"How did he find you?" I ask, turning my attention back to Parker. "How are you alive? What happened to you?"
His mouth opens, and I see him debating which question to answer first. "After we were separated, I ended up on a work farm. They kept us busy with hard labor, isolated from the world. I escaped one night... used the scythe to attack one of the guards, stole his keys, and didn't stop until I ran out of gas. That was a week ago. I've been trying to find you, but I didn't know where to start. Your husband found me first. You're married?" He laughs, disbelief in the air and every inch of his face. "How?"
I can't even begin to explain what's happened since I saw him last... not without sounding crazy. And if I sound crazy, he may just drag me off to the mental health ward, which is admittedly where I'll need to be if Cal doesn't make it through.
If he doesn't survive this, I don't know if I will either.
"Why would he do this?" I choke, clenching Parker's shirt. "I don't understand."
Dex takes a step toward me, and when I look up at him, I realize we're still on the ground. He offers me a hand, which I take.
"I found this when the paramedics took over and you went to get dressed. It was next to the needle."
"Needle?" Parker asks, standing as he eyes me in concern.
I don't answer him. I can't, because I'm too focused on what Dex hands me.
I recognize the small slip of paper.
It's tattered, crumpled, and covered in traces of blood now. But it's the one I made when Cal asked me to write down the names of the men who have hurt me. I only had two names there. Other men have hurt me, but none in the same way. None in the heinous way he was asking about.
Eric Giante and Isaac Jenko.
Jenko is crossed out in red pen, one thin, decisive slash.
Eric's name is crossed through in a black pen. There's a small question mark at the end.
But that's not what draws my attention.
What draws my attention is the name that is squeezed in beneath the others, written in block letters different from my own in the same red pen, crossed through in black.
Callum Kensington.
48
Amber
When the surgeon emerged to tell us that they'd repaired the veins and patched the trachea, I nearly collapsed. Dex pulled some sort of strings and convinced him to move Cal to a private suite once he left the observation period.
The suite has its own bathroom, which is the only way Katrina is able to convince me to leave Cal's side. It made sense when she said that he shouldn't wake up to find me covered in his blood. It would probably upset him, and since he won't be able to use his voice, we don't want to upset him.
She guided me to the bathroom and under the spray of the shower, slipping the robe down my shoulders and soaping my hair. I didn't realize how much blood was on me until I watched it swirl around the drain.
I think it should be weird, standing naked in the shower having my husband's best friend's girlfriend wash me. There's nothing sexual about the act, though it's certainly intimate. I'm too deep in a fog to move, too afraid that the doctors got it wrong, that he won't wake up, that his wound will burst open when I'm not there to help stop the bleeding.
She doesn't seem bothered by the fact that her own clothes get splashed with blood and soaked through as she guides me through the process, wrings my hair, and makes sure I don't slip on the slick floor. I dress in the clothes she brought me, grateful for the warmth of the velvet pants and the sweater that conceals the fact I'm not wearing a bra. She changes into her own outfit quickly, and then we open the door to find that nothing has changed.
Dex's head is still draped across the side of the bed, his exhaustion evident. I haven't told him what the note meant, why his best friend would feel so awful that he chose to end his own life rather than sufferthrough it.
I think he knows, though. I think he can tell that the guilt was just too much.
"That was fast." Parker says, standing and pointing to the chair he was slumped in, offering it to me. But I don't want his chair. It's not close enough.
I need to hear Cal’s heartbeat.
I'm careful of the wires that connect him to various machines. I recognize the heart monitor, the pulse oximeter, the IV, and the blood pressure cuff that goes off intermittently. I avoid it all as I crawl beside him, sure to stay well away from his neck.
I know his heart is pumping, logically. It's right there on the screen to the left of him. But that isn't enough for me. Those mechanical things? They don't offer me peace... not the way the slow rise of his chest does, the steady thrum of his heart, the warmth of him that seeps out from beneath the ugly cloth gown.
