Chapter 1 #2
Wrenching cries tore from my chest, raw and uncontrollable. Blind with tears, I shook as the bright lights, the smells, the noise blurred together into a suffocating haze.
The monitor wailed on, an unbroken line cutting across the screen.
“Flat for four minutes,” someone said, low but firm. “We’re losing him.”
“We already lost him,” another voice answered.
“No!” I roared, the word ripping my throat raw. “You don’t get to say that. He’s not gone. He can hear me. He always hears me.”
The nurse’s hands kept pressing into Eli’s chest, each brutal compression reverberating through my bones like it was happening to me instead. Sweat dripped down the nurse’s temple, her jaw locked, her arms trembling from the strain.
If we just keep going, I thought. One more compression. One more breath. The next push will bring him back. The next wheeze of the ventilator will breathe life into his broken body.
But the monitor doesn’t listen. It screams its flat, endless note—accusing, absolute.
The air reeked of blood and adrenaline, antiseptic and despair, thick enough to choke on.
“Doctor,” the nurse said gently, too gently, like the word itself was an apology. “We need to call it.”
“Don’t you dare.” My whole body shook, but I glared at him through tears that blurred the world into streaks of light and shadow. “Keep going. I don’t care if it takes ten minutes, twenty, the rest of the goddamn night—you don’t stop. You hear me? You keep him alive!”
The resident’s mouth opened, then closed. The nurses exchanged glances, pity flickering in their eyes like small betrayals.
“Adrian…” one of them whispered, softer than the beep that wasn’t there anymore.
I bent over Eli’s body, pressing my forehead to his still warm skin.
My mask was wet with tears and snot, every sob tearing through me.
“Please, Eli,” I whispered into the crook of his elbow.
“Don’t leave me. Not like this. I need more time—I need one more laugh, one more kiss, just—just one more.
” My shoulders shook, breaking me down smaller and smaller. “Please, baby, please.”
A hand touched my shoulder. The resident again. His touch was heavy. Final. “Time of death—”
“NO!” I screamed, the sound bursting out of me with a violence that turned every head. My voice bounced against the walls. “He’s mine. He’s my husband. You don’t stop, do you hear me? You don’t stop until I say!”
The word husband pierced the air like a gunshot. The staff froze, realization rippling through the room. Their faces reflected shock and sorrow before they snapped their eyes back to the monitors, their hands, their work.
But Eli’s hand remained lifeless in mine. I sobbed harder, my body folding, my mask slipping down so my mouth pressed against his skin. “I can’t do this without you. I won’t. So come back to me. Do you hear me, Eli? You come back.”
The room quieted, waiting for the inevitable.
Waiting for me to let go.
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I pressed my mouth to his hand, kissed blood and dirt, and whispered broken prayers against his skin while the monitor held its dead line.
A nurse’s voice broke through, careful, measured, like she’d rehearsed it a thousand times. “Dr. Hawke… he’s listed as a donor.”
The words slammed into me harder than any trauma I’d ever faced. My head snapped up, vision swimming. “No. No, you don’t say that. Not while he’s still warm. Not while I’m holding him.”
Her eyes flicked to mine with sympathy. “We have to prepare, sir. We’ll need to notify transplant—”
“Prepare?” The word shredded out of me, half snarl, half sob. “You think I’m going to stand here while you carve him up? He’s not gone! He’s right here!”
“Adrian…” the resident doc tried, quiet but firm, like he was coaxing me toward a cliff edge.
“Don’t Adrian me,” I snapped, tears blinding me as I turned back to Eli.
My lips brushed his knuckles, trembling.
“He’s my husband. My husband. And he’s not done.
You hear me, Eli? You don’t quit on me.” The words came out in broken gasps, each one tearing my chest open wider.
“We haven’t had our last fight yet, our last morning coffee, our last kiss—I won’t let it end here. I won’t.”
The team moved slowly, as if gravity had thickened. Hands hovered over instruments. A clipboard shifted. The RN’s compressions faltered under the weight of the silence, each push pounding like a hammer in my skull.
And still I begged, incoherent, rocking against the bed with Eli’s limp hand pressed to my mouth, my cheek. “Please, baby. Please, don’t let them take you from me. Not yet. I can’t—I can’t—”
The monitor screamed its steady death knell, filling the pause where no one knew what to say.
Oblivious to the cold, hard tiles biting into my knees, I clung to him.
“I should’ve come home earlier, should’ve made more time, should’ve told you every damn day how much I love you.
I thought we had years left—I thought we had time.
” My words dissolved into breath-stealing sobs.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye…” The words fell from my lips in a whisper of regret.
I didn’t get to tell him how fucking sorry I was.
The last time we spoke—was it even kind? Or did I rush out the door, leaving him with silence and the echo of my absence? If that was the last thing he remembered of me, I’d never forgive myself.
I had saved strangers a thousand times, but when it mattered most, when it was him, I was useless. A fraud in scrubs, a husband masquerading as a doctor.
I was incoherent, shaking, raw, falling apart in the only place I’d ever truly felt powerless, beside the person I loved more than life itself.
The machine continued to scream at me that I was out of time.
Hands slowed. Eyes averted. The room had already surrendered him. All but me.
I pressed my face to Eli’s palm, his ring biting into my cheek, anchoring me to the life they were trying to strip away. “You’re mine,” I whispered, fierce and broken. “And I’m not letting you go. Not now. Not ever.”
The world became still and hushed, my body folding in on itself, everything collapsing until there was only his hand in mine, then nothing at all.