing I can hold onto.
Then I’m in a room.
And there is my father.
And the machines.
There are so many fucking machines.
I stand in the doorway for longer than I should, registering everything around me.
The monitor with its steady green line, the IV line taped to the back of his hand, his chest rising and falling, like breathing has become something he has to think about.
His face in profile is the face I have been memorizing for nineteen years—a strong jaw, deep-set eyes, and the creases around his mouth from a lifetime of weathering things without complaint.
He looks smaller here than he does at home.
That is the part I am not prepared for.
I cross the room and sit in the chair beside the bed.
The nurses explain things.
‘Cardiac stress event…’
‘Elevated markers…’
‘Monitoring overnight…’
The language is careful and measured, designed to convey information without inducing panic. I absorb it, nod, and ask the appropriate follow-up questions, thank them, then they leave, and it is just the two of us…
And the damn fucking machines.
I stare at my phone for a full second before unlocking it, because there is a part of me that understands what making this call means and wants to delay the reality of it by even the smallest margin.
Then I press Sin’s name.
The line rings once…
Twice.
He answers on the second. “Millie?” Sin doesn’t sound surprised. He never sounds surprised at this hour, which tells me he was already awake, moving somewhere across the city, the club turning over the night like a machine that doesn’t recognize sleep as a necessary function.
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
“We’re at St. Mary’s,” I say. My voice comes out steady, which feels like a small miracle. “Dad… he’s had some kind of episode. I found him on the kitchen floor. They’ve got him in the ER now.”
There is a pause on the other end. It’s not long, just long enough to register that he’s shifting fully into this.
“Is he conscious?”
“He was… in and out. They’re running tests.” I swallow.
I can hear voices faintly in the background where he is, the low murmur of men, movement, and the kind of controlled urgency that lives in clubhouses after midnight.
“Is he stable?”
“They haven’t said yet.” The words feel brittle in my mouth. “They’re not saying much at all.”
“Okay.” It’s not reassurance, it is acknowledgment. The kind that lets you know he’s already processing possibilities. “You alone?”
“Yes.”
Silence again, heavier this time.
“I’m sending someone,” he says.
“You don’t have to,” I reply automatically, because that is the reflex my father raised me with, the instinct to reduce my own need until it becomes manageable.
“I know.” His voice shifts slightly. It’s not softer, but more intentional. “Will would want us there.”
I close my eyes against the words.
“He’d be there himself if he could,” Sin continues, calm, matter-of-fact. “You know that.”
My fingers tighten around the phone. “Yeah. Should we tell him?”
Sin pauses for a moment, then lets out a long exhale. “Probably for the best that we don’t. He will worry because he is in there, and he can’t do anything about it except worry. He might do something stupid to try to get to you.”
Closing my eyes, I swallow a lump down my throat because even though I hate keeping this from Will, I know Sin is right. “Yeah… you’re right.”
“We need you to focus on your Dad right now, Millie. Okay?”
Sniffing, I swipe a stray tear from my cheek and pull myself up before I let any more fall. “Okay.”
“And Jonas…” he adds after a second, “… he’s one of ours whether he likes the label or not. We don’t leave our people sitting in hospitals alone at three in the morning.”