Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Wasn’t I supposed to cry?
No. If I started crying, I’d fall apart and I couldn’t do that right now. This wasn’t about me—it was about him. He’d been distracting me because he didn’t want to talk about what’d happened in the ambulance.
Rome unlocked the door and I walked inside, crossed my arms, and glared at him.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Did you know my mother was dead when you met us in the ER?”
“Yes and no,” he admitted.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m just an EMT,” he said, shutting the door. “It takes a doctor to declare someone dead. Under extreme circumstances, we can opt not to transport someone who meets obvious criteria. Like, if they’re decapitated, I’m not going to try and give them life support. But your mom had a pulse when we got to her. Her body was still alive.”
“I know. The doctor said her heart stopped in the ambulance.”
“Let’s sit down,” he said. I followed him to the couch, trying to stay calm. But my anger was like a living thing, twisting and turning inside of me. It wanted a target. We sat, Rome facing me. He wore a strange expression, but I didn’t care. I wanted answers.
“So her heart stopped in the ambulance,” I prompted.
“No, it arrested,” he said, like that was supposed to mean something different. He saw my confusion. “Stopped means stopped—zero electrical activity. There’s not much we can do about that. But your mom’s heart was still fibrillating, so we shocked her and tried to get a rhythm. We did CPR. A few minutes later, we reached the hospital and they took over. They were still working on her when I went out to meet you. She was technically alive. But here’s the thing, Randi. I knew it wouldn’t work. Even if they’d saved her heart, she wasn’t going to make it.”
“How could you know that?” I asked.
“I’ve seen a lot of people die,” he explained, his face shadowed. “And it’s more complicated than you think. Your mom was down for a long time before we got there. Probably twenty, twenty-five minutes. She didn’t have any corneal reflex at that point, which means her brain was already dying. If we’d gotten her heart going she could go on life support, but the odds of her ever waking up again… I tried to save her, Randi. I really did. But I was relieved when I heard that the doctor finally called it. Her brain was gone, and once they’re gone, they don’t come back.”
I tried to process his words, my anger wavering. He was telling the truth—I could hear the sadness and certainty in his voice.
“So that’s it,” I said. “She never had a chance.”
“Not that I can see. Not unless we’d gotten to her a hell of a lot faster.”
The anger dissolved, and my stomach clenched. For a second, I thought I might puke…
Lexi had waited to check on her, and now Mom was dead.
Oh, this was bad. Really bad.
“Lexi can’t find out,” I said, looking up at him. “She said she heard a loud thump, but she was taking a bath and Mom was drunk… She didn’t think it was a big deal. She’ll hate herself forever if she learns she could’ve saved her.”
Rome shook his head.
“You can’t think like that,” he said. “Even if Lexi had gotten to her right away, it might not have been enough. Her lung function was shit, Randi. Once it gets that bad, it’s a vicious cycle. She needed steroids to breathe, but you take enough and they start to destroy the body. Bones die. The meds can cause heart damage, too. We have all this advanced technology and we like to think we’re in control, but we’re not.”
Easy for him to say.
He wasn’t the one who’d left his little sister at home so he could spend the night partying.
“My brother, Damon, was a hell raiser,” Rome said, his voice quiet. “We both were. Born to cause trouble. Dad has us jumping out of planes and racing motorcycles when we were barely in our teens. For a while, Damon rode bulls and we both fought fire. People said it was crazy. That we’d end up dead, and you know what? They were right. Damon died. Guess what took him out?”
“What?” I asked, remembering Rome and the other bikers during the bar fight. Had his brother been a Reaper, too?
“It was my mom’s birthday, and we were playing Uno,” he replied. “Mom used to love Uno. God, I hate that fucking game. But it was her day and that’s what she wanted, so that’s what we did. Damon was winning, and I’d just flipped him off behind her back when he got this funny look on his face. He said his head hurt really bad. Then he fell over. It happened that fast.”