“You make sure there’s something in place for her.” My voice low and shaking with fury, as my gaze darted to Natasha.
Carmen’s jaw tightened. “Damn right.”
They wheeled Nina out, and I climbed into the ambulance before anyone could tell me not to. Inside it, the world narrowed to the steady hiss of oxygen, the paramedic calling out numbers, and the rise and fall of Nina’s chest. My hands were still shaking as I held her wrist, counting each beat because it was the only thing tethering me to sanity.
She’s stabilizedin the ambulance, but ER personnel shouted orders and tests to run the second she was wheeled through the doors. Her hair was matted to her face from sweat, her ponytail had gotten loose, her russet-colored eyes fluttered open and close. Her chest, though, rose and fell, her breathing soundless, telling me she was safe.
A brunette nurse tried to pull the gurney out of my grasp. “I’m not leaving her.” My voice was closer to a snarl than anything resembling politeness.
“Sir,” one of the nurses said, steering me back, “we need to get her on BiPAP and?—”
“I don’t care what you need. I’m not leaving her.”
Nina caught my gaze then, mask over her face, and managed the tiniest shake of her head. My chest tightened, my throat dried. She was better, I could let go.
Physically, I did, but my eyes stayed glued to the gurney carrying her away along with fragments of myself. I should have kissed her. At some point in my fucking life, I should have kissed her.
They disappeared through a set of double doors and left me in the hallway with tight fists and pacing. She could have died, and I would have never truly told her why I’d done anything. My heart continued hammering, even as I sat on the hard plastic chair in the ER. The cold air from the vents did nothing to stop me from sweating. The smell of bleach on the linoleum floor made bile gather in my stomach, threatening to rise, reminding me of Natasha. The attack Nina had today was totally different from the one I’d seen before. This one—this took calculated effort.
Natasha’s.
I wasn’t worth all of this. Natasha wanted something else. And if this was all about a career bump she didn’t deserve… I wouldn’t stop until I ripped it away from her.
The smell of cheap coffee dripping in the waiting room hit me. The fluorescent lights above me buzzed faintly. Every sound from beyond the doors made me twitch—metal clattering, a monitor beeping, someone calling for respiratory therapy.Fuck.
I checked my watch. Twelve minutes. Twenty. Thirty-three.
“What the hell is taking so long?” I snapped at the nurses. No one even looked up.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my eye. Flashes of my mom plagued me, withering away, at yet another ER visit where they’d do nothing but offer palliative care. I hated helplessness. I hated it then; I hated it now. Hated that she was back there fighting for breath without me. At least I’d held my mom’s hand.
When a nurse finally stepped out, I was already in motion toward her. “Is she breathing? Is she better? What are you doing back there?”
“She’s on BiPAP, her oxygen is improving.”She wore the calm detachment of someone who watched loved ones collapse for a living. “You can wait in the family room?—”
“I’ll wait right here.”
She hesitated, then gave a small shrug and went back through the doors.
I planted myself against the wall, trying to calm myself by focusing on the fact that she was behind me, a wall away, with no doctors rushing toward her room. People in scrubs rushing was bad. I knew it firsthand.
“Hello,” the same brunette nurse approached me. “You’re here for Nina Reyes, yes?”
I nodded, anxiety thickening my blood in anticipation.
“She’s ready for the step-down room,” a nurse said, gesturing toward a door opening and the sound of a curtain being drawn.
I was right at her side before anyone could stop me. The nasal cannula sat just under her nose, tiny tubes trailing to the oxygen tank. Her face was pale, her lashes dark against her cheeks, and her chest rose and fell faster than normal but steady. No wheezing. Fucking music to my ears.
The nurse gave me a polite nod. “You can walk with us, sir, but we’ll need space while we move her.”
Space. No. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I walked alongside the gurney, matching the rhythm, counting heartbeats in my head, every beep of the portable monitor hammering against my ribs.
Nina flicked her eyes toward me once, a slight curl of her lips in acknowledgment, weak but unmistakable, sending a jolt of warmth through my chest. I fisted my hands at my sides to keep from grabbing onto the bed rail.
The two nurses swung the door open and wheeled her inside. The brunette gave me thatstay outlook. I stepped in anyway, close enough that the wheels of the bed nearly clipped my shoes, and dared her to argue with my dimpled smile. She blushed.
The room was too bright, too clean, smelling of antiseptic and metal. Machines hummed softly, wires swaying from different attachments. The nurses lifted her from the gurneyand onto the bed. Cables shuffled, monitors beeped to life, the cannula connected to a different oxygen tank with a low hiss.
