Alphas Like Us

by Krista Ritchie

  Meaning, no one else on site has this level of medical training. Oscar has some experience from studying sports therapy at Yale, but it’s not exactly the same.

  Oscar yells over a crack of lightning, “We should get them out fast!”

  I nod, agreeing. Oscar grips Winona by the armpits and pulls her out through the window. She’s still in a slight fog or else she’d most likely want to stay with Ben.

  Once Oscar has her, I call out, “Maximoff!”

  He’s more coherent and currently trying to unbuckle himself. But he can’t move his right arm.

  “Farrow,” he says, frustrated and raspy. “Are you…okay? Oscar has Winona?” It’s like he’s ensuring he didn’t just hallucinate that.

  “I’m fine. She’s okay,” I confirm. “Don’t move—”

  “Charlie and Ben?” he asks and grits down, pain wrenching his face.

  “Don’t move yet,” I say deeply with an outstretched hand. “Just wait.” It’s hard for him, but he physically has no choice, and I shift carefully and quickly towards the front.

  Both Cobalts hang upside down.

  “Charlie,” I call.

  Charlie winces, and he keeps looking at his brother in concern.

  “Talk to me,” I tell Charlie while I take Ben’s vitals, my fingers to his carotid pulse. I listen to his chest with my ear. Normal breath sounds.

  “My leg is broken,” Charlie states through his teeth, and he wraps his arm around the seatbelt before unbuckling—I reach out and help him slide to the bottom of the car.

  “Ben, do you know where you are?” I ask, and I snap the seatbelt. Careful with his head and neck, I hold all his weight. Shit, the youngest guy in this car is the tallest at six-foot-five.

  He blinks, still dazed. I check his eyes, and then I lean him against his intact door, the window already shattered.

  At this point, I understand clearly who’s critical and who isn’t.

  One person is critical.

  Just one.

  I return to the back at the same time Maximoff drops down too easily, like he’s done this before with a broken collarbone.

  He hasn’t, by the way.

  His Timberlands hit the shattered bottom, and he clutches his forearm to his chest.

  I can’t even surface a glare as I say, “You stubborn idiot.”

  He crouches, his breath shortened. “I’m feeling great. Thanks for…asking.”

  “I didn’t ask,” I say, my fingers to his neck. I mentally file his fast heart rate. “Anything else hurt?”

  “No. Yeah, I don’t know. We need to get my cousins out of here.”

  Before either of us move, Oscar returns and lifts the flap of the airbag. “Redford?!”

  “Ben has a concussion!” I call out. “Eyes are dilated, but he’s not critical!” I explain how he’s accessible through the driver’s window, and Oscar has Ben out in a minute flat. He doubles back for Charlie and helps his client out the same side.

  I turn to Maximoff. “I’m going out first so I can help you.”

  He doesn’t argue or combat me, and that just about kills me. Because it means he’s in severe pain.

  I slide out the window backwards. Rain instantly pours on me, soaking my inked chest. Drenching my hair and dripping off my lashes.

  Now it’s his turn.

  I kneel and clutch his waist, not his arm or shoulder, and I pull Maximoff out the window. He uses the strength in his legs, and he almost screams through his teeth.

  I have him out of the overturned car, and he tries to pick himself up to stand. He wheezes.

  “Stay down.” I can’t touch his collar without hurting him more. He just has to listen.

  And he does with no pushback. It fucking guts me.

  Maximoff lies on his back, tilting his head to try and make sense of the dark, stormy surroundings. I kneel closer to his side, concentrating on his injuries, but I still see the cameras flashing.

  Akara, Quinn, and some of Epsilon security restrain the paparazzi who’ve jumped out of their vehicles on the highway. They try to snap photos of the wreckage. Right where Maximoff lies on the pavement littered with metal and plastic car parts.

  I can’t move him yet.

  Security yells and pushes paparazzi backwards.

  “Can we help?!” a pedestrian asks, other cars parked in the emergency lane. Epsilon creates a barrier to keep them back from us.

  Quickly, I rip open his soaked shirt at the collar until it tears in two. Welts bloom around his ribcage, and he has trouble catching his breath.

  “Where’s…Nona?” he asks, worried. It’s all killing me. Every word he says, every gasp of breath he takes is eviscerating me.

  “Range Rover with Ben and Charlie,” I answer. Near the wreck, Oscar leans into the Range Rover, doors open, and I assume that Ben and Winona are inside. Waiting for the ambulance.

  Charlie has a suit jacket over his head, and he rests against the hood of the Range Rover, putting all his weight on his left leg.

  Maximoff winces, his palm floating above his abs. Rain continues to beat down on us, and I hover over my boyfriend to protect him from the storm.

  “Chest pain?” I ask, already knowing by sight.

  “Yeah…” He wheezes again.

  I put my ear to his chest. Absence of breath sounds on the right, and no visible movement. I take his vitals again. Tachy.

  I’ve never treated a loved one before.

  Fuck, I’ve never loved someone the way I love him. With a father married to medicine and no mother, I didn’t grow up seeing love, but I sought that in every relationship, and I thought I met it.

  But I realize that I never even came close.

  Then I fell for him.

  It’s a love that pummels me every time I wake and crave to near him. Every time I see his morality and think, how good you are, and fuck, I’m lucky. It’s a love that beckons me towards him when he’s gone. One that reaches into my core and wraps itself around me. It’s that persistent, unforgettable undetachable love.

  He’s in critical condition, and he can’t know what I know. I’ve never lied to him, but I can’t tell him this. Right now, I’m the first and last defense against fatality.

  “Oliveira!” I shout, the night sky rumbling as sheets of water pound the pavement and us.

  Oscar leaves security’s car and sprints to me. “What do you need?” He crouches so neither of us has to yell.

  “The trauma bag.” We keep one in security vehicles in case the concierge doctor needs supplies. “You’ll find a needle decompression kit, and get me an umbrella.” I almost have to shout since he takes off running. Realizing the enormity.

  “Farrow…” Maximoff inhales a ragged breath, forearm tucked to his chest. He tries to gesture me closer, but his fingers only twitch.

  I hover over my boyfriend, my palm on gravel above his head. Rain thumps against my back but helps keep his chest and face dry.

  “You’re bleeding…” He tries to reach out again, to help me. He grimaces, his arm immobile.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Just relax, wolf scout.”

  His eyes drift to my temple. “You’re bleeding, you know…”

  I touch my temple, the cut small. “It’s nothing. Tell me how you feel.”

  He licks his lips. “I feel…great.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “Like I could fly to the moon, pick us up some lunch, take my Audi out for a spin.” His eyes melt against mine before flooding with pain. His face twists.

  I stroke his dark, wet hair out of his face. “It’s not lunch time and you don’t have a license.”

  He almost grimace-laughs, and then he coughs roughly. Really roughly, and suddenly, Maximoff solidifies to marble. He notices blood splashed on pavement.

  He’s coughing up blood.

  My head swerves to the car. “Oliveira!” He has to be struggling to find the kit. I check the time on Maximoff’s wristwatch.

  “Farrow…” Maximoff says, swallowing, his teeth stained with blood a
s he winces. “Just…tell me.”

  He wants to know what’s wrong with him. It’s killing me. It’s killing me. “Maximoff—”

  “You’ve never…held anything back before…” He takes a shorter breath.

  My eyes sear and well, but rain washes my agonized face. I’m dying…with him. I take a deep, punctured breath and get my shit together.

  Breathe. Give him what he wants.

  Like always.

  Gravel digs in my palm as I shift closer. “You have a flail chest; ribs four through seven are fractured,” I say. “Hemoptysis, coughing up blood, indicates a pulmonary contusion.” Off his confusion, I say, “Your left lung is bruised.” That’s not the serious injury. This is… “You’re in severe respiratory distress on the affected right lung. Neck vein distension, no breath sounds, tracheal deviation. It’s a tension pneumothorax. Your broken rib collapsed your lung, and now air is filling in the pleural cavity.”

  I don’t explain how at this stage the pneumothorax can cause obstructive shock. Lack of blood flow to the heart, and the heart will stop pumping blood to his body.

  Maximoff nods slowly, listening. Understanding. He’s good at that, and he knows. I know he knows that this could be fatal, so I say, “I’m not going to let you die. You hear me?”

  He grimaces, blood still filling his mouth. “You’re…smarter than me.”

  “Stop.” I need him to say how I’m the know-it-all asshole. How he could’ve regurgitated all this shit just as easily as me, even if we both know that’s not true.

  I help lift his head as he coughs.

  His forest-greens stay on me, screaming love me.

  Love me.

  And he says, “You’ve always been smarter than me.”

  “Don’t.” I shake my head repeatedly. I can’t listen to him admit that I’m wiser, older and stronger. “Don’t.” My head whips. “OLIVEIRA!” I yell at Oscar to hurry the fuck up, and cameramen scream questions at me about whether Maximoff is alive.

  I tune out the chorus of alive and dead.

  Maximoff stares right into me and chokes out, “I love you, you know that?”

  We’re both crying. “Stop.” I clutch his sharp jaw. I’m a stubborn idiot too. Because I refuse to say I love you back in a goodbye.

  Maximoff takes a shorter breath. “Tell Jane I love her…” He swallows a knot in his throat. “Tell my parents they’re the greatest…”

  “Maximoff—”

  “I love you,” he repeats.

  “Stop. Stop.” I can’t do an ending with the one person I’ve loved enough to want to last forever. I can’t. I haven’t even told him that I can see forever. I haven’t said all that needs to be said yet.

  “Take care of my sisters…my brother—”

  “Look at me.” I hold his face as his breath shortens. “You’ll be here tomorrow and the next day. This isn’t it, wolf scout. You’re not ending here. And I’m confident…” I nod over and over, his eyes flooding. “You will see your sisters grow up to be old women and you’ll see your brother become an old man—and I’ll be right by your side.”

  He blinks and tears fall down his sharp cheekbone. “You will?”

  “Yeah,” I nod. “You’re stuck with me, wolf scout. I’ll annoy the shit out of you every single morning for decades. Longer, and our kids will take your side because you’re good and lovable.”

  He breathes deeper. “We have kids?” His iron-willed eyes drift to imagine this future, our future. “How many?”

  A rock lodges. “As many as you want,” I say, never lying to him. “And when I agitate you and I really hit a nerve, you’ll joke about how you wish you died in this car crash.”

  His lip wants to lift. “Romantic.” He coughs, then grits through pain. “Fuck.”

  His skin is starting to discolor, and as I look out in the rain, Oscar is running towards me with an umbrella and the kit.

  “…Farrow,” Maximoff chokes.

  “Shh,” I whisper.

  “...I don’t want to die…” His neck strains.

  My chest is on fire. “That’s good, wolf scout.” I nod. “Because I’m not writing down your will right now.”

  Maximoff stares upward. “Thanks…like you write anything down…”

  I grab all the medical supplies Oscar collected. He snaps open the umbrella and shields rain from us while I work.

  I tear open antiseptic and cleanse the site. Then I take out the needle catheter from the kit. Quickly, I run my finger over the top of the third rib and the second intercostal space, midclavicular line on the right side.

  My hands are shaking.

  In all my life, my hands have never shook.

  “Take a second, Redford,” Oscar tells me.

  I breathe out. Relax, Farrow.

  My hands steady.

  No more hesitating, I insert the needle catheter, and a rush of air expels like the burst of a balloon.

  Maximoff inhales deeper, and his right lung finally has movement. I keep the catheter in place and remove the needle. He’s more stable. And now, all I can do is wait for the ambulance.

  I hover over him again. “Better?”

  He nods once, taking another breath. He’s still in a lot pain from multiple fractures. Our eyes latch for a heady moment as a flash strikes the air.

  As the night sky rumbles above us.

  Maximoff stares out in a short second before he looks back at me and says, “That’s us.”

  I don’t follow. “Plato talking to you again?”

  He groans, then coughs.

  “Relax,” I tell him, ambulance sirens blaring in the distance. And it’s only when lightning cracks the sky and thunder roars again do I realize what he meant by that’s us.

  Thunder.

  Lightning.

  My brows rise. “I’m lightning then, and you’re thunder. You always follow me every time I appear.”

  His lips lift in a choked laugh. “You’re right…you will annoy me to death.”

  My chest swells, and I can’t hold back. I lean down and kiss Maximoff, gently, on the lips, and he tries to kiss back and even sit up. But I don’t let him.

  Later.

  There will be a later. There has to be one.

  7

  MAXIMOFF HALE

  A heart rate monitor lets out quiet beep beeps. An IV is hooked in my vein, connected to bags of fluid, and I ended up asking Farrow what the nurse clipped to my finger: a pulse oximeter.

  I’ve been dazed for a while.

  Maybe since I was put on a stretcher and wheeled into an ambulance and brought to Philadelphia General.

  I think about how I’ve been stalked, threatened bodily harm and death. How I’ve crashed my motorcycle dozens of times, back-flipped into ravines, skydived, wiped out on a snowboard, eaten pavement after skateboard tricks, swam in strong ocean currents, and after all these things, all this damn time, I’ve never been afraid to die. And then tonight.

  I was afraid.

  I was fucking terrified.

  My mortality, my fragile life, just crashed against me, and I remember that I’m only twenty-two. I remember that I can’t control the direction of anything, and I’m a passenger to the universe—but God, this ride can’t end for me. Not here, not now.

  I wasn’t ready.

  I’m not ready.

  I begged and pleaded to receive one more minute with Farrow. I’d been surrounded by the love of family for twenty-two years, but I didn’t even get a full year with the love of another man, a companion, a soul mate—and maybe I was being selfish.

  Asking for more when I’d been given so much already.

  But then I thought about how he never had a family that really loved him for him. And I thought, if not for me, don’t do this to him. Don’t gut him.

  So I’m not returning this second chance, this extra time. Maybe it’s why I can’t stop staring at him now.

  Then again, my brain has always been obsessed. I’m pretty sure he knows that too.

&nb
sp; “Aren’t you supposed to be reading to me?” I ask Farrow as he clutches a paperback in one hand, my paperback, and flips a page. “You know, out loud.” I sit up as best I can on the firm hospital bed.

  Farrow has claimed a seat at the end of my bed.

  My bare legs stretch over his lap. One of his inked hands moves up and down my leg, settling on my kneecap for a few seconds before moving again.

  “I’m saving you from a dull read, wolf scout.” He flips another page.

  He’d say everything on this planet is a dull read because he rarely reads, and he already folded the cover and dog-earred the pages just to irritate me.

  “I’ve read that philosophy book before,” I tell him.

  His eyes flit to me, a spark of amusement in them. “I know. You have a hard-on for Cicero. There are little highlight marks and scribbles on basically every line.”

  I almost smile, and I lick my dry lips. “Not every fucking line.”

  He flashes the page he’s on. It’s annotated to hell and back.

  “Fine,” I concede. “I like Cicero.” I lie on top of the hospital sheets, my throbbing right arm secured in a loose sling. A thin blue hospital gown reaches my thighs and hides the reddish-bluish bruises that mar my abs and chest.

  My sore body thuds in a harsh rhythm like I’ve been run over a billion-and-one times, but I have the best distraction in front of me.

  “He loves Cicero,” Farrow repeats as he skims the book.

  “Likes,” I correct.

  His biceps look ripped in a Yale T-shirt, but the crew-neck conceals the symmetrical pirate ships on his collarbones and inked skull on his sternum. He said he gave Winona his black button-down for her busted lip, so he ended up borrowing the shirt from Oscar’s gym bag.

  Farrow flips another page. His speed-reading is fucking annoying.

  Another page turns.

  More seriously, he asks me, “Why do you like him?”

  “You jealous?” I try my hand at teasing my boyfriend.

  His brows slowly lift at me like I’m the geekiest fucking geek that ever did geek. “Of a dead Roman philosopher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” he says like I’ve lost my mind. “There’s no competition living or dead.” He skims the next page.