My mind immediately went to the medical report from her last head, “But that means that…”
“That the heat could be too much for her body. She started seizing on the ambulance ride over and they’ve been working to stabilize her.” Gage looked over at the closed door where I assumed Eloise was. Panic filled my body. What would happen if Eloise died? I finally understood how Leon’s fathers had felt after losing their omega. I didn’t know how I would be able to live in a world that Eloise wasn’t a part of.
“Diaz has suggested that being close to her bonded alphas will help to ease the heat.” Leon explained. “Fulfilling the heat is the best way to fix this but as Eloise is unconscious that isn’t an option. But Diaz says that there is considerable research about omegas who benefited even just from skin to skin contact with their bondmates.”
I had to agree with that. There was nothing sexy about our omega being hospitalized, but I could almost feel the itch of the heat through our bond even though Eloise was unconscious.
“It’s worth a shot. Should I grab everyone?” I asked, pulling out my phone and positioning my fingers over the screen, ready to shoot a text off to Owen and Link at Leon’s go-ahead.
Leon shook his head, “They are only allowing the three of us into the private room until her condition stabilizes. Something about having less people to kick out if the need arises. But could you send a text explaining the situation? I need to run and shower off this pool water before they will let me be around her.” With that he turned and hurried down the hall looking more exhausted than I had ever seen him before.
My fingers flew over my phone keyboard, “What the hell happened out there, Gage?”
Gage growled before explaining, “Tonight was a shitshow from start to finish. That bastard had tied a dumbbell to her ankles and was trying to drown her in the same damn pool he drowned Leon’s mother thirty years ago.” We were all still reeling from the idea that Leon’s motherhadn’tkilled herself, that the idea of Eloise nearly meeting the same fate made me sick to my stomach. Leon had spent years hating his mother for her perceived abandonment, how would he feel now that we knew that wasn’t true?
“I hope the bastard is dead.” I said and meant it.
Gage turned to me with a grin that was edging towards feral, the first smile I’d seen out of him in almost forty-eight hours, “Shot the shitstain myself.”
“Good.” Was all I said as Matteo Diaz approached us again, his hands in the pockets of his white hospital coat.
“Everything is ready on our end, we just need to move Eloise up to one of our executive suites upstairs. It has a bit more privacy since I’m going to need you gentlemen in your birthday suits if this has a chance in hell at going well. Is Russo coming back?” He asked, glancing up and down the hallway, looking for our pack leader.
“He’ll be back soon, he ran to take a shower. I can text him the room number once we make it upstairs.” I offered and we both stepped out of the way as the door to the closest hospital opened and a nurse emerged at the front of a rolling hospital bed.
I was immediately taken aback with just how sick Eloise looked. A sheen of sweat glinted under the artificial hospital lighting and there were deep purple bags under her closed eyes. Her hair was still wet from her dip into the pool earlier and someone had pulled it to the side and secured it with a hair tie. She had an oxygen mask over her face and so many cords attached to her body that I was surprised that there were even enough machines to go to all of those wires.
Gage’s sudden intake of breath brought my attention from our omega’s prone form to our gentle giant who was leaning against the far wall, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths as they pushed Eloise’s hospital bed fully into the hallway.
“Hey…” I put a hand on his shoulder and he jerked with surprise as if he’d forgotten that I was here. I could feel the residual panic through our bond with Eloise. I knew that I must be emitting some of the same kind of emotions but one look at Eloise’s face, troubled even in sleep, made me realize that these emotions were going to hurt more than help. I took a deep breath, pushing positivity into my head and not even entertaining the idea that this could end badly. Eloise had once told me that I was the one who took care of everyone and I would be damned if I didn’t live up to that.
I put my hand on Gage’s arm and started again: “Hey, look at me. You need to get your emotions under control, Gage. If I can feel what you’re feeling she definitely can. I get that this is scary as hell but we’re going to get through this as a pack and someday when we are all old and gray we’re going to reminisce about this with Eloise and our baseball team of children.”
“A baseball team?” Eloise’s voice croaked from behind us and we both whirled to look at her, she had a weak hand on the face mask and she was lifting it so that we could hear her. Her eyes were barely cracked open as the nurses waited for us to get our shit together, “That’s too many. I’d like to petition for a solid tennis duo.”
“Hey gorgeous.” I greeted her as we hurried over to the side of her hospital bed, “How are you feeling?”
Eloise was quiet for so long that I was afraid that she’d passed out again, but finally she pulled the mask aside again and responded, “I’ve been better.”
“We’ve got to get her upstairs, gentlemen.” The stone faced nurse who was pushing the bed informed as before nodding to the two other nurses who were helping her move Eloise and they began pushing her down the hallway towards the elevator. As I moved to follow, Gage grabbed my arm.
“Thank you, Ric.” He said, giving my arm one final squeeze before continuing, “For knocking me out of my head.”
“It’s what family does.” I responded before hurrying down the hallway after our omega.
“There is absolutely no way that I am going to strip in front of you.” I was standing in front of Eloise’s new hospital bed that they’d transferred her over to. It was three times the size of her original one, Matteo Diaz had explained that this room was the suite that the most affluent packs used. It was like a completely different world from the sterile white hallway just outside of the door. For one the floor was a dark wood and there was a sitting area of sectionals pushed up underneath the huge window that overlooked the city which was just beginning to wake up as it was just before five in the morning at this point. The bed itself was at least three times the size of the hospital bed that they’d had Eloise in originally and was outfitted with expensive looking white sheets and a stack of blankets was folded and put on the edge. The whole room reminded me more of a hotel room rather than a hospital room and if it weren’t for the various monitors and machines in the room I would have thought that we were staying in a fancy hotel suite.
It had taken them almost thirty minutes to get Eloise settled into the new bed and arrange all of the wires which seemed to cause the machines around the back end of the bed to beep and chime wildly as they shifted her around. Leon had come back about half way through and we’d agreed that Ric and I would go first for the skin-to-skin so that Leon could finish handling the mess that we’d caused with the FBI and check in with Link and Owen about how Dominic was doing.
The nurse looked unamused at my reluctance to undress in front of her, “Mr. Larson. I have seen enough naked men in my lifetime to be completely unphased by whatever you’ve got going on underneath your clothes. I need you to strip down into your boxers so that we can help you get arranged with Eloise in the bed without you yanking any of her wires out.”
“Come on, Gage.” Ric was already stripped down into nothing but a pair of black boxers and the nurses were already lifting wires and Eloise’s left arm so that he could slide in next to her. She appeared to be dozing but as we jostled her, one of her eyes cracked open and she squinted up at me. Just looking at her pale face made me curse out loud and pull my shirt over my head and kick off my boots. My pants went last and the smug nurse held out a hand for them and I gave them to her with a glare before turning my complete attention to Eloise as the nurses next to her began lifting wires and making a spot for me.
As I slid under the wires and up to her side I could feel the clamminess of her skin and the tremble that rolled up and down her body.
“What should we do, Doc, just lay here?” I asked, running my warm hands up and down her arms to try and get the blood circulating in her undoubtedly numb limbs.
“Unfortunately this is where my expertise comes to an end. Eloise’s heat symptoms are presenting like hypothermia. Clamminess, shudders and drowsiness. We dosed her with an anti-epileptic drug on her arrival which will keep her from seizing as the heat goes on. Hopefully, if things go well, your nearness will trick her body into thinking it’s sating the artificial heat as I believe that sexual intercourse to sate the heat would be detrimental to her health rather than helpful.” Matteo was beginning to ramble now and it was clear that this was something that he was very interested to see play out and if it were anyone other than my omega I’d probably be curious too. But this seemed like too holistic of a treatment for it to actually work.
