Chapter Forty Six
Hanging On
Rachel Willaims
The world is noise.
Alarms. Shouting. Hands everywhere. Blood everywhere.
But none of it matters.
Only him.
Only Bishop lying on the floor, pale and still and soaked in red, his chest unmoving, his eyes closed like he’s already gone.
I’m on my knees beside him, shaking so hard I can barely stay upright. My hospital gown is splattered with his blood. My fingers slip on his skin every time I try to touch him, to hold him, to keep him here.
“Please,” I whisper, voice shredded. “Please don’t leave me.”
A doctor pushes me back, but I claw forward again, refusing to let go. “Save him…save him…please-”
They start compressions.
His body jerks under their hands.
I sob so hard my ribs feel like they’re tearing open again, but I don’t care. Pain is nothing. Pain is irrelevant. Pain is a whisper compared to the scream inside me.
“Come on,” one doctor mutters. “Come on, Bishop.”
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t breathe.
He’s slipping.
“No,” I choke. “No. Bishop…stay…stay with me. Stay-”
A nurse calls out numbers. Another grabs paddles. Someone shouts for more blood. The hallway is chaos, but all I see is him.
All I hear is the silence where his heartbeat should be.
A tiny, fragile blip on the monitor.
“Wait…wait…hold compressions-”
The doctor leans in.
Another blip.
Then another.
Then a rhythm.
Weak. Unsteady. But there.
“He’s got a pulse,” the doctor says, breathless. “He’s back.”
My knees give out completely, and I collapse beside him, sobbing into my hands, into his shoulder, into the blood and the tile and the relief so violent it hurts.
“Bishop,” I whisper. “Oh God. Bishop. Don’t ever do that again.”
He doesn’t answer, he’s unconscious, barely hanging on. But he’s alive.
He’s alive.
Gemma’s footsteps thunder back down the hall.
I look up.
She’s covered in blood.
Not Bishop’s.
Beth’s.
Her knuckles are split. Her shirt is torn. Her breathing is ragged. And she’s dragging a limp, broken body behind her by the collar.
Beth.
Dead.
Gemma drops her like trash and wipes her face with the back of her hand.
“No one hurts my family,” she says, voice low and shaking with fury.
Family.
She looks at me. At Bishop. At the blood. At the devastation.
And she steps closer, placing a trembling hand on my shoulder.
“He’s alive,” she whispers. “He’s alive, Rach.”
I nod, sobbing harder, clutching Bishop’s hand like it’s the only thing tethering me to the world.
Because it is.
Because he is.
Because Beth didn’t win after all.