He’s older, maybe in his mid-to-late sixties. He looks shocked as he glances between me and Dex, then at Alexandria.
“Which one of you is Mr. Langston?”
“I am.”
“Come with me, please.” He turns to swipe his badge on the sensor to open the doors.
“What about us?” Alexandria’s voice cracks.
“I’m sorry, Miss. I need to speak with Mr. Langston.”
I quickly pull her into a hug and kiss her on the top of her head.
“It’s going to be okay. They’ll both be fine,” I whisper.
When I pull away, more tears fill her eyes. I don’t know what information I’m about to hear, but the knot in my stomach is getting worse.
“How well do you know Lumina Warner?” he starts.
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“I mean about her past. How long have you known her?”
“I knew her a long time ago, but we haven’t spoken to each other in years.” I don’t feel like being judged by this man right now.Yeah, I haven’t talked to her in twenty years because she and her parents, my best friends, died in a car crash…but she actually didn’t die…I can practically feel the judgmental glare he would give me.
“So you were aware she was in a coma before? She had a severe TBI.”
“What?”
“She had a traumatic brain injury. She was in a coma for eight months.”
“Eight months? When?”
“Twenty years ago. She was just a child. We pulled her records and…Mr. Langston, when someone suffers a severe TBI like she did, they are more susceptible to them.”
“Where is she?” I glance down the hallway. It’s silent other than the beeping of heart rate monitors, a faint laugh track from a patient's TV, and the sound of someone sobbing behind a closed door.
The doctor takes a moment before he turns and tells me to follow him. We walk down another hall beforetaking two more turns then come to another set of locked doors marked ICU.
“This is technically going against protocol here, Mr. Langston. But you seem to have connections higher up. We’ve been instructed to accommodate you and your friends in the waiting room. They’ll be brought back later, but I wanted you to see her first.”
He swipes his card, and we enter a large open room. Glass walls separate the center of the room from the individual rooms for each patient. He continues forward. I try to keep my focus on the doctor ahead, but my eyes keep wandering and searching for Cash.
“Here we are.”
He stops next to a closed room. The curtains are drawn so you can’t see beyond the glass wall. My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’s pulsing in my head. I can’t breathe, and my mouth is so dry it feels like my throat is closing.
“Mr. Langston, I just want you to be prepared…We don’t know how long she will be in the coma or…”
“Or what?”
“We don’t know yet if she’ll wake up. We have to wait for some of the swelling to go down before we can run more tests.”
He slides the door open and pulls the curtain back. I take two steps into the room, and my entire world shatters. My beautiful Mina is lying in the bed. Her small body is dwarfed by the number of machines hooked up to her.
Two blue tubes that merge into one are in her mouth. Another smaller line is running into her nose. Her head is wrapped in gauze. Her bruising is so much worse now. Hereyes are rimmed in black and purple. Her left hand is wrapped up, and both arms are bandaged from her wrists up to her shoulders. Wires run from her chest beneath the fabric gown.
An IV is hooked to her right arm with four bags of clear to off white liquid and one bag of blood that’s almost empty. Her heart rate machine is beeping at a steady 73 beats per minute. The sound of the ventilator pumping to keep her breathing is the loudest thing in the room.
