So it was just him and me.
For the first time since the crash, it almost felt quiet.
“Thanks, mate,” Magnet said suddenly.
“What for?”
“That day. Staying with me. Ringing an ambulance. Not bawling your eyes out,” he added, lightening what was quickly headed down a dark path.
“Mate. I wasn’t leaving you in the middle of the road. I’d never fucking hear the end of it.”
Magnet laughed, hiccupping. Then something changed. Tiny at first. The monitor shifted rhythm. The steady pattern turning uneven. Magnet’s expression changed too. Eyes losing focus slightly. Confusion flickering across his face before discomfort followed. Then pain. Sharp. Sudden.
“Magnet?” I straightened immediately.
He grabbed at his chest hard enough to pull at wires, his face draining white so quickly it didn’t even look real.
“Fuck…” he gasped.
I was on my feet instantly.
“Nurse! Doctor! Fucking someone!”
One of them turned immediately from the station outside the room, saw the monitor and started moving before I’d drawn in a panicked breath. Magnet’s breathing changed next. Wet. Fast. Wrong. Not panic. Something worse. I grabbed his wrist instinctively. His pulse hammered against my fingers far too quick.
“Stay with me, brother.”
The monitor screamed. Everything exploded into motion. Bodies flooded the room. Blue scrubs. Gloves. Machines dragged in. Orders thrown around so fast they barely sounded like words anymore. I stumbled backward automatically, nearly hitting the wall as the room swallowed Magnet whole.
“BP’s crashing.”
“Get the crash trolley.”
“Massive PE.”
“What’s a PE?” I shouted over the voices, my voice almost an octave higher.
“Blood clot,” someone replied matter-of-factly.
No.
No fucking way.
Magnet’s body jerked violently beneath the hands working on him. The machines screamed and shrieked around him while people forced oxygen and drugs and fucking life back into his body. And then she appeared.
One second she wasn’t there. The next she was cutting through the middle of it all like she belonged nowhere else on earth. Calm. Focused. Controlled. Her hair was tied back badly now, pieces escaping around her face, exhaustion etched deep beneath her eyes. But none of it touched her hands. Or her voice.
“Dr Mercer?” someone asked.
“Heard the call. Was down the corridor,” she responded, fingers not stopping. “Adrenaline’s in.”
“Continue compressions.”
“Charge again.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Just stood there watching my brother die while the woman I loved tried to drag him back from it with her bare fucking hands.
Please.
