by M. Leighton
He showers me with kisses. Everywhere from my neck to my navel, I feel them like butterfly wings grazing me. So light, so sweet, so far, far away. “Your skin is so hot,” he breathes against me. “You’re burning up.”
I hear his voice like he’s a million miles from me, speaking to me from the edge of paradise as I wade through warm waters to reach him. I even hear the urgency in his voice. I don’t really understand it, but I hear it.
“Sloane, look at me.” I try, but my eyelids won’t obey. And then I feel the world dip and I’m falling. But, just like I’d hoped, Hemi’s arms are there to catch me. He’ll keep me safe. For as long as I have left, he’ll keep me safe.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR- Hemi
“Sloane!” I yell, my voice having grown louder the longer she goes without responding to me. She just fell in my arms, boneless and limp. Her cheeks are flushed and there’s a fine sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Her skin is hot to the touch. She’s burning up with fever. “Sloane, answer me!”
I lower her gently to the floor and she moans. And not a good moan, but one of discomfort. Her brow furrows, letting me know she’s in pain. Or that something is wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
I scramble for my phone, dialing 911. It’s all I know to do. I don’t know what happened. One minute she was with me, the next she wasn’t.
I give them my emergency and my address, and then I call the guard to let him know they’re coming. I scoop Sloane up into my arms and carry her to the couch, running back for her clothes and getting them back on her as quickly and gently as I can. Even after manipulating her arms and legs, after lifting her upper then lower body off the couch to redress her, she doesn’t stir. She just turns her head from side to side, her brow still wrinkled as she pants, short, shallow breaths.
I bolt up the stairs to grab some jeans and a shirt, taking them back downstairs to dress beside Sloane so I can keep an eye on her. I’m just pulling on my shoes near the door when I hear the diesel engine of the ambulance as it pulls into my driveway. I open the door and wait, half in-half out so I can watch Sloane until they can get inside.
The EMTs rush in, carrying their stretcher and a bag of supplies between them. Both are in their forties, I’d say. Both look serious and competent, which makes me feel better.
“Sir, can you tell me what happened?”
“She just collapsed in my arms and now she won’t respond. Her skin is hot, like she’s feverish. Other than that, I don’t know what happened.”
I feel an unhealthy fear gnawing at my gut. I can’t lose her. Not now. Not like this. Not when there’s still so much I want to say, so much I want to show her and prove to her.
My heart is thundering inside my chest when they set to work on her and can’t get a response either. “What’s her name, sir?”
“Sloane.”
“Sloane!” he calls loudly. “Sloane, can you open your eyes and look at me?”
Nothing. No flutter of her eyelids, no turn of her head, no movement of her lips. Just nothing.
One EMT sets his stethoscope on her chest while the other takes her hand and presses his fingernail into the cuticle of hers. She doesn’t even twitch. They mutter back and forth to each other with their findings. One questions me as they transfer her onto the stretcher they carried in.
“Has she been drinking?”
“No, sir, not that I know of.”
“Does she take any medications?”
“Only birth control that I know of.”
“Is she allergic to anything?”
I shrug and shake my head, feeling so helpless. “Not that I know of, but…”
He nods, making notes on the paper pinned to his clipboard. “Sir, we’re gonna take her to the ER. She’s out, but her vitals are stable right now. You’re welcome to ride with us if you want.”
“Yes, I would, actually.”
“Are you a family member? Or is there an emergency contact who should be notified to meet us at the hospital?”
“I’m not…no, I’m not family, but I can use her phone to contact her father on the way.”
“Sounds good. If you’ll do that, we’ll get her in the squad.”
With that, the two EMTs lift Sloane, the legs of the stretcher extending so that they can roll her out the door and down the walk. Since Sloane didn’t bring a purse in, I run to her car, grabbing it from the back seat and running back to the ambulance to jump in the back with her.
I see her phone the instant I open her purse. It’s in a little pocket on the side, obviously designed to hold a phone. I take it out and scroll through her contacts until I find her father’s information. I tap his cell number and listen to it ring as the EMT cleans off her hand to start an IV.
As the large needle pierces her skin, I watch her face for signs that she felt the prick. She doesn’t move a muscle. My stomach sinks like I swallowed a handful of rocks.
“Locke,” I hear on the other end of the phone, distracting me from Sloane’s still form.
“Mr. Locke, Hemi Spencer. Sloane came to see me at my house tonight. She collapsed. I’m in the ambulance with her now and we’re on the way to the emergency room. Can you meet us there?”
There’s a pause, during which I’m sure Sloane’s dad is processing my information dump. I didn’t beat around the bush. I’m not that kind of man and neither is he.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asks. His voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear him. Fear is evident, which makes me even more apprehensive.
“I don’t know. She’s flushed and sweaty, and her skin is hot like she’s got a fever. She seemed fine otherwise. But now she won’t respond. I don’t know… I just…”
Words escape me as I relate to him what little I know. It’s the most horrible feeling in the world—to be so helpless. And so scared. What could be wrong that she’d just fall out like that? And not respond? It’s more than just fainting. That much is obvious.
“Oh, God, please no!” I hear him whisper into the phone.
A fist wraps icy fingers of pure terror around my heart. “What? What’s going on? Why did you say that?”
I hear the strain in Mr. Locke’s voice. It comes across the line loud and clear. “I’ll explain when I get there.” And then he hangs up.
All the way to the hospital, my mind races with scenarios. There, they do little to clarify things for me. The nurses come out to assess her, asking me only one question. “Sir, are you a family member?”
I should lie, but I don’t. “No.”
“Have you notified someone in her family?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait here until someone in her family arrives. When they do, you can show them to registration first. Then, if you’ll have the receptionist give us a buzz, we’ll send for you.”
I don’t like it, but I know how strict hospitals are now with patient confidentiality. Without telling an outright lie that I have no way of backing up, there was nothing I could do. Now, I just have to wait for Mr. Locke to get here. Maybe by then they’ll have Sloane awake. I pray that they do.
Through the bank of windows that face the parking lot, I watch the headlights of every car that pulls in, holding my breath for Sloane’s dad to arrive. When he does, I take my pacing to the door to await him.
As soon as he steps through, I’m on him. “They need you to answer some questions in registration before they’ll let you go back.”
“The hell they do!” he says angrily, stomping up to the reception area. “My daughter was brought in on the ambulance a few minutes ago. I need to go back and see her. Right now.”
He doesn’t give them any other choice.
“Sir,” the young blonde begins, “if you’ll—”
“Forms can wait. I want to see my daughter first.”
The girl stares at him for a few seconds, evidently gauging whether he can be reasoned with at all and how much effort it will take to do so. She quickly decides it’s not worth it to
argue and she gives in.
“Have a seat and I’ll call the nurse.”
Mr. Locke nods and turns to find the seat closest to the door that leads back to the patient rooms. Where Sloane is. He leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees and drops his head into his hands.
I move to stand in front of him, feeling more and more distressed by the second. He’s not only not surprised by this, but he seems to me like a man who has dreaded this day.
“Mr. Locke, I need you to be straight with me. What the hell is going on with Sloane?”
For a few seconds, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond. Finally, though, he runs frustrated fingers through his dark brown hair and sits back in his chair, his face ten years older than it was when I saw him yesterday.
“Did Sloane ever tell you about her mother?”
“I know she died of leukemia, right?”
“She did. She was first sick with it when she was a child. She went into remission and was healthy for years. And then one day…BAM! She got sick. At first we thought it was the flu. She had been achy and feeling a little under the weather for a couple of days. But then, one night after dinner, she just collapsed in my arms. She was burning up with fever. I brought her to the hospital and they did all sorts of tests. Turns out she had a relapse of her leukemia. And when that happens, the prognosis is bad. She fought it like a trooper, but there was just no beating it when it came back. She died two years later,” he finishes, his voice miserable.
“Sloane told me about her mother, sir, and I’m sorry that happened to your family. All due respect, but what does this have to do with Sloane?”
Mr. Locke looks up and meets my eyes. His are agonized and defeated. “Because Sloane had the same thing when she was a little girl.”
He says no more, just watches me as his words trickle in and my brain scrambles to make sense of them.
“Are you telling me that Sloane had leukemia?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. She was diagnosed when she was five. She was just really starting to act like a little girl and feel better when her mother died. She’s been fine ever since. Stubborn as hell, and determined to live her life to the fullest for as long as she has. Just in case… Every day, she has lived with ‘just in case’ hanging over her head. And that’s why we’ve protected her so fiercely. Because we have, too.”
My eyes, my chest, my soul burns with this knowledge, with what Sloane’s father is telling me. My mind rejects it, searches for some other conclusion to draw. But there’s none.
I can barely force the words past my numb lips. “So you’re saying that this could be Sloane’s leukemia relapsing and that she could only have a few years left to live?”
Mr. Locke’s eyes fill with tears and my heart crumbles, right behind my ribs.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” he confirms, his voice breaking as he leans forward and puts his head in his hands again.
I see his shoulders shaking as all the promise and hope and happiness that the future held suddenly gets swept away by a devastating wind. I’m torn between screaming and running my fist into one of these concrete walls over and over again. Or maybe just walking outside to give in to the urge to just sit in the dark and weep.
How could this be happening? She’s so young, and there’s still so much ahead of her. How can she be sick? She’s been fine. All this time, she’s been fine. So vivacious, so full of life…
As Mr. Locke gets up and walks to the reception desk again, I stand in the exact same spot, drowning in regret. All this time, I could’ve been enjoying Sloane, enjoying time with her, laughing with her, holding and touching her, telling her the truth about what is in my heart. But instead, I was destroying what we had with lies and deceit. In the back of my mind, I thought if she could just forgive me, I’d have another chance. I’d have more time, time to make up for what I’d done, time to make her happy and see her smile. Not make her cry.
But that was a cruel joke. There is no time. There is no future. Not for Sloane. And, now, not for me. She is everything I could ever have wanted. Perfect. Complete. Irreplaceable.
Desperation floods me. My thoughts, my feelings, my muscles. When I see the door to the back open, I turn and I run. I don’t ask permission. I don’t listen to the voices yelling for me to stop. I just run.
I begin passing doors. I pause to look in each one, searching for Sloane. Through a tunnel of heartache, I hear voices behind me, but I ignore them and I keep looking, keep searching. I can’t stop until I find her. I can’t rest until I see her.
And then I do. I see her pale face, turned to the side, facing the glass window of the room in which she’s been placed. Her eyes are closed, her expression is peaceful and, right here in this moment, I know I can’t live without her. I can’t even think of what I will do with myself if she dies. Tonight. Tomorrow night. In a year. In ten years. I can’t bare the idea of a world without her. Of my life without her.
Oblivious to anyone else in the room, I walk to the bed, I take her hand in mine and I drop to my knees beside her.
I press the backs of her cool fingers to my eyes. Then to my lips. They taste salty. And wet. I didn’t even realize I was crying until this very moment.
I stare up into the face that has haunted my dreams and my thoughts for months now, and I feel the crushing weight of sorrow. Already, I feel it, like I can see her slipping away right before my eyes.
“Oh God, please!” I beg quietly. “Please let her be okay. Please let her live. Don’t take her from me. Please don’t take her from me!”
The only thing I hear around me is the broken sound of my own voice. It’s caving in on me like darkness, swallowing me up like nothingness.
********
Like I do at least a few times an hour, I glance up at the monitor that assures me Sloane is still alive somewhere in there. I watch the reassuring blips as they dance across the screen. I listen to the reassuring whisper of air filling her lungs. I feel with my soul that she hasn’t yet left me. Not completely anyway.
A voice sounds from behind me. It’s gruff and annoyed.
“Has she opened her eyes yet?”
It’s Steven. He’s angry that I’m here at all. Like her father and her brothers, they come in, they hover over her helplessly and then, after a few minutes, they leave to go fall apart somewhere else. Somewhere that the eyes of a stranger can’t find them.
He stomps into the room, aiming for the chair that sits on the other side of the bed. Sloane is in the ICU now, where they can keep a close eye on her condition until the doctors can determine what’s going on with her. Or until she regains consciousness.
Aside from her father, Steven has visited her most. Despite his dickweed ways, it’s obvious that he loves her every bit as much as she loves him. After several minutes of staring silently at Sloane, he finally speaks. “You been home yet?”
“No.”
He doesn’t look at me. “You planning on staying here ‘round the clock?”
“Yes.”
I see his lips thin. I’m sure that’s not the answer he was hoping for.
“That pisses me off, but I’m sure you know that,” he gripes.
“Yes. Luckily, I don’t give a shit. I’m here for Sloane.”
That draws his eye. He glares at me across the bed. I know he’d just as soon plant his foot in my face as talk to me, and I’d just as soon he try. I think we could both use a little tension-relieving scuffle. But that wouldn’t do Sloane any good. And she’s the one I care about. She’s really all I care about.
“That would make her happy,” he mutters, his teeth obviously gritted.
“I hope so. I just want her to wake up. And I want to be here when she does. I want her to know that I’d never leave her. Not unless she asked me to go.”
“What if I asked you to go?” Steven asks. His expression hasn’t changed at all, but something tells me he might be actually teasing.
“I’d tell you where you could go.”
One corner of his mouth lifts up in a combination sneer-smirk-grin.
“After this is all over, I’m still probably gonna kick your ass.”
I shrug. “You’re welcome to try. After Sloane wakes up.”
He nods. “Fair enough.” We fall into a weird, somewhat amicable silence again. “Has the doctor come by yet?”
“Yeah. Said they’re still waiting for some test results. Still giving her fluids. Evidently she was pretty dehydrated. Plus the fever…”
“Dad said she wasn’t eating or drinking much for the last several days.”
He sends me a nasty look.
“Look, man, I know you blame me. And you know what? That’s fine, because I blame me. I hurt her. I hurt her bad. And I’d give anything—I mean, anything in the whole world—to go back and do things differently. And when she wakes up,” I say, stressing the when, in my speech and in my heart, “I’m gonna do everything in my power to make it up to her.”
“I hope to hell you do. And I hope to hell she doesn’t make it easy on you.”
I don’t respond. It’s possible Sloane may not remember forgiving me, may not remember the time right before she passed out. And if she doesn’t, I’ll have to deal with it. But at this point, I just want her to wake up. Even if she wakes up mad all over again, she can scream and yell, punch and kick. She can raise cane. I’d take it all. Happily. If she’ll just wake up.
********
The nurse is the same one tonight as last night, and she agreed to let me stay again. When she talks to me, she pats my arm and nods like she’s trying to make me feel better. There’s always a look in her eye that says she sees a desperate man. And she’s right.
Sloane’s dad wanted to stay, but he had some things at work come up —important things about his son’s case and the guys that shot up the house. I would never tell him that Sebastian had called me earlier with a witness, someone who knew the identity of the dirty cop dealer. I would never tell him that I’d passed that name along to Reese, who then informed his connection at the Attorney General’s office. I was just happy he was leaving and that I’d get to stay. I knew that if he wanted to press the issue, that if he wanted to stay, there would be nothing I could do. Except leave. And I’d rather die than leave Sloane’s side. Even for a couple of hours.