I tried to breathe, but I was shaking like Bonnie had been against the rug five seconds earlier.
He pulled me into him.
He held me with one arm and kept the other hand on Bonnie’s back, his mouth against my hair.
“Sabrina. Breathe. In.”
I tried.
“In with me. In.”
I got a quarter breath.
“Out. Slow.”
My breathing came back.
The paramedics came up the stairs. They had Bonnie on the stretcher in two minutes. Beau was already up and grabbed his coat. He had Bonnie before they did — lifted from the rug, held against his chest with one arm under her shoulders and the other beneath her knees — and he was carrying her to the door because the paramedics hadn’t yet brought the stretcher up, and he was not, by the look on his face, going to wait.
He passed her to the paramedics in the hallway.
Then he came back for me. He grabbed the medication bag from the counter without needing direction. He put his hand at the small of my back and walked me out the door.
Mrs. Park stayed behind for a beat — to lock up, to grab my coat, to put Pickles in his carrier so he wouldn’t be alone — and by the time we were coming down, she was already moving behind us.
“Sabrina, I’m right behind you.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, but the words came out clipped and thin, my hands trembling at my sides.
“Beau, hold her.”
Beau held me.
The ambulance was at the curb. Bonnie was on the stretcher with a paramedic over her, doing things I couldn’t look at. Beau got me into the back of the ambulance with her. Then he climbed in behind me.
I hadn’t asked him to. The paramedic hadn’t stopped him. He climbed into the back of the ambulance because he was coming with us, and that wasn’t something he was going to negotiate.
I held his hand the entire way to the hospital.
Dr. Reyes met us at the doors.
He met us there because Mrs. Park had called him from the lobby, and Dr. Reyes had run. He doesn’t run, but he did.
The team took her, while Beau and I stood in the corridor.
My hands hung at my sides, the ground feeling unsteady beneath my feet, and Beau was beside me with his hand at the back of my neck. Somewhere very far away, I heard him telling me she was going to be okay.
I didn’t believe him.
He walked me to the family lounge.
We waited.
Mrs. Park arrived. She had taken a cab and carried a larger quilted bag that, I would learn later, contained a change of clothes for me, a phone charger, two bottles of water, and a packet of crackers.
We waited through the kind of long stretch of time the lounge was designed to absorb.
Beau held my hand.
