GABRIEL #7
"Unfortunately yes. Awakening heats in alphas is an extremely complex problem.
We had some promising leads, but we were still only doing lab work, not field tests.
This was supposed to be the next stage, but after Drax left, the board decided to stop the program. So I had to give him some bad news."
I absentmindedly play with his hand, sliding his fingers across my palm.
"Well. That’s rough, but who knows what the future will bring. He’s still young, maybe in a few years science will move forward on that."
Then I lean in and rest my forehead against the back of his neck, breathing him in, even though his scent is muted now by the anti-pheromone deodorant.
"You know, that whole dinner thing… it went really well. I think for the first time I actually felt like an equal member of my family. I’ve always been on the edge because of my personality, but I think in their eyes I finally count as a real Nolan."
"Hey," Blue says, playfully wagging a finger at me. "Your last name is Lowen now, remember?"
I laugh under my breath. "Right, and honestly that works for me, because it’s as a Lowen that I did all this work on myself, the kind I never managed as a Nolan."
Blue brushes his fingers lightly along my face. "It was only a matter of time, Gabriel. I think you’ve always been too hard on yourself, but your potential was always there, just waiting for the right moment."
◆◆◆
That night, when Blue and I make love, I feel incredible, free, fulfilled, full of hope for what’s ahead, but later, lying beside him and holding him in my arms, I notice with some surprise that my phone starts ringing.
I don’t want to pick up, but then it rings again, and again.
"Seriously, they don’t even let a guy rest after orgasms," I mutter with a grin, propping myself up on one arm above Blue’s warm body.
"I’ll check what’s going on, because this kind of persistence usually means something’s up. At this hour?"
My eyes drop to the screen.
I see the missed calls are from my dad.
"It’s my dad," I say, a cold shiver running down my spine.
"I should call him back." I dial, and right then my eyes widen…
My 5-sec vision hits me. I already know what he’s going to say the second he picks up.
"Oh fuck," I mutter, putting him on speaker.
The first thing my dad says is in Russian.
"О Боже, Габриэль!"[21]
Then he switches to English, his voice breaking.
"Marlow tried to kill himself! They found him just in time. He’s in critical condition, in a deep coma.
Please if you can, ask Blue for help. They can’t stabilize him.
He’s in severe respiratory depression, they’re fighting for his life, but it’s a small suburban hospital.
He needs better care." He chokes, and I can hear the tears in his voice. "Please… beg Blue."
Blue sits up abruptly, tension flashing across his face.
He grabs the phone.
"Which hospital?"
My dad’s voice shakes as he gives the name.
"I’ll send a helicopter. We’ll take him to Malden General. We’ll do everything we can."
"Thank you, Blue, thank you! Please hurry! They’re doing everything they can… his oxygen saturation is dropping. They’re worried about brain injury."
My hands are shaking. A wave of guilt crashes over me. The way I treated him… over the past year I pulled away, almost completely, I stopped even responding to his text messages and we used to be so close, but it slipped apart while I focused on Blue, on love, on my own happiness.
"Fuck… my brother…" I groan in pain.
Blue doesn’t answer. He takes out his phone, turns, and steps into the hallway.
I hear his voice, controlled, but urgent.
I just sit there, trying to process it. Did we all miss it? The signs? His depression?
Blue comes back a moment later and starts getting dressed. Seeing that, I grab my own clothes too, pulling them on quickly, the same ones we threw aside in a rush earlier, when Blue and I were tearing them off each other just moments before our intense, passionate sex.
But… while I was fucking, my brother was preparing to die. The thought is almost unbearable.
My jaw is clenched so tightly my muscles ache as we leave the penthouse together and, for the first time in my life, I head with Blue to the helipad.
When we stop there, waiting for the helicopter, Blue says in a voice filled with something tense underneath,
"I feel partly responsible for this. I’m almost certain the bad news about the alpha activation program today was the final straw. He lost hope completely, the hope he’s been living on for months, believing I’d find a solution for him."
"That’s absurd. I don’t believe that. This isn’t a decision someone makes in a second, based on one factor. He must have been carrying this for a long time…"
But Blue shakes his head.
"You didn’t see him when I told him today that the research had been paused for now.
It was like the light inside him went out.
I realized then it meant more to him than I’d assumed.
But I couldn’t lie to him. I couldn’t mislead him with promises I might not be able to keep, or offer him something unethical. "
"No one can predict things like this. But maybe I’m the one who should have.
Before I went to prison, we were close. Marlow is sensitive.
After his last breakup, he was depressed.
I took him on trips, talked to him for hours, let him vent, and he somehow got through it.
Now he didn’t have anyone to talk to, anyone close, someone he trusted, and he doesn’t trust many people.
Over the past year I basically stopped existing in his life as a brother. "
Blue takes a deep breath.
"We probably all carry some part of the blame for not seeing how serious it was."
"Fuck, I simply turned my back on him!" I snap, feeling a surge of pain. "I even ignored his text messages…"
At that moment, we spot the helicopter approaching in the sky.
Seconds later, a powerful gust of wind hits us as it lands. Blue’s dark navy hair flies high into the air. We rush to climb in. The pilot, two paramedics, and two physicians from Malden General are already on board with equipment.
Blue gives them the destination and we take off.
I’ve never been in a helicopter, but in moments like this I appreciate that I’m married to a billionaire, because even if Blue doesn’t use all of his fortune for personal things, when there’s a situation this serious, he can always reach for those resources.
Ten minutes later we land outside the hospital where Marlow is.
Blue exchanges a few words with one of the doctors, then turns to me.
"We’ll stay here. They don’t need extra people in there."
The next few minutes pass with my fists clenched tight, a twisting pain in my stomach, my head filled with what-if scenarios. Blue sits motionless, staring out at the hospital lights.
Soon the doors open and a gurney is wheeled out. Marlow is lying on it, surrounded by a whole team of people and a mass of equipment moving with him.
I squeeze my eyes shut because it all feels unreal, like some kind of horror movie. My poor brother lying there, being rushed by medical staff, right on the edge between life and death. How did it come to this?
They load him into the helicopter along with all the equipment.
The Malden doctors lean over him, their bodies blocking my view of his face, which in a way is both frustrating and a relief.
I’d be ashamed to look at his face and perhaps see a silent accusation there.
In a way, all the tubes, IV lines, oxygen masks, and everything else I can’t even name that’s covering him feel like a physical manifestation of that.
We take off, and I reach out to grab Blue’s hand.
"Tell me he has a chance. Please, tell me…"
"They said his respiratory rate is four breaths per minute. That’s critical. His GCS is low. He’s far from stable, it could get worse at any moment. He took a massive amount of sleeping pills. They found him already in a deep coma."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck…" I repeat, pressing my free hand to my face. It’s just too much.
I barely remember the flight, then the landing on the roof of Malden Hospital.
My emotions are tearing through me. Blue’s hand stays in mine the whole time, and I think only that steady, grounding touch is keeping me together.
The doctors take Marlow down in a dedicated elevator, while we go inside using the stairs.
Then Blue speaks with several doctors. I don’t listen in, the jargon they use is completely foreign to me.
At one point, though, I see one of the doctors hand Blue a vial and a syringe. Blue sticks the needle into his vein and draws some blood, that shines silvery.
I blink, staring at him in shock.
"What are you doing?"
"I gave them some of my bionanobots. They’re his only real chance. Mine are special. They’re not the same ones I licensed to the military. They have far more applications. And I’ve already encoded the necessary directives."
I stare at him for a moment, then suddenly pull him into a tight embrace, holding him with all my strength.
"Oh Blue… thank you, thank you for everything! You’re a miracle worker!"
Blue answers with bitterness in a slightly muffled voice, his face pressed against my chest.
"If the Alpha Activation program had been more successful, we wouldn’t be here.
Don’t thank me. I truly feel partially responsible.
The problem is I could have devoted more time to this program, but I was working on something completely different, my biggest life project, which entered an entirely new phase and…
consumed me. Because of that, I pushed the alpha activation program aside.
Maybe if I had focused all my efforts on it, we would have succeeded… "