Everything inside me drops so fast my head falls forward, slamming into the steering wheel. I start hyperventilating. My lungs squeeze hard, my throat struggles for air, and straight up fear races past the chills on my spine. It’s happening again. All over again. Fuck!
I hear him talking, but none of the words sound right, not over the roar in my ears. Not over the images now cycling faster before my eyes. Replaying everything we just went through in a split second.
“—motorcycle collision?—”
My lungs stop working, locking the air in. My vision tunnels. Black spots dance across the instrument panel. I try to say something, anything, but my throat won’t open for the words to come out.
“—he’s conscious, but disoriented?—”
Those words are the only things my brain manages to grasp. Awake means alive. Alive means I haven’t lost him. Yet.
“What hospital?” My voice is shredded, barely a sound.
He says it, but all I can think of is we’re back to the same ICU, the same place. Everything is falling apart again. I can’t handle it a second time. I can’t do this again. I hang up mid-sentence because I can’t listen to anything else without completely falling apart right here in my car as the light changes. Green to go, and I floor it once the cars clean out.
My fingers tremble so badly I can barely hold the wheel. My chest feels too small. My skin is too tight. My heartbeat is too loud. I can’t catch a full breath. Not until I see him. Not until I know he’s whole, or at least whole enough that they can put him back together again.
The same fear seizes me again. Familiar and scary. The kind of fear that I felt weeks ago, I never want to feel again. Now I’m freaking the fuck out, praying I don’t lose my twin. The idiot I love most in the world. How fast one decision, like taking a long fucking shower, can take everything away.
And somewhere inside all that panic is her again.
Sofia.
Fuck space.
I need her.
Em needs her, and fuck if I don’t call her on the way to the hospital. It rings several times, as it always does. She doesn’t pick up. I cuss a line of shit but don’t expect her to answer.
I blurt out the little bit I know. Ask her to come. Ask her to be there for Em and for me. Beg her not to make me give her space. That emergencies are different. I beg and plead with her voicemail the entire drive to the hospital.
Once I see the emergency room lights, I speed into the parking lot. Throw my car in park and jump out, sprinting past the double doors to complete chaos. It’s madness. Cops and firefighters standing by, bloodied people moaning on gurneys next to them. Hospital security is oddly handling patient intake while no nurses are in sight.
I turn in a slow, useless circle, gripping my phone so tight my fingers ache. I don’t know where he is, or who to ask, or what the protocol is when your entire world keeps getting wheeled into hospitals on stretchers. Something about a pileup on the freeway, multiple victims.
None of the EMTs or firefighters look approachable, not with all the blood on their gloves and their radios spitting out codes I don’t fucking understand. The air smells like blood, piss, and fear. My panic rises as someone screams behind a curtain.
My knee buckles, and I catch myself on the wall because this feels too much like déjà vu, except I am more awake this time, more aware of how quickly a life can vanish between one breath and the next.
My mouth is dry. My throat tastes like metal. I swallow hard enough that it hurts.
“Excuse me?—”
No one hears me. Or maybe no one cares. I’m not bleeding. I’m not screaming. I’m not dying on the floor, so I’m just another body in the way. I push through two men arguing with a cop to reach a triage nurse, who finally appears.
I lean over the front desk even though I know better than to get aggressive with hospital staff, but I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t stand here doing nothing while my twin is somewhere behind these walls.
“Emilio Dimas,” I manage, voice cracking so hard she has no choice but to look up at me. “Twenty-one. Motorcycle accident. He was brought in. I . . . need . . . please, I just need to know?—”
“Sir, you need to step back,” she barks, looking for someone to make me, but the security guy is on front desk duty.
“I’m his brother. Next of kin.” I back up but barely, hands shaking so hard my phone clatters on the countertop. “Please. I just need to know he’s okay.”
“Sir, everyone here is being seen?—”
“He has a walking boot and stitches.” I push out, talking over her. “You guys called me or the ambulance. Please he can’t take another hit . . .”
My voice gives out, just drops off a cliff. I don’t care. I’d beg on my knees if it means seeing him alive and talking.
