Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
But even when it passes that crucial threshold, it’s still not quite the point of no return. Organ failure deaths are slow and agonizing.
For now, there’s a chance to save him, if he’s holding through this.
There’s still a chance to pull him back from the cliff.
Please, God.
Hasn’t there been enough suffering in this town?
But I have a funny feeling God isn’t listening to me right now.
Because even as Law settles into a fitful sleep, intubated and sedated again, the respirator forcing his chest to rise and fall...
That same cacophony of screaming machines rises.
Not from Law.
But from a room several doors down the hall.
Cold sweat sweeps over me as I jerk toward that direction, drawn like a magnet.
I already know what’s happening before a throng of nurses comes rushing down the hall.
My nails dig into Grant’s hand as I pray, I pray, I pray that they pass my mother’s room—
No.
Room 110.
The door jerks open, people go funneling in, voices rising and calling out commands, demands for—the words aren’t even clear.
Everything narrows down to a tiny distant pinprick in my vision.
I think Grant’s calling my name, but I’ve dropped his hand and I’m running—running—racing through a wavering nightmare of runny colors.
But I can’t stop.
Just like I can’t stop the churning thud of my heart or the slap of my feet against the cold tiles or the way the icy sterile air pours down my throat and hurts my lungs.
I have to save her.
I have to save my mom!
They don’t love her enough.
Yes, they’re professionals and they’ll do their jobs, but they won’t fight the way someone who loves her will. I have to—
“Ophelia!” Grant calls roughly.
Then there’s nothing at all.
I don’t know what I’m thinking when I hurl myself into my mother’s room.
When I see those doctors and nurses perched over her bed like vultures, like soul reapers coming to take her away.
She’s so pale, alabaster white.
And I let out a soft scream, flinging myself at her bed.
“Mom!” I can’t even see her anymore, not when it’s just bodies and limbs in my way, my eyes overflowing. I’m grabbing at the emergency cart, digging through wrapped syringes of emergency injections. “Her kidneys are failing—you have to—she needs, she needs—”
“Ma’am—ma’am!” A nurse blocks my path, barricading my mother’s bed with her body. “What she needs is for you to get out of this room and let us do our jobs.”
“Damn!” Another voice erupts from behind her—followed by a long, sustained beep. That eerie sound I’ve heard more times than I can count, but this time it’s my mother, it’s my mom— “Flatline, we need the crash cart right—”
I throw myself at the nurse, but she shoves me back, then barks, “Captain Faircross!”
I’m fighting her, trying to claw my way through her, but now I have arms around me.
Huge, hugging arms I can’t fight.
Strong oak tree-trunk arms that bind me up and pull me against him, filling me with hate and wonder and another anguished scream.
Grant takes me hostage as he sweeps me away from the room.
He drags me along as gently as he can while I lose my shit, twisting and thrashing and shrieking through the hot, drowning tears skating down my face.
“Mom, no—Mom!”
She can’t die like this.
She can’t be alone.
Not suffering, with Ros nowhere to be found, her body too weak to hold her strong, bright spirit.
“Ophelia, stop,” Grant growls, clutching me against him.
He wrestles me into the hall until my mother’s creeping death is just a surreal portrait through the window. A still life painted in crisis and pain.
“Ophelia, will you listen? They’re going to fucking save her. They are.”
“Clear!” comes from inside the room, followed by a terrible liquid zapping sound.
I can’t bear to watch after the first time my mother’s body jerks like a puppet shaken by some angry child.
The fire goes out of me and common sense comes flooding back.
Oh my God, what have I done?
“Ophelia,” he whispers again, pinning me to his chest.
That embrace becomes my world, overtaking the horror, the fear, the impending loss.
This man truly is a bear, forever bigger and brighter than the great one in the night sky.
He’s certainly holding up my entire world.
This time, I don’t fight Grant when he turns me away, running one big hand down my back.
I bury my face in his chest, smothering my sorrow in his bulk.
“Clear!”
Then more of that hellish zapping.
I can’t really hear it now, but it’s still in my brain, the ugly sound of my mother falling limply against the hospital bed and losing her hold on life.
It’s breaking me in slow motion.
Imaginary noises hollowing me out horribly, but I can’t hold it in.
Can’t escape that hell sound even with Grant’s arms wrapped around me like he can block out every evil and protect me with the soft wordless silence he offers.
His drumming heart is so strong under my cheek, though.