Page 39 of Ruled By Fate

Her lips parted for a moment, then she gave a rueful chuckle. “I knew you were too handsome to be real.”

“I’m real, Esther,” he replied. “Just not of this world.”

Looking back on it later, it would always strike Brie how very strange it was to hear them speaking. He didn’t talk to her the way one usually addressed their elders — with the unintentional detachment that sprang from a barrier of so many years. He spoke as if they were equals.

His eyes were warm and welcoming. His fingers stroked back her brittle hair.

“I always hoped there would be more. But sometimes, I found it difficult to believe.” She looked into his eyes, worried. “Has my lack of faith kept me from seeing my Simon again?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, he’s here now.”

He leaned back, and Esther’s face lit with joy.

“Simon!” she cried. “Oh, Simon…”

Brie looked on as the woman greeted someone who wasn’t there, her own eyes sweeping nothing but a blank wall. A feeling of helplessness came over her, paired with a shivering dread.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” she whispered to Cameron. “Can’t you save her?”

He glanced at her, never letting go of Esther’s hand. “I am saving her,” he murmured. “Saving her from an agonizing death. Saving her from drowning on dry land. Allowing her to pass away peacefully in the arms of her true love.”

He turned back to the old woman, now happily carrying on a conversation with her favorite person in the world, whom only she could see. His lips curved in a tender expression as he stroked the grizzled curls away from her eyes.

“Go ahead and do your job, Brianna,” he said softly. “I will continue to do mine.”

She’d been rooted to the spot, taking in the incredible scene in front of her, but his words galvanized her into action. She checked Esther’s stats and saw they were dropping. She paged Denise immediately and called for a crash cart to have at the ready. She was about to try to break through Esther’s reverie to talk to her again when Denise rushed back into the room.

“What is it?”

“Ms. Abrams is about to crash. I can tell. Just trust me. I have everything prepped, and you said to notify you as soon as there was any change, so I—”

At that moment, the heart monitor flatlined.

“There it is,” Brie cried. “Okay, so call the code, and we’ll—”

Denise took her shoulders and looked her square in the face. “Weldon. She’s a DNR. We aren’t calling a code.”

Brie looked down at the patient, trembling where she stood. “But you said—”

“Her breath sounds were virtually nonexistent. She was dying when she arrived. This was end-of-life care. She shouldn’t have been in the ER in the first place. She should have passed away peacefully at home. Her daughter just didn’t understand.” She paused a moment before finishing more gently. “I told you to take care of her because I knew she’d like you.”

She walked over to the monitor and turned off the sound. Then they stood and watched the thin green line continue horizontally across the screen. Just a few seconds and it was over.

Denise saw a lovely old woman quietly pass away.

Brie saw a lovely old woman and a beautiful angel of mercy become completely suffused in golden light. It haloed them for a suspended moment, illuminating all those passing memories, all those blissful years, then the light passed entirely to the angel, and he blinked away in a flash.

She opened her mouth but could find nothing to say.

Denise glanced her way and, in a moment of empathy, clapped a hand on her shoulder. “I also picked you because I thought you could handle it. Some of the rookies don’t have the stomach for this, and they don’t know it yet. You? You’ve got a steel core in there somewhere. I can see it.”

She clapped her on the back once more, a gesture of goodwill that might well have left a mark, then turned and walked out of the room, calling over her shoulder. “I’ll send in the on-call doctor for the time of death. Don’t forget to chart.”

Brie was left standing alone in the room with Esther’s body, reeling from what she’d just witnessed. When Cameron appeared again beside her, she stood there, too shaken to move.

“Brianna?” he said hesitantly. “Are you alright?”

Am I?