38. Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
JUDE GRAVES
“Can I see her?” I ask immediately, my voice rough enough that it hardly sounds like mine.
The doctor hesitates for only a second before nodding once. “Briefly.”
Relief and terror hit me at the exact same time. Because if I can see her, that means she’s alive. But it also means she’s hurt badly enough that I have to prepare myself for whatever waits behind those doors.
Heather shifts beside me instantly. “I’ll come with you.”
I glance toward her, and for a moment, all I see is blood.
Micah’s blood soaked into the front of her shirt, Emma’s dried along the sleeve.
Her face is exhausted beneath the fluorescent hospital lights, eyes swollen red from crying for hours, but she still looks ready to stand up and carry the entire world on her back if someone asked her to.
That’s what a nurse does for us every day.
My throat tightens. “Can you…” I stop briefly, trying to steady my voice. “Can you go to Micah first?” The words almost fucking kill me to say, because I know what it means to ask her that.
Heather’s expression crumples softly.
“He shouldn’t wake up alone,” I whisper.
For a second, she only stares at me. Her brown eyes study my face in an intimate way she’s never done with me. Then she nods. “You’re the only person I’d choose over myself for her.”
I look away immediately because I don’t want to cry again right now.
Heather wraps her arms around me despite the blood still staining our clothes. I hold onto her, eyes squeezing shut for one brief second. “Go be with our girl,” she whispers. Then she pulls away and disappears down the opposite hallway toward Micah’s room without looking back again.
I stand there for another second, staring after her.
Somewhere farther down the corridor, Levi’s calm voice carries quietly through Russian accents as Nico and Kieran help translate for the officers nearby.
I catch fragments of words. Investigation, witness, trauma, and self defense.
I know I have that shit to face soon, but nothing is as important to me right now as my Emma.
The doctor touches my arm gently, guiding me toward her ICU room.
The walk down the hallway feels endless.
Every fluorescent light overhead seems brighter than it should right now.
I glance down at my hands while we walk.
The blood is gone from my skin. Mostly. But there’s still dried red beneath my fingernails.
Alexei’s blood.
Emma’s blood.
The realization hits so hard that I almost stop walking and collapse.
One belonged to the man I hated most in this world.
The other belongs to the woman I love enough to offer my life for.
And somehow they’re tangled together beneath my nails in a night that will never stop haunting me until the day I fucking die.
The doctor slows outside a door before quietly stepping aside.
He allows me a chance to steady myself, and then I push the door open.
And immediately…I feel like I’m in a horror movie that shouldn’t be my life.
That never should have been hers. I’ve gone over and over in my head about how I should have just shut the door in her face when she came looking for me again, and just running away with her and leaving our lives behind.
But life isn’t always like the movies. It seems silly to rip myself apart for a hypothetical that was never even possible…but since we’ve been back in each other’s lives, I’ve just continued breaking her heart. Was I always bound to do this to her?
Emma lies motionless beneath white hospital blankets. Machines hum steadily around her, soft, rhythmic beeps filling the room.
There’s a tube down her throat.
I stagger, suddenly needing something to hold me upright.
It takes several moments for me to realize that I’d grabbed onto the doctor himself.
He kindly gestures for me to sit in the chair beside her bed.
And as I sink into the cushion, I feel my heart withering a little more at the damage I see.
Someone so beautiful and kind should never experience this.
Should never look like this or feel anything other than unconditional love.
I’ll show her. I’ll spend the rest of my fucking days showing her how something so precious can be loved so fiercely. If I could carve open my body and offer my soul so she could live, I fucking would.
There’s a bruise on the side of her face where Alexei hit her earlier. Her skin is pale beneath the dim lighting, her hair spread across the pillow in dark waves. For one horrible second, she doesn’t even look like someone who is going to wake up again.
My chest tightens so hard it physically hurts to breathe when my hand finds hers. They’re warm, thank fuck. But her fingers don’t squeeze back. I bow my head over our joined hands, pressing my forehead against them as my eyes burn again.
The doctor steps farther into the room, glancing briefly toward Emma before looking back at me. “Miss Easton lost a significant amount of blood before arriving here. During surgery, her heart stopped briefly.”
I can’t even speak. I just stare at him while my hand tightens around Emma’s.
“She coded on the table for a short period of time. We were able to resuscitate her successfully, but because of the trauma her body sustained, we made the decision to place her into medically induced sedation afterward.”
My brain physically cannot process the words fast enough.
Coded.
Her heart stopped.
My gaze wanders back toward Emma, panic climbing into my throat. She looks exactly the same as she did three seconds ago, but now every machine surrounding her feels terrifying instead of reassuring. “When will she wake up?” I ask.
The doctor hesitates. “We don’t know yet,” he admits. “Some patients wake fairly quickly once sedation is reduced. Others take longer, especially after severe trauma.”
A horrible pressure builds behind my sternum. “So you’re telling me you don’t know when she’s coming back to me.” The words come out quieter than I mean for them to.
The doctor doesn’t correct me. “She’s stable right now,” he says instead. “That’s a good sign. But you are correct. I’m sorry.”
Stable. I fucking hate that word. Because stable still means this can be taken away from me.
I’m suddenly dizzy when I look back down at Emma again, at the ventilator breathing for her, at the bruising on her face, at her hand lying limp in mine.
A few hours ago, she was screaming my name in a burning mansion.
Now she’s silent, suspended somewhere I can’t follow.
The doctor studies me for another moment before speaking again, gentler this time. “Talk to her. Hearing familiar voices can help more than people realize. If you need anything, please get one of the nurses out here.”
Then he quietly leaves the room, and I’m alone with her.
“You scared the fucking life out of me,” I whisper shakily.
The machines answer instead of her.
I swallow hard before finally forcing myself to look at her again. “I know you can’t hear me,” I murmur softly, thumb brushing carefully across her knuckles, “but I’m gonna talk anyway because if I don’t, I think I might actually lose my mind.”
My laugh comes out broken. I stare at her face for a long moment before speaking again.
“You know, in the waiting room, while I sat with Heather…I remembered something.” I smile to myself. “Do you remember that diner outside Portland?” I ask quietly. “The shitty little twenty-four-hour place with the flickering sign that we went to after camping?”
My thumb traces slowly against her skin.
“This one particular time, you were wearing that oversized gray sweater you stole from me because you said it smelled like me so much.” My voice cracks slightly around the memory.
“And you got syrup all over your sleeve because you were half asleep while trying to eat the pancakes you so desperately wanted. So obviously, I wasn’t going to force you to smell like syrup for the rest of the drive home. ”
The image hits me so vividly I can almost fucking see it.
Emma laughing quietly in our tent at three in the morning.
It was raining so hard that we could barely hear each other panting and moaning.
Then her adorable socked feet tucked beneath her legs in the booth across from me the following morning…
“I remember thinking…” I stop briefly, my throat bobbing.
“I remember thinking that I wanted to propose to you so badly. But I was an idiot and didn’t because you were nineteen, and I worried that it would have been too soon.
” I sigh. “I realize now that I just should have done it. Maybe things would have been different if we had been planning a wedding instead of me leaving for LA that day. Perhaps my priorities would have saved my life if I…if I had let them.”
The monitors continue their steady rhythm.
I squeeze her hand tighter. “You can’t leave me here after everything,” I whisper. “Do you understand me? You don’t get to come all the way here and save my life, just to lose yours.”
Emotion climbs higher into my throat, suffocating and hot. A wild and desperate anger surges inside my chest, choking me for a few beats. My eyes squeeze shut when I think about losing her. Losing my brother. Losing Micah…
“Please wake up, because I can’t do this again.”
My cheek rests on her arm.
“I can’t bury another person I love.”
***
After I’ve finished crying for what seems like hours beside Emma’s bed, I decide that it’s time to go see my best friend.
Reluctantly, I stand, leaving her side. I glance once more at her before slipping out into the hallway.
I don’t know where I’m going, exactly, but I see that there are names outside of rooms. So I walk, half-present and half-not, my gaze landing on every name that I pass. Until, finally, I see his.
M. Prescott.