“Sir we need you to move.”
I can’t get my body to work.
“Sir!” The paramedic yells.
Someone grabs me – Sebastian – and drags me out of the way while two paramedics drop to Olivia. They work quickly, efficiently, speaking in terms I don’t understand.
And then Olivia is hauled onto a gurney and rushed from the warehouse, but she still isn’t awake.
I’ve seen people bleed out before; I’ve watched the life drain away quickly because of it but I don’t remember there ever being that much blood.
I try to follow into the ambulance, but the paramedic closes the doors before I can get inside, the lights flashing as the sirens echo through the industrial estate, but I don’t have a chance to demand to be let inside. Sebastian controls the situation, hauling me to the Maserati as he shoves me into the passenger seat.
“Get fucking with it, Malakai,” he snaps, gunning behind the ambulance to follow it to the hospital.
“That’s my wife,” I croak.
“Yeah, and she needs you right now.” He snaps, pissed at me, “Not this useless version of yourself. She needsyou.”
I turn my eyes to him.
“So, either snap the fuck out of it or I’ll drop you on the side of the road and go to the hospital myself.”
“Like fuck you will!” I growl.
“Get your head out of your ass!” Sebastian hissesback. “Your wife needs you.”
He’s right. I look down at the blood on my hands, the stained cuffs of my shirt. Her blood. My wife.
The drive behind the ambulance clears my head. She doesn’t get to leave me. Not like this. The moment we stop, I’m out of the car, running toward the ER doors.
“Where is she!?” I demand.
“Sir!?”
“Where is Olivia Farrow?” I growl, “She was just brought in. Gunshot wound.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m her husband, where is she?”
They show me through to a quiet family room with Sebastian following, but then they close the door and provide no answers. I throw it back open, but Sebastian stops me.
“Malakai!” He growls. “Fucking stop. They will come to you when they have answers.”
“She needs me.”
“She needs the fucking doctors right now. She will need you when she wakes up so pull it together, wash off the blood and wait for her.”
I nod mutely. Wasn’t he the one who told me she needs me right now? Or was that just to get me to stop panicking? I have no fucking idea what is going on right now. It’s like the years of training, of preparing for a life like this have all gone out the window. I don’t know what to do, how to act.
But I start by washing my hands in the small bathroom attached to the room, watching the stained red water swirl down the drain. It takes five minutes to get it all off but the sleeves of my shirt are soaked with it so I can’t completely get clean. Sebastian goes in after me, washing off the blood on his hands and then he sits in one of the chairs while I pace the room.
It’s several hours later when a doctor comes into the room.
“She’s stable. We stopped the bleeding and repaired her leg. She lost a lot of blood though, we had to give her a transfusion. She’s awake.”
“Where is she?”
