FROST
Margot's hospital room felt smaller by the hour. I sat with Wells all day, speaking softly about Evelyn and what she'd been through, but I kept it brief and factual. I didn't tell him that my chest was a hollow well that echoed with a haunting message.You failed her. You failed her. You failed her like you failed them.I didn't tell him that despite the fact that I was nothing but a hazard to her safety, I wanted to go back. I wanted to sit next to her while she worked and watch the sun burnish her hair with gold highlights. I wanted to tease her until her cheeks grew pink and she huffed at me.
I didn't say any of that. This wasn't the time for my own pitying introspection. Wells listened with half an ear, not fully involved but at the very least, distracted by what I said. Every time her oxygen dipped, he was up and alert or gripping the armrests as the on-call nurses and doctor handled his sister's care. I watched helplessly, going through all the necessary procedures in my head just before each of her medical professionals did it themselves. No doubt, Wells was, too.
She was declining so much faster than I would have predicted. Like she'd given up.
When the sun had fallen behind the horizon long ago, and the hours were ticking past midnight, Wells leaned his head on his hands and scrubbed his face. "It's too bloody fast, Frost. It's not enough time."
I rolled a surprised look his way. Wells didn't usually let his British through unless he was tired or stressed. His parents had come here right before he'd started high school, and he'd mostly picked up our vernacular in the process. Every once in a while, though, it came through.
I sat up, exhaling slowly as I chewed on what to say. There were two ways he might mean that, and one of them would be less obvious to an outsider. "How close were you with your melittin compound?"
Wells gripped his hair tightly, still leaning his elbows on his legs and not looking at me. "We've been approved for human trials."
My breath hurt on the intake. "What?"
He sat up, his features ragged with grief. "It's moving to human trials. I've had it for eight months. Solid. I could give it to her right fucking now and?—"
"Don't." My arms tensed, and I gripped my hands together to give the rush of energy somewhere to go. "You know you can't." If he gave his sister an experimental drug at the end of her life, the drug would die before it ever had the chance to succeed. Margot was too far gone for a compound designed to restore nerve and muscle function. Her organs were failing—nothing could stop that.
Remorse ripped across his features, and he grimaced, removing his glasses. "I know I can't."
Wells was the most logical person I knew. The most steady and reliable. He didn't break—but he was breaking now. And all I could do was sit at his side as the fractures tore cracks in hissanity. "You're going to save thousands of lives with this, Wells," I reminded him.
He nodded, replacing his glasses and fixing his tortured gaze on his barely breathing sister. "Just not the one who counts."
We both fell asleep in our chairs at some point. When I woke, disoriented and strangely bereft of something warm and soft at my side, it was light outside again. The soft sigh of the respirator reminded me of where I was. And then I realized the BiPAP machine was blaring, and Wells was pacing just outside the circle of nurses who had rushed into the room. I sat up, already devastated for my friend. The alarm was signaling an inadequate exchange of oxygen and CO2. The capnography monitor under her nose was probably confirming that she had too much CO2 in her blood. She wasn't taking in enough oxygen.
I stood and joined him, and then I realized that there were three other people standing in the opposite corner, all three stricken with fear. Wells' parents, I assumed. And he had a younger brother, too, Julian, who was in his late twenties and looked every bit Nash's brother with light brown hair and slightly warmer, slightly rounder eyes. He was holding his tall mother, who stared with glassy, dark eyes as her daughter's oxygen dipped to dangerous levels. I wasn't sure when they'd gotten here, but it must have been recently. They still had coats on, and Mr. Wells was setting down a black backpack slowly.
Under my breath, to Wells, I asked, "Did she give a directive?"
"No intubation," Nash choked back.
I looked away, too incensed to fully grasp that. Margot had never seemed distraught over her diagnosis, never panicked.Just calm and accepting. Soothing to others who met her as her condition rapidly worsened over the short course of eight years. It shouldn't have surprised me that she would refuse life-prolonging measures. But it felt sofinal.
I put a hand on my forehead, my chest tight. The on-call doctor came in to adjust the BiPAP machine’s settings, and I didn't miss that he maxed her out on IPAP and EPAP pressure. While they were drawing blood and refitting her mask—a useless measure at this point—I took a seat again. I felt like I was in the way, suddenly. A grotesque observer of a family tragedy I didn't belong in.
Wells went to his parents, embracing his mother first and holding her up as she began to cry softly. My eyes smarted, and I looked out the window. Wells began explaining to his family what was happening, that the BiPAP machine wouldn't breathe for her indefinitely. That without intubation her CO2 would climb, and she would begin to slip away. All three of his family members made disbelieving sounds, asking questions about how this could have happened so suddenly.
I returned my gaze to Margot again as they sat her up to help the machine breathe for her a little easier. She was pale, and sometimes her eyes would flutter open as if looking for someone. As if on cue, Wells led his parents to her side, and they gathered around her, punctuating the hissing machine and beeping monitors with soft crying.
I couldn't breathe. I'd watched patients die, even as a plastic surgeon. Nothing could have prepared me for watching Wells lose his sister like this. I stood again, moving silently across the room and to the door. It felt wrong to stay, to intrude. I left, making sure the door shut soundlessly, and I looked around the hospital wing with helpless apathy. It felt different being here for a patient. Being a doctor kept me in control and comfortable inhalls much like these, but being here while a friend died was… suffocating.
I checked my watch and noted that it was already almost ten in the morning. Like my thoughts had a compass that pointed true north, I remembered what Evie was supposed to be doing today. And just like that, my worry increased tenfold. I started walking, no destination in mind, just restless. I could go back to her now that Wells had his family. I could go back to that farm and…
And what? Tell her not to do this thing that scared me shitless? Watch from the bushes as she made herself a beautiful target for a group of merciless psychopaths? My neck ached from the strain of last night and from the uncertainty battering my head and ringing down my spine.
This was insanity. I couldn't just stay here while she put herself through that. But I couldn't leave Wells, either. Not if he wanted me here. And Evie didn't need me there—I would be in the way. I'd be a liability to her safety.
I found myself in the cafeteria and checked my watch again. Just after ten. She'd be getting set up any minute now. They'd planned for noon, right? Or eleven? What if they did it earlier? I stood in frozen indecision in the mostly empty cafeteria, unsure of what to do with myself. I wanted to run, to act, todosomething. Someone was dying on the floor above me, and I was powerless. Someone innocent was putting her life at risk on a bee farm an hour away from me, and I was powerless.
A familiar figure suddenly cocked his head into my view. "Frost?"
I blinked, shell shocked by my friend's sudden appearance. "Cal?"
"I thought that was you, but the linen was creased, so I had to check," Cal grinned. His auburn hair looked a little more red than brown today, swept neatly away from his face. He waswearing a T-shirt with his urgent care's logo printed on a dorky pocket—who put pockets on T-shirts anymore?—and he slid a pair of sunglasses into the collar. "I just got here."
