Nova steals my attention by stopping from me. “Arya, what the fuck happened? Where is Nathan?”
“H-He’s in the ER. I found him…” The image of his unconscious body beside the bottle of pills flashes behind my vision and I shudder violently.
“Found him where?” Nova demands. “Dammit Arya, answer me!”
“Nova.” Rosalie touches his arm, nudging him aside. “Stop yelling at her. She’s scared enough as it is. Go talk to the doctor.”
He storms past us.
Rosalie and Iris step forward on either side of me while I quiver from head to toe. Nathan’s letter burns a hole in my fist.
“He’s going to be okay, Arya,” Rosalie soothingly says.
Iris tugs me toward the bench. A hitch in her voice as she whispers, “Come on, let’s-”
“He swallowed sleeping pills and tried to take his own life.”
“No!” gasps Iris, staggering on her feet.
Rosalie turns white as a sheet.
“It’s my fault.” Guilt eats me alive. “I kicked him out after promising I would always stay with him. Even if we fought. But I broke my promise and now I’m going to lose him forever. I was too late. I shouldn’t have left…. Shouldn’t have left… Oh God. I can’t breathe.” My voice comes out hysterical, my vision blackening as my knees give out.
Rosalie wraps an arm around my waist, taking all my weight and drags me to the bench. Pushing me down, she tugs my face up and fiercely says, “You’re not losing him, Arya. You found him and brought him here. Nathan will make it.”
“I-I can’t lose him. I’ll die if something happens to him.” Ugly sobs rack my chest. “He’s my love…I won’t survive.”
“Shh…” She hugs me, pressing my face to her chest. “Everything will be okay.”
A new set of footsteps approach us, followed by a dark and bleak voice. “Iris.”
“Kian!” cries Iris. “It’s Nathan.”
“What happened?” Kian demands anxiously. “Is he hurt?”
I open my eyes after pulling away from Rosalie to see him peering down at his sobbing fiancée, who clings to him for life. His body is built like a Viking, thrice Iris’s size yet he holds her gently and protectively.
“It’s bad.” Kian tenses at her answer. “Arya found him overdosing on sleeping pills at his home.”
The second he pieces it together; he vehemently shakes his head. “No. My brother would never do it. Something else happened.”
“It’s true,” I hoarsely say, making his head snap in my direction. Lifting the letter so they can all see, I brokenly reveal, “His suicide note.”
His rugged face falls, gawking at the crumpled paper in dismay. Tearing his gaze away when Iris makes a broken noise, he places her on the seat beside me. “I’m going to check on him.”
Iris nods. “Go.”
“I’m coming with you.” I spring to my feet and beg, “Please, Kian.”
Studying my disheveled state and red rimmed face, he flicks his chin. There’s an intense understanding on his face, as though he knows exactly what I’m going through. “Come on.”
We walk up to the reception, where he asks for his brother’s room number. Intimidated by his menacing aura, the woman behind the desk doesn’t question if I’m family and lets me through with him.
The distraught and gloomy energy emanating from the patients and their families in the ER worsens my anxiety. Zig-zagging between people, we find Nathan’s room in the corner. A morose and tense Nova stands near the doctor.
Kian steps up to them, while I slip inside the curtained room before they can stop me. The sight turns my organs upside down. A choking sound escapes my parched lips.
Nathan lies on the bed, his body covered in the blue hospital gown and hooked to several machines. A big valve mask provides him oxygen, causing his chest to rise and fall steadily. An IV drip is administered in his right arm.
