Chapter 8 – Ariane – Shattered Hopes
The scream doesn’t even sound human.
For a second, I think the bonfire cracked or one of the champagne bottles exploded. But then my mother’s voice shatters across the lawn again, ripping out of her throat like it’s been waiting there all her life.
The world tilts. Glasses topple off tables, guests stumble backward, heels scraping on the patio stones. The quartet crashes into silence mid-note, bows hanging stupidly in the air. It takes me a heartbeat too long to realize the thud I heard wasn’t a bottle. It was Richard.
He’s on the ground, crumpled on the grass. His face is slack in a way I’ve never seen before.
My entire body freezes. It’s like my bones forget how to move. I may as well be a wiry thirteen-year-old again, watching kids whisper about me while I try to disappear into a chair too small for my legs. Except, this time, it’s worse because I can’t disappear. I have to move, I have to…
Finally, my knees slam into the grass beside him, my dress pooling awkwardly, my palms fumbling for his hand. “Rich—” His name catches in my throat. I choke it back to where it belongs, my heart aching for the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had. “Richard? Richard, can you hear me?”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes are closed, his lips parted, a sheen of sweat breaking along his temple. My mother is clutching his jacket like she can drag him back by sheer force. She’s shaking her head over and over, whispering, “Not tonight, not tonight.”
The air smells like smoke from the bonfire and spilled wine. Someone yells that they’ve called 911. Guests shift, murmuring, pulling back like the sight of a man crumpled in the grass might stain their shoes.
“Move back!” someone shouts. EMTs.
They descend on us like angels made real, uniforms dark against the string lights, kits already open. One kneels at Richard’s head; another pushes me aside gently but firmly.
“No… please, I’m his…” The word sticks to the roof of my mouth. Daughter. Do I get to claim that tonight? Do I deserve to?
“He’s my family,” I manage.
Strong hands tug at me, and I struggle against them till realize it’s Julian. His grip is firm, his jaw tight, his perfect suit unrumpled even in the chaos. “Ari, sweetheart, let them work,” he says, soothing, the same way I’ve heard him calm a jittery donor before. “They know what to do.”
I can’t breathe.
My knees ache from being on the ground, my fingers still reaching toward Richard even as the EMTs press pads to his chest, fit an oxygen mask, call out numbers I don’t understand.
The crowd blurs and all I hear is the rush of blood in my ears. My mother’s sobs like glass grinding together, the steady, terrifying rhythm of the EMT’s voice: “Pulse weak, BP dropping, prep for transport.”
Transport. That means ambulance. That means hospital. That means he’s still alive.
I surge up, grabbing for my mom’s arm, but she’s locked in place, her nails digging into the grass like she can root herself here. “Mom, we have to go…”
“I can’t…” Her voice cracks. She looks at the crowd, at the guests with their horrified faces and their perfect dresses, and I realize she’s not frozen by fear. She’s frozen by shame.
“Forget the guests!” The word edges skewed and hot, and for once I don’t care if it stings. “He’s dying, Mom. I’m going.”
Julian’s hand tightens at my elbow, steadying me. “She’s right. Eleanor, let the staff manage this.” His voice is calm and commanding.
My mother looks at him like he’s the only solid thing on the lawn. She nods, stiff, her lipstick smudged at the corner.
And just like that, I’m free.
I climb into the ambulance without thinking, pushing past the EMTs as they load Richard onto the stretcher. His hand dangles, cold. I catch it, squeezing hard, whispering into his ear even though I don’t know if he hears me: “Stay with me. Please, Richard, you have to stay.”
The doors slam, the siren blares, and the world outside becomes a blur of lights and shadows.
Inside, it’s all antiseptic smell and clipped voices. I hunch forward on the bench, his hand pressed to my lips, whispering every prayer I half-remember, every poem I’ve ever taught my students, fragments spilling out because silence feels like giving up.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” I whisper, voice cracking. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I almost laugh. Trust me to drag Dylan Thomas into an ambulance. My voice breaks on a sob.
The EMT checks vitals, calls updates into a radio, and I can’t stop staring at Richard’s chest rising under the mask, shallow but still moving.
His tie is crooked; his shirt soaked with sweat.
He looks so small. How did he get small?
He’s supposed to be the one making dumb jokes about raccoons in the garden, not the one lying here fighting for each breath.
I press my forehead to his knuckles, whispering, “You still owe me pancakes on Sunday, remember? You promised.” My voice trembles. “Don’t you dare bail on me now.”
The ambulance lurches, siren wailing. My stomach twists. My head spins.
Through the small back window, headlights follow at a steady distance. A sleek black car.
Finn.
The evidence of his presence is a comfort I can’t articulate. Just now, I don’t even bother. I’ll take what I can get.
###
The hospital waiting room is the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.
Fluorescent lights that hum like insects.
Beige linoleum with scuff marks no amount of bleach can hide.
Plastic chairs that cling to your clothes if you sit too long.
The air smells like antiseptic and burnt coffee, like they’re trying to scrub away the fact that people bleed and die here every single day.
I hate it instantly.
Mom paces the length of the row of chairs like she’s walking a stage, pearls glinting in the flat light, heels ticking on the floor.
She’s muttering to herself, not prayers, or pleas, but lines.
Rehearsed sentences. We appreciate your concern but ask for privacy…
Richard is strong and stable… the family is grateful for your thoughts and prayers.
Her voice grates against me. She sounds more furious than devastated.
Furious that this happened here, at her glittering party, with senators and photographers watching.
Furious at the optics. I want to scream at her: He’s not a headline.
He’s not a statement. He’s my stepfather and he might not wake up.
But I don’t scream. I sit. Maybe this is her way of coping with this.
Julian sits beside me, arm snug around my shoulders, his palm rubbing slow circles down my arm.
He’s murmuring reassurances, “He’s in good hands.
Hospitals are prepared for this. He’s going to be okay.
” But his voice has the same cadence he uses on donors, like every word has been tested for focus groups.
I lean into him anyway, because my chest feels like shattered glass and I need him to keep me from falling apart.
Across the room, Finn sits apart from us, unsurprisingly.
Isolating himself is what he does. His large frame is bent forward, forearms braced against his thighs; a tree bent by a storm too mighty for it to bear.
His head is drooped low, but I see his teeth grinding like he’s chewing through something bitter.
His fists are clenched, knuckles blanched.
I close my eyes and try not to remember. But I do. I remember everything.
###
I was sixteen the first time my mother brought Richard home for dinner.
I had met men before. “Friends” of mom’s who drifted in with pressed shirts and too-wide smiles, boyfriends who lasted a month, some who didn’t even make it to dessert.
I had learned early not to get attached, not to ask too many questions, not to imagine anyone sitting at the head of the table for long.
They always left, and Mom always straightened her shoulders and acted like it hadn’t mattered.
But Richard… I liked him immediately.
He walked into our kitchen with his tie already loosened, like he had just decided that our house was somewhere he could relax.
In his hands, he held a bouquet, not roses or lilies, not anything rehearsed, but daisies, half-wrapped in the grocery store paper sleeve.
He held them out to me and said, “I didn’t know what flowers you liked, so I picked the ones that looked like they were trying the hardest.”
I laughed so hard iced tea came out of my nose. It was humiliating. But instead of looking uncomfortable or awkward like the others would have, Richard laughed too belly-deep, wiping his hand over his mouth as if he was in on the joke with me instead of at the center of my embarrassment.
At dinner, he asked me questions no one ever bothered with: what books I was reading, whether I’d made the school play, if I preferred math or English.
He listened, really listened, when I talked, nodding like my opinions actually mattered.
When Mom tried to redirect the conversation back to her stories about her charity committees, Richard circled it back to me. Every time.
Later that evening, he asked if I wanted to show him around.
I did. We walked out together into the sticky summer air, fireflies flashing across the yard.
At the sea’s edge near our home, he picked up a flat stone and tried to skip it across the water.
The first one sank with a pathetic plop.
So did the second. The third actually bounced off his shoe and rolled back toward us.
He cursed under his breath, not loud but not hidden either, and then he grinned when the fourth finally skipped, just twice, but enough to make him cheer like a kid.
“Don’t tell your mom I swore,” he said, winking.
I didn’t. And I also didn’t tell him that I had already decided he could stay.
After that night, Richard kept showing up.
Pancakes on Sunday mornings, even though he burned the first batch every single time.
Saturday drives where he let me pick the music and never complained, even when I made him listen to the same song five times in a row.
He came to my school play with flowers, daisies again, and cheered louder than anyone in the auditorium.
He wasn’t perfect. He worked too much. He forgot anniversaries and sometimes left his shoes in the hallway where I tripped over them.
Yet, for a girl who had spent years learning not to expect anyone to stay, that steadiness was everything. Quirks and all.
###
Back in the waiting room, my throat burns with the memory. The man who made pancakes on Sundays, who taught me how to change a flat tire, who never once made me feel like a burden, he’s the one behind those double doors now, fighting machines to breathe.
And Mom is rehearsing for reporters. And Julian is speaking like a press release.
And Finn…
He isn’t even here anymore. I didn’t even notice him go out.
The hospital air presses down on me until I can hardly breathe. I shoot up from the chair, Julian’s hand slipping off my shoulder.
“Ariane?” Eleanor’s voice snaps like an elastic band.
“I just need some air,” I manage, already moving toward the exit.
The night outside is cold and biting and it smells faintly of rain. The automatic doors hiss shut behind me, muting the buzz of the hospital. I cross my arms tight, hugging myself, trying to stop the shaking.
It isn’t hard to find him. He isn’t exactly easy to miss.
Finn leans against the wall just beyond the entrance, no cigarette but he holds himself like a man who should have one, hips angled, head tilted back, and arms crossed.
James Dean, if he was photographed slouching outside a hospital building.
Beneath these lights, the silver at his temples gleams like steel fragments.
“Do you always have to act like you don’t care?” I blurt before I’ve even decided what to say.
His head turns slowly, eyes catching mine. He doesn’t look remotely surprised by my intrusion. “Do you always have to pretend you do?” he asks dryly.
The words land like a slap. I reel, then snap back, voice trembling, “You think this is pretending?”
“I think,” he says, straightening from the wall, stepping closer, “that Eleanor’s already rewriting the story for the press.
Julian’s playing the perfect fiancé. The town’s gossiping like it’s a goddamn sporting event.
” His eyes darken, unflinching. “And I think I’m the only one willing to say it… Richard might not make it.”
The truth rips through me. Hot tears spill before I can stop them. My knees buckle a little, and I brace against the cold stone wall. “Don’t,” I say, and it comes out sounding like a whine. “Don’t say that.”
His expression shifts. He steps closer, and his hand brushes my wrist. Warm.
I suck in a ragged breath. “I can’t lose him. He’s the only parent I’ve ever had who didn’t judge me, who just… loved me. For free.” My voice breaks. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Finn’s jaw flexes. His eyes flick to the ground, then back up, steady on mine. “Dad’s the only one who ever tried…” he says quietly. His voice is rough, like he hates giving me that piece of himself.
For a long moment, we just stand there, me trembling, him holding my wrist, both of us staring into the night. The heat simmers between us, dangerous and intimate, wrong in a way I can feel down to my bones.
And then the doors hiss open again.
“Ariane?” Julian’s voice cuts through, careful, gentle, his glinting shoes clicking against the pavement. He stops short when he sees Finn, gaze narrowing. “Everything okay?”
I pull back instantly, wiping my face with the heel of my hand.
“Yeah,” I croak. “I just needed air.”
Julian steps closer, his hand brushing my back. “Come inside, sweetheart. They’ll update us soon.”
I nod, even as my skin still burns where Finn’s hand touched mine.
When I risk one last glance over my shoulder, Finn is still watching. I can’t tell what the look on his face means—but it makes my heart drop to my stomach, pounding erratically.