Chapter Thirty One
Rain hammered against the windows hard enough to blur the skyline beyond into nothing but grey smears and fractured lights. Outside, the world drowned. Inside, Magnet looked better. Or at least less like death had one hand wrapped around his throat.
Colour crept back into his face through the bruising.
The ventilator was gone. So were half the machines that had surrounded him those first couple of days.
He still looked rough as fuck. Tubes hanging out of him.
Staples. Dressings. But he was awake. Talking.
Being a pain in the arse again. Which felt normal.
And after the last week, normal felt dangerous. Like the second you relaxed, something came along and ripped it away again.
“You should’ve seen Reap’s face when the nurse said she needed to catheterise me,” Magnet rasped weakly from the bed, eyes glassy with pain meds but still full of that same stupid humour.
I snorted from the chair beside him. “I was laughing because your knob’s too small to find.”
“Fuck off,” he muttered.
The monitor beside him flickered faster for a second as he laughed, and instantly, I saw Sophie’s face in my head, warning him not to push too hard. Funny how often she lived in my fucking head these days.
Suzy had finally gone downstairs with Emmie after six straight hours sat beside his bed. Indie practically forced her. Mamma Dot had shuffled off, muttering about hospital coffee tasting like “burnt dishwater and disappointment.”
So it was just him and me.
For the first time since the crash, it almost felt quiet.
“Thanks, mate,” Magnet said suddenly.
“What for?”
“That day. Staying with me. Ringing an ambulance. Not bawling your eyes out,” he added, lightening what was quickly headed down a dark path.
“Mate. I wasn’t leaving you in the middle of the road. I’d never fucking hear the end of it.”
Magnet laughed, hiccupping. Then something changed. Tiny at first. The monitor shifted rhythm. The steady pattern turning uneven. Magnet’s expression changed too. Eyes losing focus slightly. Confusion flickering across his face before discomfort followed. Then pain. Sharp. Sudden.
“Magnet?” I straightened immediately.
He grabbed at his chest hard enough to pull at wires, his face draining white so quickly it didn’t even look real.
“Fuck…” he gasped.
I was on my feet instantly.
“Nurse! Doctor! Fucking someone!”
One of them turned immediately from the station outside the room, saw the monitor and started moving before I’d drawn in a panicked breath.
Magnet’s breathing changed next. Wet. Fast. Wrong.
Not panic. Something worse. I grabbed his wrist instinctively.
His pulse hammered against my fingers far too quick.
“Stay with me, brother.”
The monitor screamed. Everything exploded into motion. Bodies flooded the room. Blue scrubs. Gloves. Machines dragged in. Orders thrown around so fast they barely sounded like words anymore. I stumbled backward automatically, nearly hitting the wall as the room swallowed Magnet whole.
“BP’s crashing.”
“Get the crash trolley.”
“Massive PE.”
“What’s a PE?” I shouted over the voices, my voice almost an octave higher.
“Blood clot,” someone replied matter-of-factly.
No.
No fucking way.
Magnet’s body jerked violently beneath the hands working on him. The machines screamed and shrieked around him while people forced oxygen and drugs and fucking life back into his body. And then she appeared.
One second she wasn’t there. The next she was cutting through the middle of it all like she belonged nowhere else on earth.
Calm. Focused. Controlled. Her hair was tied back badly now, pieces escaping around her face, exhaustion etched deep beneath her eyes.
But none of it touched her hands. Or her voice.
“Dr Mercer?” someone asked.
“Heard the call. Was down the corridor,” she responded, fingers not stopping. “Adrenaline’s in.”
“Continue compressions.”
“Charge again.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Just stood there watching my brother die while the woman I loved tried to drag him back from it with her bare fucking hands.
Please.
The word repeated in my head over and over.
Please.
Magnet jerked again beneath the compressions, mouth slightly open, skin turning that horrible grey colour I’d only ever seen on dead men.
Sophie didn’t stop. None of them did. Sweat dampened the back of her scrubs.
Blood streaked one glove. Her voice stayed level anyway. And somehow that made it worse.
Because she already knew.
I could see it in her eyes before anyone said the words. The clot was too big. Too fast. Too final. The room slowly changed after that. The violence went out of it first. The urgency. Compressions slowed, voices lowered. Hope disappeared so subtly that I almost missed the exact second it left.
Then came the sound.
One long continuous tone. Flat. Empty. Final. Nobody moved. Not properly. Sophie glanced at the man to her left, and he looked up at the clock.
“No….” I whispered. “No…” like I could make a difference. Stop them from saying it.
“Time of death…”
The rest blurred.
I stared at Magnet lying still beneath white sheets and suddenly all I could think about was him laughing two fucking minutes ago.
Calling Chaos a pussy because he cried during Marley and Me.
Punching me in the shoulder after I got patched in.
Standing beside me outside the prison gates the day I got out like no time had passed at all.
Gone. Just fucking gone.
I braced one hand against the wall because my legs suddenly didn’t feel right. Nobody noticed me.
Sophie stood completely still at the end of the bed, chest rising unevenly now the adrenaline had nowhere to go. The consultant touched her shoulder gently.
“I’ll go let the family know…” he said, like I wasn’t even fucking standing there.
I knew. I’d watched him die in front of me. No.
“No,” Sophie said quietly. “I’ll do it.”
Fuck.
Around us, the room had already started shifting back into motion.
Quiet now. Controlled. One nurse silenced the monitor while another began peeling bloodied gloves from shaking hands.
Someone pulled the sheet properly over Magnet’s chest with a gentleness that nearly fucking finished me off.
The crash trolley rattled softly as it was pushed back out into the corridor, traces of the chaos already being cleared away because somewhere else in the hospital another poor bastard would need it next.
I glanced at Sophie. Our eyes connecting. Wordless stares. We moved away, pulling the curtains around him. I stayed half a step behind her the entire time, watching the tension build in her shoulders as we moved out into the corridor. She looked exhausted now. Pale beneath the fluorescent lights.
I saw them first. Coming back from the hospital canteen.
Suzy, Emmie, Indie and Fury in the front.
The twins and Baz behind them. Visiting time.
They stopped when they saw us, Indie’s gaze meeting mine, knowing before we even said the words.
He eased the coffee cup from Suzy and passed it to Fury, and she looked back at him quizzically and then to us.
Terror tore across her face so violently it made my chest hurt.
“No…” she whispered instantly. “No, no…”
Sophie stopped in front of her, and for the first time since I’d met her again, I saw her composure crack. Just slightly.
“We did everything we could.”
Suzy stared. Looking at Sophie, then at me, and then at Indie. Then she broke, her legs going completely and a sound ripped out of her that I’ll hear for the rest of my fucking life. Not screaming. Worse. Pure grief tearing itself out of someone’s chest.
Indie caught her before she hit the floor, and nobody else moved for a second.
Fury turned away sharply, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth.
Baz sat down heavily in a nearby chair like his knees had given up holding him.
Chaos covered his mouth with both hands while Carnage stared blankly at the wall like his brain had stopped working.
Indie lowered his head. Just for a second.
One hand covering his eyes before he dragged it away again.
Controlled. Contained. Destroyed anyway.
I went to Suzy without thinking. Wrapping my arms around her and pulling her into my chest, too choked to say anything. She sobbed against me, her body convulsing. And I held her there. While my brothers sat in silence around us. My heart breaking harder than I could have ever imagined.
When I let go of Suzy, I looked behind me. Sophie stood quietly. The overhead lights sparkling on her cheeks, catching silent tears. Not running. Not judging. Just grieving with us, like Magnet belonged to her too.
Magnet. Gone. Fuck.
I let go of Suzy, passing her to Emmie, glanced back at Sophie, and then I moved. Big, long strides taking me out of the corridor. Away from the bleep of machines and the smell of antiseptic.