Chapter Forty-Five
Tank
Ricky barrels through the ER doors like a man possessed, driven and wild-eyed, and I’m right behind him, my legs pumping, heart pounding, lungs screaming, Vanessa's small body limp in my arms. Her head hangs back, and her lips are going blue. The weak thump of her pulse echoes in my mind. A cruel countdown. Her arms dangle with an awful stillness.
"Help!" Ricky yells, his voice already ragged with fear. "Somebody help!" He runs ahead, turning back to shout over his shoulder, panic and desperation etched into every feature. "She's not breathing!"
Bianca runs beside me. She's silent, but her face says everything: lips pressed white, eyes burning with something fierce and unyielding, like she can will Vanessa back to life by strength alone.
"Doctor!" I bark, loud enough that the receptionist jumps and drops her pen. "We need a crash cart and Narcan now!"
Bianca breaks away from my side and lunges for a nurse. I see her grab the woman’s arm, face fierce and unyielding. "Maria! It’s Vanessa — she overdosed. She needs help. Right now.”
The nurse doesn't waste a second with questions. Recognition flashes across her face, sharp and immediate, and she spins around and calls for a gurney, urgent as a shouted prayer. In a blink, the trauma team floods into the hallway, a well-oiled machine. They peel Vanessa out of my arms, set her on the gurney, and rush toward the blinding white light of the double doors. The doors swing open, swallow her whole, and Ricky's eyes go wide with a silent scream.
She's gone, and we're left standing there, gutted and breathless.
Ricky stumbles, drops to his knees outside the trauma room, his face twisted like a raw wound. It's the collapse of a man who’s already rebuilt himself from pieces one too many times. His bloody palms slap against the white tile, and he leans forward to press his forehead to the floor.
I move toward him, my chest aching with every step, but he jerks away the second he senses me getting close.
"Don’t,” he chokes. “Just... don’t."
Bianca slumps into a waiting room chair. Her arms wrap around her stomach, squeezing tight like she's trying to hold herself together, desperate to stay whole. I sit next to her; the space between us is a void filled with words we can't bring ourselves to say. I don’t know if I can take her hurt on top of mine, don’t know if I can bear the weight of it. But I reach out anyway. I pull her closer, steady and firm, and she relents, leans into me. Just a little. Only a little. But it’s enough.
"She’s so strong," she whispers, her words fragile and breaking. "Stronger than people think. But this... this could break her. What if she doesn’t make it?”
Her voice trembles, and something in me snaps.
Not fear. Not anger.
Love.
And with love comes guilt. Pain. Remorse. A thousand things I’ve tried to bury, all rising to the surface now with a vengeance.
“I owe you an explanation,” I whisper, my arm still around her. “Everything. No lies. No deflection. After this, I’ll tell you everything. Who I am. Why I came to Boise. Why I lied.”
Bianca lifts her head, just enough to look at me. Her eyes are wet with tears, but there's something else there, too: hope and a kind of love that makes my chest hurt. "I know," she says simply, like she’s been waiting for me to admit it all along. "I know you’re not just some bearded baker with a secret cinnamon roll recipe."
She tries to smile. It falters. Her eyes shine with tears, hope, love.
“But right now,” I say, squeezing her shoulder, “Ricky needs us. And Vanessa needs him. We hold the line here.”
Bianca nods. “Yeah. Okay. One crisis at a time.”
She turns her hand and places it over mine. Holds it there. It’s not forgiveness. It's not everything I want from her. But it’s a beginning.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “I’m glad you’re alive. And… I’m glad you came for me.”
I lean back, exhaling through my nose, still gripping her hand like it’s a lifeline, like it’s the only thing tethering me to this moment and not the one we left behind. The adrenaline’s wearing off, and I feel every ache, every bruise, every second of war we just lived through. But I’d do it all again. Because this woman — this strong, stubborn, brilliant woman — is sitting beside me, alive. And she put her hand in mine.
I’d face death a thousand more times for this.
Minutes tick by. Then minutes more. Silence, heavy sits between us, and I realize it’s been so long since I’ve even thought about the fact that I killed Moretti. Because maybe, just maybe, killing him wasn’t what I really needed. Maybe Boise gave me something else.
Then the trauma room doors creak open.