18. Odette
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Odette
Forty Minutes Later
Something is wrong.
I know it before I know it, the way you know a storm is coming before the first drop of rain. Some animal instinct buried deep in my brain, screaming at me to pay attention.
I pull out my IV.
The nurse who comes to check on me tries to stop me, but I’m already out of bed, already reaching for the robe someone left on the chair, already moving toward the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
“Mrs. Fairbanks, you need to stay in bed. The doctor said rest.”
“My partner went to get food. He’s been gone for forty minutes. Something is wrong.”
“I’m sure he’s just stuck in line somewhere. There’s a good diner down the street, it gets busy.”
“At four in the morning?”
She doesn’t have an answer for that.
I push past her into the corridor. The hospital at this hour is quiet, the lights dimmed low. I pad barefoot down the hallway, my gown flapping behind me, searching for someone, anyone, who might have seen him.
“Excuse me.” I stop a nurse pushing an empty wheelchair. “Have you seen a man? Tall, dark hair, dark coat. He’d have left about forty minutes ago.”
She shakes her head. “Sorry, I just came on shift.”
I keep walking. The corridor branches, and I take the left fork without knowing why, following the pull in my gut that won’t let me stop.
Then I hear the commotion.
Voices. Urgent, overlapping, shouting instructions I can’t quite make out. The squeak of wheels on linoleum. The beep of machines being moved at speed.
I round the corner and see chaos.
The entire floor is consumed by an incoming patient. Doctors and nurses swarm around a gurney being rushed through the double doors, their hands reaching, their voices calling out numbers and instructions. Someone is pressing a cloth to the patient’s chest, and the cloth is soaked red.
“Stab wound, severe,” someone shouts. “Two to the abdomen, one to the chest. Found in a parking lot two blocks from the twenty-four-hour diner. No wallet, no ID.”
I press myself against the wall to let them pass.
The gurney rolls by.
And I see his face.
Elliott.
Pale as paper. Eyes closed. Blood everywhere, soaking through his shirt, pooling on the white sheets, dripping onto the floor. There’s a tube down his throat and a nurse squeezing a bag to force air into his lungs because he isn’t breathing on his own.
Under the wheels of the gurney, crushed and forgotten, is a milkshake cup. Chocolate. From the diner two blocks away.
“Elliott!”
The scream tears out of me before I can stop it. I lunge forward, trying to reach him, trying to touch him, trying to make him open his eyes and look at me and tell me this isn’t happening.
Hands grab me. Hold me back.
“Ma’am, you can’t go in there. Ma’am, please, you need to step back.”
“That’s my partner! That’s Elliott! Let me go!”
I’m fighting them, clawing at the hands that hold me, screaming his name over and over like saying it loud enough will make him wake up. The gurney disappears through another set of doors. The doors swing shut. He’s gone.
“Ma’am.” A nurse is in front of me, her face calm but firm. “Ma’am, you need to breathe. You’re pregnant. You need to stay calm for the baby.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t stay calm. I can’t do anything except stare at the blood on the floor tiles, at the crushed milkshake cup, at the doors that just swallowed the man I love.
“She needs to be sedated,” someone says. “For the baby. Get me two milligrams of...”
I don’t hear the rest.
There’s a pinch in my arm. A cool rush spreading through my veins. The edges of my vision go soft, then softer, then gray.
The last thing I see is his blood on the floor.
Then everything goes dark.