Megan started to say something, but I cut her off with a murderous glare so sharp she silenced instantly. No one was stopping me.
“I’ve got you, baby,” I whispered into Mackenzie’s hair, my lips brushing her damp forehead as my hands trembled violently. “I’ve got you.”
Rage and terror flooded through every step I took toward the camp gates, my breath ragged and shallow. I ran to the cabin with her in my arms, grabbing my wallet and truck keys in a frantic blur. Bloody fingerprints smeared across the nightstand as I seized them, mind racing.
“I’m not losing you,” I muttered like a vow, clutching her tighter as if to hold her from slipping away. By the time I shoved open the camp’s front gates, my chest heaved wildly, my mind a chaotic storm. Rational thought had vanished. Only raw, primal instinct remained: get her safe, get her healed, keep her alive at all costs.
If anyone tried to stop me, I would destroy them.
As I forcefully charged through the ER doors 15 minutes later, chaos erupted around us. People were shouting and screaming at the sight of us. I was half-dressed, drenched in a sickening mixture of my blood and Mackenzie’s, the scent almost suffocating. The squeal of gurney wheels echoed like nails on a chalkboard. Someone desperately tried to yank her from my grasp, but I clung on, brutally unwilling to let her go.
"She... she hit her head. She was stabbed... D-don’t you dare waste time..." My voice cracked into a guttural cry, losing allcomposure. I could feel my mind slipping, unable to hold back the terror and despair.
"Sir, please, step back,” a nurse commanded, grabbing my arm roughly.
"Don’t fucking touch me!” I spat, my grip tightening on Mackenzie. “She isn’t leaving my arms until you swear she’ll be okay.”
Two orderlies moved in quickly, their faces cold and intimidating. Realizing I was blocking the way, I reluctantly lowered her onto the stretcher, my hands shaking as I gently brushed her blood-matted hair from her face.
“Get vitals,” a nurse said quickly. The cuff inflated around her arm with a hiss.
“BP eighty over fifty, pulse one-forty, tachycardic. Respiration’s shallow,” another nurse rattled off, already clipping a pulse ox to her finger. “SpO2 ninety-two percent.”
The ER doctor appeared in the same instant, eyes sharp and voice calm. “Airway’s intact for now. She’s talking?”
“No, unresponsive,” the nurse answered.
“Okay—two large-bore IVs, fluids wide open. Oxygen, non-rebreather, fifteen liters. Apply direct pressure to that stab wound, left flank. Get a type and cross, send blood, and page trauma surgery now.”
Gloved hands pressed gauze to the wound, red blooming through the white. Someone slipped an oxygen mask over her face. Machines began to beep.
“FAST exam at bedside, CT head and abdomen once she’s stable.”
“Step back, sir,” the charge nurse barked without even looking at me. Her tone was flat, practiced. My legs obeyed before my brain could argue.
“I’m not leaving her.” My voice cracked.
“You can follow in the hallway,” she shot back, already pushing the stretcher. “But she goes to trauma now.”
And then she was gone, swallowed whole by an overwhelming tide of scrubs and clipped voices, while I stumbled after, powerless. My heart pounded so loudly it drowned out the monitors. Inside the trauma bay, chaos erupted.
Gloves snapped onto hands, monitors screeched, voices shouting over each other in frantic, disjointed commands. Orders yelled amid the chaotic, synchronized movement of the team: gauze pressed desperately into the bleeding wound, IV bags spiked and hung, machines blared ominous numbers into the suffocating air.
“Stay with us,” a nurse’s strained voice whispered as they shoved meds into her line. I stood paralyzed at the edge of the turmoil, helpless, watching strangers fight desperately to keep her alive. I clutched Mackenzie’s hand tighter, feeling the cold grip of terror and helplessness.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but next of kin only.” The nurse put her hands on my chest and tried to push me out of the room.
“I am her next of kin,” I said curtly. The lie was instinct, primal. It just happened.
“And you are?” The nurse eyed me inquisitively.
“Her husband.”
The nurse paused, sizing me up. I was eighteen, but my size made me look older. She relented, grabbing a clipboard and a pen.
“Okay, husband, I need details on our Jane Doe. Patient ID, age, allergies, medications, blood type.”
“Mackenzie McKinnon…”
