Chapter 38 – Alise #3
Not now. Not here. I can fall apart later. I can let the fear take me under later.
I press my forehead to the back of his hand, breathing him in.
My eyes burn, and I don’t know if it’s from holding my breath or from the tears pressing against the back of my eyes, desperate to escape.
I swallow them down. My job—the only job that matters—is to keep my hand on his and my voice steady enough to anchor him when he wakes.
The ambulance slams to a stop. My head jerks up just as the back doors fly open, cold air flooding in.
Steady, practiced hands are everywhere, sliding the stretcher out, the jolt making his arm shift against mine.
I tighten my hold like a promise, and then we’re moving again.
The gurney clatters over the threshold into the ER, fluorescent lights flashing overhead in bright, clinical bursts.
Each one burns and feels too far from home.
The doors crash open, and we’re swallowed by the hospital’s noise. Voices overlapping, machines beeping in jagged bursts, and the slap of shoes against polished floors. The air shifts instantly to something more sterile, cold, and sharp with bleach that burns the back of my throat.
“Thirty-year-old male, collapsed at home. Monitored in the field with unstable tachyarrhythmia—rate one-fifty, irregular. Blood pressure low nineties over fifties, O? sat eighty-nine on non-rebreather. One large-bore IV established en route.” The EMT’s voice cuts steady through the chaos as they wheel him inside.
We’re inside a curtained-off trauma bay before I can take another breath. Nurses swarm around Beau, a mixture of hands, wires, monitors, and blood pressure cuffs snapping into place.
I swallow against the dryness in my throat, stepping back just far enough to keep from blocking their work.
My eyes stay locked on Beau’s face, all ashen and sweat dampening his hairline.
He looks nothing like the man who had me pinned against the siding less than an hour ago.
More leads stick to his chest now, the heart monitor’s uneven blips cutting through the air.
Every spike and dip scrapes my nerves raw.
“What’s going on?” My voice is low but urgent. “He was fine—”
“Ma’am.” A nurse’s voice cuts clean through mine, firm but not unkind. A gloved hand closes gently around my elbow, guiding me back. “You need to step outside the curtain.”
I shake my head hard, panic clawing up my throat. “No. I’m not leaving him.”
“You’ll be right here,” she says, gentler now, but unyielding. “We’ll update you the second we know more.”
It feels like a door slamming shut. Like someone’s pulling me out of the only space tethering me to him.
My legs move anyway, stumbling backward until the curtain sways between us.
The fabric is so thin I can see shadows dancing against it, but it may as well be a wall of glass. He’s in there, and I’m not.
My fingers fist tight in the vinyl, clutching like I could tear through it if I needed to.
I press my forehead against the seam, my breath fogging the sterile air.
Every clipped order, every shuffle of feet, every alarm from the monitor seeps through, but it’s not enough.
I can’t see his face. I can’t hold his hand.
I can’t do anything but listen and hope that when the voices say his name, it’s not the last time.
The curtain pulls between us before I can form another word, rattling on its hooks.
I stumble back a step, my palms slick, my whole body buzzing with the urge to tear it open again.
Instead, I’m left staring at the sterile fabric that’s suddenly become a wall between us.
From the other side come clipped voices and the frantic symphony of machines.
“Get a 12-lead,” someone orders, voice firing like bullets.“Start fluids and page cardiology.”
The words hit like a gunshot, vibrating through my chest. I can’t see him, can’t touch him, and all I have are the clipped commands and the steady rise of panic in the voices on the other side. My palms press flat to the curtain anyway, useless against the barrier.
Michele barrels into the hallway like a storm, hair windblown, eyes wide, and voice sharp with fear. “I rode in with Cole. How is he?”
“They’re working on him,” I rasp, and it’s a miracle the words make it past my throat.
Cole is right behind her, moving fast, his face carved into something grim. His gaze fixes on the curtain and doesn’t budge, like if he looks away for even a second, he’ll lose him.
The fabric is thin, useless at keeping the chaos inside from spilling out. Every clipped order hits like shrapnel.
“BP is dropping. Open the fluids wider.”
“IV secure—starting second line.”
The snap of gloves. The shuffle of feet. The beeping of the monitor, sharp and erratic, cut straight through my chest. My knees wobble, but I lock them tight, pressing a hand to the cool wall for balance.
Michele’s fingers clutch at my arm, her nails biting through the fabric of my sleeve. “God, Beau…” Her voice cracks, the sound shattering something inside me.
Cole doesn’t move. He’s stone, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticks in his cheek, but his hands tremble where they hang at his sides. Every breath he drags in sounds like it’s scraping through his lungs.
I press my forehead against the wall beside the curtain opening, desperate to tear it open, to get to him, but all I can do is listen.
The curtain rattles faintly with every hurried step inside, the sound of sneakers squeaking across tile.
A machine dings to life, then another, layering into a jagged rhythm that feels all wrong.
I picture him surrounded, hands on him, wires sticking, his chest bare under the harsh lights, while I’m stuck out here with nothing but the noise.
“He was fine,” I whisper, the words breaking in half. “He was fine all day…”
Inside, the tempo quickens. A cart rattles into place, wheels squealing, metal clattering. Someone calls for oxygen. Another voice barks about leads and connections. It’s all movement and urgency, but no reassurance. No one says he’s okay.
Auntie Mel’s voice slices through the hallway, raw and shaking. “Tell them he has lupus! Make sure they know!”
For a beat, everything in me stutters. The word rings in my ears, heavy and sharp, louder than the monitor alarms. Lupus. She says it like it has been living in her mouth for years, like it is already part of his story, when to me, it is a grenade dropped at my feet.
The curtain flutters, and a nurse slips her head out, eyes sweeping over us. “Did I hear correctly? Lupus?”
“Yes,” Auntie Mel snaps, her voice still trembling. “Please make sure the doctor knows.”
The nurse gives a quick nod and disappears back inside.
The curtain sways for a moment before settling, and when it does, the silence it leaves behind is worse than any noise.
My stomach knots so hard I almost double over.
He never told me. He’s carried this alone, and he still kissed me like I was the only person who could steady him.
Shame coils in my chest, twined tight with fear, until I can barely breathe around it.
Inside, the room crackles with urgency. Metal trays clink together, a cart squeals as it’s pushed into place, voices overlap in clipped bursts. The monitor shrieks in erratic pitches, jagged and cruel, each sound tearing across my skin like a blade.
“He’s in atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response,” the attending doctor says, voice flat with urgency. “Push diltiazem, twenty milligrams IV bolus, then start a drip.”
The words mean nothing and everything at once.
They are precise, practiced, the kind of language that belongs in textbooks and charts, but to me, they sound like a sentence being handed down.
Atrial fibrillation. Rapid response. Bolus.
Drip. The syllables scrape against my ribs, cold and sharp, while my brain trips over them, translating only one thing: his heart is breaking its own rhythm, and they’re racing to cage it before it slips too far.
My shoulder digs into the wall, paint cool against my skin, and I curl my fingers into the edge of it so tightly my nails ache.
The hiss of machines filters through the curtains, sharp with the sting of antiseptic, and I picture the way his chest must rise unevenly under all those wires.
I can’t stop thinking that while they fight to keep his heart steady, mine is splintering on the other side of this curtain.
“You stay with me,” I whisper, the words sharp enough to cut my tongue. The curtain swallows the sound, but I say it anyway, as if he can hear me through fabric and chaos.
On the other side, the noise shifts. The alarms that had been shrieking settle into a steadier cadence, the beeping rhythmic and almost bearable. The clipped urgency of voices softens into something controlled.
“Heart rate’s coming down.”
“Blood pressure holding.”
“Respirations steady. Oxygen ninety-six.”
The scrape of a stool, the muted clatter of metal trays being pushed aside—it’s the sound of a room easing out of crisis. My lungs burn as if I’ve been holding my breath with him, and when it finally evens out, my chest caves with relief.
Beside me, Michele lets out a broken sob, muffled behind her hand. Cole’s jaw is locked, his knuckles bone-white against the chair he grips, like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
Then a nurse’s voice cuts through, calmer now. “Family’s in the hall. You can update them.”
The curtain parts, and the attending steps out, snapping off his gloves as his gaze sweeps over us. His eyes land first on Cole, then Michele, then Auntie Mel, cataloging faces like he’s searching for an anchor.
“Who’s his next of kin?” His voice is calm, clipped, but not unkind.