1. Reva #2
The paramedics take the space he makes. Gauze replaces my hands. More pressure. More movement. Cal’s body lifts, straps click, plastic crinkles, monitor leads flash in the terrace light.
My hands hang in front of me, red to the wrists. Empty. I make a sound I don’t recognize. Deacon’s fingers tighten once at my shoulders, then loosen because he knows better than to hold too hard right now.
“I’m going with him,” I say.
The male paramedic doesn’t look up from the stretcher. “Miss—”
I turn on him. “That’s EMT Hart.”
Red hits his cheekbones. To his credit, he doesn’t back down. I wouldn’t either if I were in his position. I have the sense to recognize that even as my hands shake hard enough to flick blood onto the stone.
“You’re not an EMT right now,” he says. “You’re family.”
I shake my head. “I’m both.”
The female paramedic straps Cal’s arm down and looks between us. “One rider if there’s room. She can’t interfere.”
The male paramedic exhales through his nose. “We don’t have time for this.”
Deacon steps past me. “Then stop wasting it. Let her ride.”
The medic’s eyes cut to him, then to the gun still in Deacon’s hand.
Nash is there before the silence can turn into another problem. “She rides. He rides with her.” He points to Deacon. “I’ll follow.”
The female paramedic doesn’t blink. She lifts an eyebrow at her partner. “Load him.”
That ends it. They move.
I stumble after the stretcher, but my heel catches in the torn hem of my dress. Shiloh grabs me before I hit the ground. His hands are steady at my waist, too gentle for a night this violent.
“I’ve got you,” he says.
“I need to go.”
“I know.” His eyes search my face for one beat. Whatever he wants to say stays behind his teeth. “Go.”
Ever appears on my other side, pressing something into my hand. My phone. I didn’t know I’d dropped it.
“Battery at sixty-two,” he says. His voice is all control, but his fingers linger against mine. “I’ll keep eyes on the hospital feeds as long as I can get in. Shiloh and I are right behind you.”
“Delia,” I say.
His face hardens. “We’ll find the trail.”
“Find her.”
“We will.”
I believe him because I have to.
Deacon puts a hand at my back and guides me toward the ambulance. I nearly trip again, and he lifts me by the waist like my body weighs nothing, setting me onto the rear step before I can turn and claw at him for helping.
Cal is already inside, pale under the harsh lights. Too pale. The female medic climbs in after him, talking into the radio. Adult male, gunshot wound, hypotensive, altered, possible thoracoabdominal involvement. ETA…
I know those words.
I hate those words.
The male paramedic climbs into the driver’s seat, and Deacon follows me into the back without asking permission. The female medic gives him a look that should peel paint.
“She stays seated,” she says, nodding at me.
“She will,” Deacon answers.
I glare at him. “Do not speak for me.”
His eyes meet mine. Dark. Steady. Ruined in some quiet place he won’t show anyone else. “Then sit down before they throw you out.”
I sit because Cal jerks with a cough, and the medic needs room.
The doors slam.
For one second, through the small back windows, I see the terrace shrink into a frame.
Nash stands in the spill of light from the mansion, phone to his ear, blood on one cuff, looking less like a man and more like a line nobody crosses twice.
Shiloh is behind him, talking to a uniformed officer who has just arrived and already looks sorry he did.
Ever has one hand to his ear, the other on his tablet, head bowed over the screen like he can force Delia to appear through sheer fury.
Then the ambulance lurches forward, and they are gone.
The siren starts above us.
Inside the ambulance, everything is too bright.
Too close. Cal’s blood is on my hands, my forearms, under my nails.
It has dried in the tiny creases of my knuckles and stayed wet in the lines of my palms. The green skirt of my dress spills over the bench like something from a storybook that wandered into the wrong ending.
The medic works over Cal. IV. Fluids. Oxygen. Pressure. Monitor. She checks his pupils, his pulse, his breathing. I watch every move with the vicious attention of a person who would rather be unbearable than useless.
“His pressure?” I ask.
“Low.”
“How low?”
She doesn’t answer.
My stomach turns. “How low?”
“Reva.” Deacon sits across from me, braced with one hand against the wall as the ambulance takes a hard turn. “Let her work.”
“I am letting her work.”
“You’re interrogating her.”
“She should answer.”
“She should save him.”
My eyes snap to his.
The medic keeps working. Smart woman.
Cal’s head shifts. His eyes crack open.
I lean forward before the medic can stop me, one hand grabbing the metal rail near the stretcher. “Cal. I’m here.”
His gaze wanders, unfocused.
“I’m here,” I say again. “You’re in the ambulance. We’re going to the hospital. You’re going to be okay.”
The medic does not correct me. I love her a little for that.
Cal’s mouth moves around the oxygen mask.
I lean closer. “Don’t talk. Save your strength.”
His fingers twitch against the strap.
This time, I can’t stop myself. I slide my hand under his, careful of lines and tubes, and let his fingers curl weakly around mine.
His grip is barely there.
It still breaks me.
“You listen to me,” I whisper. “You made me eat vegetables. You taught me how to change a tire. You threatened three boys in high school for looking at me weird, and one of them was gay. He was gay, Cal. You do not get to leave me with that as your legacy.”
The sound that comes out of him might be a laugh. It might be pain. The monitor jumps, and the medic says something to the driver.
I stop breathing until the rhythm steadies into something ugly but present.
Present is enough. Present is everything.
Deacon’s gaze is on my hand over Cal’s. I feel it without looking at him.
It was Deacon who made sure I found my way to Cal after the night my life changed irrevocably. Deacon who moved pieces, made arrangements, chose silence, chose lies. He helped deliver me to Cal, and I have spent the last fifteen years hating him for every truth he wrapped in shadow.
Because Deacon was also the catalyst for that night, the Reaper sent to sow the seeds planted by my grandmother. No matter how hard he tried to make everything right, the truth is—he couldn’t.
Now he sits across from me while Cal bleeds between us.
The shape of it is too cruel to be accidental.
“If he dies,” I say, voice low enough that the medic can pretend not to hear, “I will never forgive you.”
Deacon does not flinch.
I wish he would. I wish he would defend himself or tell me that isn’t fair. I wish he would give me somewhere useful to put the rage, because the fear is too big and too hungry and it is chewing straight through me.
Instead, he leans forward.
His hand closes around my bloody one where it rests near Cal’s. Carefully. So carefully it almost hurts.
“I know,” he says.
“Don’t do that.” God, I need him to rage at me. But he never does.
Instead, he lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my palm, right over the blood and the shaking and the useless grief I can’t keep inside my own skin.
“I know, Little Ghost,” he says against my hand. “I know.”
I swallow and look back at Cal.
The ambulance screams through Lasalle Street, or maybe Magazine, or maybe some other road I will never be able to name later. New Orleans blurs red and white beyond the small windows. The siren rises and falls over us. The medic calls ahead again. Cal’s hand stays loose in mine.
I count his breaths.
One.
Two.
Three.
Not because counting will save him. Not because love is medicine. I know better. I know all the ways bodies fail no matter how badly someone needs them to stay.
I count because I need something to do besides beg.
Four.
Five.
Cal’s eyes stay closed. I lean close enough that my forehead almost touches the rail of the stretcher.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please, Dad.”
The word comes out before I can stop it.
Dad.
Deacon’s fingers tighten around mine.
The monitor keeps beeping.
The ambulance keeps moving.
And I sit between the man who gave me a life after blood and the man who helped hide me inside it, praying to a God I’m not sure I believe in that this time, the sirens are fast enough.