22. Cast
22
CAST
I know the moment her heart gives out. The exact moment everything in my life ceases to be, and the tendrils of death and fear threaten to choke the life out of me.
I feel it as a physical blow—a sudden hollowness in my chest that mirrors what must be happening in hers. The alert on my phone is almost an afterthought, a mechanical confirmation of what my soul already knows.
"Willow's heart," I snarl, immediately hitting a u-turn towards the hospital near her house. The car fishtails violently, tires screaming against asphalt as other drivers blare their horns in protest.
"Is that the app tracking the mechanical heart?" Damien asks, panic shooting through him as he reaches for my phone. His birthday dinner forgotten, his face ashen under the harsh glow of the dashboard lights.
"Yes," I manage through gritted teeth. The interface that normally shows a steady rhythm now flashes crimson warnings, numbers plummeting into dangerous territory. The app was designed as a precaution, a way to monitor the sophisticated machinery keeping her alive. Right now, it's become a countdown clock.
I tighten my grip on the wheel, my knuckles white as I push the car to its limits. The tires screech against the asphalt as I maneuver through traffic, narrowly avoiding a collision with a speeding truck. My heart slams against my ribs, a painful reminder that Willow's might not be beating at all.
A red light looms ahead, but I don't slow down.
"Cast, you can't—" Damien starts, but falls silent as I thread the needle between two crossing cars, their horns blaring in our wake.
Damien swears under his breath, his eyes locked on the screen as the app blares red. "Her heart is failing—Cast, we're losing her." His voice cracks on the last word, the reality of what's happening finally penetrating through the shock.
"No." The word rips from my throat, raw and broken. Not her. Not now. Not after everything we've survived together. Not when I've only just begun to believe we might have a future.
In the back seat, Vincent clutches the door handle, his jaw set, his face pale. He was supposed to meet us at the restaurant, but called for a ride at the last minute. Now he's trapped in this nightmare with us. "How long does she have?"
Damien doesn't answer right away. His fingers fly over the screen, trying to stabilize the signal, trying to will the mechanical heart back to life through sheer desperation. The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken terror.
"Damien!" I bark, swerving around a slow-moving SUV. "How. Long. "
"Three minutes, maybe four before irreversible damage," he finally answers, his medical training cutting through his panic. "If her heart stops completely..." He doesn't finish the sentence.
I already know the answer. If she flatlined, if her heart stopped—every second mattered. If she doesn't get medical attention in time the heart will stop pumping and she will be—fuck I don't even want to think the fucking word.
I slam the gas pedal down, the engine roaring in protest as we hit ninety on a forty-five road. My vision narrows to a tunnel, every cell in my body focused on a single goal: reach her in time.
"Can you track where she is?" I rasp, swerving in and out of lanes. The hospital is still eight minutes away at this speed. Too long. Far too long.
"I'm trying," Damien says, his fingers trembling slightly as he navigates through the app.
"The GPS is—wait." His breath catches. "She's not at home. She's not heading to the restaurant either."
Vincent leans forward, his breath hot on my neck. "Where then?"
"Oakridge Drive," Damien says, looking up with confusion. "Why would she be?—"
"There's been an accident on Oakridge," Vincent interrupts, his phone in hand, scanning local alerts. "Major collision, emergency services on scene, roads blocked."
My blood turns to ice. Accident. Heart failure. The connection is instantaneous and devastating .
"She crashed," I whisper, the words barely audible over the engine's roar. "Her heart gave out while she was driving."
Damien's face contorts with horror. "Cast?—"
"New plan," I cut him off, yanking the wheel hard right at the next intersection. "We're going to Oakridge. Now."
The car leaps forward like a living thing sensing my desperation. In my mind, I see her—trapped, alone, her life literally ticking away with each passing second. The mechanical heart that gave her a second chance now betrays her when she needs it most.
"Hold on, Willow," I murmur, as if she could somehow hear me across the distance. "Just hold on. I'm coming."
Behind me, Vincent has gone eerily quiet, his breathing shallow and controlled. Damien stares at the app, watching Willow's life signs fluctuate dangerously. The weight of our shared fear fills the car, thick enough to choke on.
I push the accelerator even harder, praying to gods I don't believe in that traffic parts like the Red Sea, that every light stays green, that the seconds stretching between us and Willow somehow slow down just enough.
Because I know with bone-deep certainty that if we don't reach her in time, it won't just be Willow's heart that stops tonight.
The wail of sirens grows louder as we approach Oakridge Drive, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles painting the night in surreal strokes of red and blue. Traffic has ground to a halt, but I don't care—I mount the curb, driving half on the sidewalk until we can't go any further .
I abandon the car in the middle of the road, leaving the door hanging open as I sprint toward the chaos ahead. Damien and Vincent are right behind me, their footfalls heavy on the asphalt.
"Willow!" Her name tears from my throat before I can even see the crash site.
Then the crowd parts, and I see it—her father's car, the one she'd been so proud to inherit, crumpled against a telephone pole. The driver's side is completely caved in, metal twisted like paper. Emergency responders swarm around it like ants, their movements urgent and practiced.
And then I see her.
The jaws of life are still peeling back the roof of the car, the metal groaning in protest. In the harsh spotlight from the emergency vehicles, I catch glimpses of her—pale skin, dark hair matted with blood, the unnatural stillness of her body as they work to extract her.
"WILLOW!" This time it's a scream, ripped from somewhere primal and desperate inside me. I lunge forward, shoving past bystanders, my only thought to reach her.
A police officer steps into my path, arms outstretched. "Sir, you need to stay back?—"
"That's my girlfriend!" I roar, trying to push past him. "Let me through! I need to get to her!"
Two more officers appear, forming a human barrier between me and Willow. One of them, a woman with sympathetic eyes, places a firm hand on my chest. "Sir, please. The paramedics need space to work. You'll only delay them. "
"Her heart," I gasp, struggling against their hold. "She has a mechanical heart—it's failing—they need to know?—"
Behind me, Damien steps forward, his voice steadier than mine though it wavers at the edges. "She has a LVAD mechanical heart. It's experiencing critical failure according to her monitoring app. They need this information immediately."
The female officer hesitates, then nods to her colleague who runs toward the paramedics.
Vincent grabs my shoulder, his fingers digging in painfully. "Cast, they're getting her out. Look."
I follow his gaze just in time to see them finally free her from the wreckage. Her body looks impossibly small and broken on the backboard as they lift her clear of the destroyed vehicle. Her face is obscured by an oxygen mask, arms limp at her sides. One of the paramedics is already performing chest compressions as they rush her toward the waiting ambulance.
"No, no, no," I moan, my knees threatening to buckle. "Let me go to her! Please!"
"Cast, stop," Damien hisses, grabbing my arm. "We’ll meet them at the hospital.”
The police take advantage, pushing us further back from the scene.
"Your girlfriend is in critical condition," the female officer says, her voice deliberately calm. "The paramedics are doing everything they can. They know about her heart condition now."
Vincent steps up, his face ghost-white but composed. "Which hospital are they taking her to? "
"County General," she replies. "It's the closest and has the best trauma center."
I watch helplessly as they load Willow into the ambulance, the doors slamming shut with terrible finality. The siren wails to life as it pulls away, carrying her further from me with each passing second.
"We need to go," I say, my voice hoarse from screaming. "Now."
Damien is already pulling me back toward my abandoned car. "I'll drive," he says, taking the keys from my shaking hands. "Vincent, call her mother. And the hospital—tell them she's coming in with a mechanical heart failure."
As we race back to the car, I glance over my shoulder one last time at the wreckage that nearly claimed her. Something glints in the emergency lights—a small object on the ground near where they pulled her out.
Before I can identify it, Damien yanks me into the car, and we're speeding toward the hospital, chasing the ambulance that carries the only future that matters to me.