“It’s okay. I’m okay,” I managed. But chest aches and a bout of dizziness sent me swaying. I leaned my palm on my desk. I landed with a thud on the floor instead.
“Archer!” Her voice sharpened, coming around the desk to help me up.
“Just stress. Coffee…” My words broke on a gasp. My fingers clawed at my shirt buttons. Air wouldn’t come.
“Oh my God. Matt! Penny! Call 9-1-1!” she screamed. I didn’t flinch at the sound. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Bodies swarmed around me. I searched through them, fighting for a familiar face.
For a moment, this was insulting—ridiculous. “Stress… Coffee…” I repeated, my words broke on a breath I couldn’t catch. No one would listen. This was nothing. I was fine.
“Archer, stay with me. It’s Penny. I’m here.” She came into focus—terrified, tear-streaked.
I wasn’t fine.
My light, my Penny, held my hand. But wait… she did something I didn’t like. I couldn’t think straight enough to recall what it was.
“Please, baby, stay with me.”
The pressure in my chest spiked, radiating outward, and my left hand went numb.Help!I hated the wordhelp.I built structures to withstand storms and earthquakes, yet my frame failed me, collapsing in my office, the one place I always felt untouchable.
“The ambulance is three minutes out,” Matt shouted somewhere above me.
I nodded—barely. Words were too expensive, a luxury I could no longer afford when hanging on by a thread.
Penny’s fingers locked with mine, her voice low and constant. “I love you, Archer. Stay with me.”
Love…
For one jagged heartbeat, I let go of denial. Let her voice and that word anchor me like a plumb line—straight, pulling me back to center.
Multiple hands suddenly appeared, and worked around me—shirt torn open, wires pressed to skin, voices blurring. Emergency crews worked on me. Penny was the only thing grounding me.
“Stay with me,” she whispered again, breath trembling. “I love you.”
As they rolled me out of the office, the frosted Bellamy logo on the glass door slid past in slow motion—my name gleaming back at me in silver letters that suddenly felt like they belonged to someone else.
“I love you…”
Penny’s worried and fragile voice was the last thing I heard before I blacked out.
TRUTH AND TREMORS
Penny
The steadybeepof the heart monitor in Archer’s hospital room was the cruelest reminder ever of the most panicked moment of my life. At least each blip saidhe’s alive, thank God, but each one also whisperedWhat if I lost him?
Color had sightly returned to his skin, but seeing him lying there—hospital gown, wires on his chest, IV in his arm—unraveled fear deep inside of me.
I sat at Archer’s bedside, hands clasped so tightly in prayer my knuckles were white. My heart hadn’t moved, locked somewhere between panic and disbelief, neither had the huge lump in my throat.
Brier’s hand rubbed my shoulder. “He’s going to be okay. They said it was mild,” she muttered.
“Mild or not, I was terrified I’d lose him.”
She squeezed once, her engagement ring catching the sterile light. “You know him. He’s strong. A fighter.”
Through the window by the door, Maya stood there with Matt and Brooks, all of them talking quietly with the doctor. Brooks gave us each permission to be here, informing the nurses that we’d rotate visitation so we wouldn’t crowd Archer all at once.
Stress was the last thing his heart needed right now.
