Chapter 12
Jasper
“We’ve got a pulse.”
For a second, the words don’t register. I’m too lost in memories. Too lost in pain. Then there’s a sound. A low, steady beeping.
A noise rips from me. Half gasp, half sob, and I lurch forward, catching Arlo’s hand in my own.
“It’s thready, but it’s there,” the medic says. “Keep venting.”
Arlo is alive.
My baby boy is alive.
I blink hard, staring at the monitor like it might flatline again if I look away.
“Post-ROSC. Intubated. Smoke inhalation, partial-thickness burns. ETA two minutes.”
Return of spontaneous circulation.
I’ve heard it hundreds of times. Said it myself.
I’ve never, not one time in nineteen years, felt the weight of it in my chest quite like this.
He’s warm. His hand is warm. Not cold like Sarah’s. Not cold at all.
My hands are still shaking.
Arlo is still here.
I lean forward, pressing my forehead to the back of his hand. “I’m here, baby boy. You’re going to be okay.”
I can’t look away from Arlo’s chest.
He’s in the ICU now. The ventilator is hissing beside him, the thick tube between his lips held in place with white tape. It looks stark against the soot still clinging to his skin.
They weren’t able to get it all off.
He’s asleep. Sedated, really. But it makes me feel better to think he’s just sleeping. I want to touch him. I want to feel his soft skin under my fingers, but I’m afraid of that too.
I know he’s not in any pain. Not right now anyway, but I still don’t want to risk it.
His chest rises.
Falls.
Rises again.
I know he’s not doing it on his own, but it still soothes me to see.
My throat convulses as I swallow hard, my eyes taking the same path they’ve taken over and over since they let me come in here twenty minutes ago.
His eyelashes are singed. I didn’t notice it earlier, but now it’s almost impossible not to see. He has the most beautiful eyelashes. Long and thick, framing his eyes perfectly. I know they’ll grow back. I know that, but it doesn’t make it easier to see.
His throat is wrapped loosely in gauze, slight pink bleeding out around the edges where the burns aren’t as bad. His shoulder is wrapped too.
I know he’s not cold, but the sight of his bare chest makes my heart ache, especially the bruising on his sternum.
Compressions are hard. When Sarah… I shake my head against my own thoughts.
I can’t afford to go there right now. Sarah is dead.
And it might be my fault, but it’s also been twenty-one years. I couldn’t save her. I didn’t save her.
I saved Arlo. Maybe. My eyes burn. God, I fucking hope I saved him.
The bruising is getting to me. The day I went to the diner, ready to get Arlo back and make him mine for good, Theo asked me if I’d hurt him. I was upset about that.
I’d never hurt Arlo. I’d just as soon cut my own hands off. But here we are anyway. Arlo’s ribs cracked, with an ugly bruise forming on his chest from the force of what I had to do to him.
ECG leads dot his chest. His heartbeat is steady now. Normal and strong. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get him flatlined out of my head, though. The image will haunt me until the day I die.
My eyes travel lower. He has an IV in each arm, and his knuckles are red.
Before they cleaned him up, I hadn’t noticed. Or maybe I was just too focused on everything else. He tried to crawl, I think. Tried dragging himself through the house.
Fresh panic rushes in at the thought, my chest getting so tight I can hardly breathe around the pressure.
He must have been so afraid. I can’t even bear to think about it. My sweet baby boy, dragging himself through fire to get to safety, only to pass out instead, his heart giving out on him.
The pressure in my chest gets worse, choking me. I can’t breathe. There’s just Arlo’s lifeless body. Arlo and Sarah, mingling in my head and destroying me from the inside out.
I force a deep breath into my lungs.
I’m not sixteen anymore.
They got his pulse back.
He’s alive.
He’s alive and right here.
He’s asleep. Just asleep. He’s just asleep.
“Jasper.” Luca’s voice pulls me out of my spiraling thoughts, and I turn, finding him standing a few feet away. His eyes leave mine and fall to Arlo, and he covers his mouth with his hands, tears welling up and instantly spilling over. “Is he…? He’s gonna be okay, right?”
“He’s stable,” I say, my voice sounding like it belongs to someone else. My lips are numb. I can’t quite feel the words leaving my mouth. Maybe that’s why they don’t feel like my own. “Where’s Austin?”
Luca steps closer. “Can I?”
I nod. “Hold his hand if you want. Just be careful of the IV.”
Luca’s face crumples when he gets closer, but he wraps his finger loosely around Arlo’s pinky. My throat almost closes up at that small gesture, and something warm slips down my cheek.
“Talk to him,” I choke out. “They say they can hear us.”
“Austin’s in the waiting room,” Luca finally says. “They said only two people at a time, and neither of us wanted to kick you out, so Austin told me to come in first.”
That’s for the best, really. Would I leave Arlo’s side so Austin could visit him? Probably not. I don’t think I’d leave Arlo’s side for a single fucking thing in this world.
God himself couldn’t make me. Unreliable bastard that he is.
“When will he wake up?” Luca asks.
“I don’t know. They have him sedated right now. The smoke inhalation caused swelling in his throat. They want to give him time to heal a bit before they lift the sedation.”
“He’s gonna be okay?” Luca sounds so young right now, his voice small and vulnerable.
I wish I knew the answer to that. “I hope so.”
The truth is, I don’t know. No one does. Not yet. Things look better, but that doesn’t mean anything.
His heart is beating, but he’s not breathing on his own. Would he be, if not for the vent? I also don’t know that. Plus, we don’t even know if he suffered brain trauma. We won’t until he wakes up. If he wakes up. I shake my head. No. When. When he wakes up.
“You have to be okay,” Luca whispers, his finger brushing Arlo’s pinky. “You’re my best friend. I haven’t had a lot of those, so that means you have to be okay.”
The machines answer for Arlo. Whirring. Beeping.
Luca looks at me. “What did the doctors say?”
Dragging a hand over my face, I take a deep breath. “They’re keeping an eye on his lungs. Smoke inhalation is dangerous. If they pull the tube too early, he might need to be reintubated.”
Luca nods slowly.
“They’re monitoring him for neurological response too.” I shouldn’t have said that part out loud. Luca doesn’t need to be scared by that, but keeping the thought to myself is painful. It’s hard enough being terrified. It’s even worse to be terrified alone.
“What does that mean?” Luca asks, eyes snapping to mine.
I force my voice to be steady when I speak. “It means that…” I have to pause, swallowing hard. “He was without oxygen. He had no pulse. We don’t know for how long before we found him.”
“But you all got his pulse back.”
I nod. “We did.”
“And his oxygen is good now,” Luca points out.
“It is.” Because a machine is breathing for him.
“And he’s healthy and young. He’ll bounce back, right?”
“I hope so.”
It’s all I can offer.
“He’s going to be in pain when he wakes up,” I whisper, carefully reaching out to cradle his hand in mine.
Luca’s eyebrows draw together. “What do you mean? Because of the burns?”
I nod. “That, and he has broken ribs.”
Because you fucking broke them.
I press my lips together, clenching my jaw to keep myself from crying.
“But…” Luca studies me, his eyes soft and assessing. “You saved him, though.”
I inhale a deep breath. “We don’t know for sure.”
“You ran into the house,” Luca says, voice shaky and thick. “Austin said you didn’t even wait. Said you ran right in and broke all protocol.”
“I did. I don’t regret it.”
But it still doesn’t mean he’ll pull through. It doesn’t mean that he won’t have neurological issues. It doesn’t mean he’ll be able to breathe on his own.
“You love him. Austin told me you called him baby boy.”
That’s what ends up breaking me. Tears spring to my eyes, and I drop my forehead to the edge of Arlo’s hospital bed in my attempt to hide them from Luca.
It doesn’t work.
A warm hand lands on my back, rubbing up and down as it heaves with shuddering sobs. I cry until my throat’s raw and my breath is coming in hitching, hiccuping gasps.
Luca stands by me the entire time, his hand resting on my back. Every once in a while, he sweeps up my spine. Other times I’d almost swear he gently shushes me. At one point, I barely make out him telling me everything is going to be okay.
When I finally manage to get my shit together, I raise my head. Luca’s hand falls away from my back, and I force myself to meet his gaze.
His face is as tear-stained as I’m sure mine is, but he’s got a slight grin. “I knew, you know. Y’all weren’t hiding shit.”
That somehow makes me laugh. It’s choked off and broken, but I’ll take anything right now.
“Yeah?”
Luca nods slowly, sobering. “I’m happy for you guys.”
“I love him,” I say. “I’ve loved him for a very long time.”
I brush my fingertips down Arlo’s arm, careful to avoid his bandaged-up areas.
“I know you do. It’s easy to see. He’s gonna be okay.”
I sure fucking hope so.
Luca sighs. “I’m gonna go get Austin now, okay? Do you need anything?”
I shake my head. The only thing in this world I could possibly need is for the love of my life to wake up. For him to smile at me. For him to blink up at me with those beautiful, mismatched eyes.
I need him to be okay. I need him to be alive and okay. That’s all. And Luca can’t give me that.
Luca slips out of the room, and I bring Arlo’s still hand to my lips, pressing a kiss to the back of it before carefully moving it back to the bed.
“I love you, baby boy. Come back to me, okay? You’ve made it through the hard part. I’ll take such good care of you, I promise.”
I drag my fingers over his, avoiding the bruising and redness on his knuckles. “I’ll help you bathe, and I’ll help you with your wounds. I’ll take time off work, even.”
More tears start falling, and I don’t even bother trying to stop them. “You can move in with me. As soon as you’re able to leave the hospital. I’ll make sure you have everything you need. And then you don’t have to worry about a thing except getting better.”
“Just please, please come back to me.”