Page 157 of The Wrong Heart

His ribs hiss, his chest whistling. My terror mounts higher, drenching me in worry as a paramedic tries to shoo me away, ambushing Parker with blood pressure cuffs and oxygen. The other man lies motionless a few feet away, surrounded by medics, while stretchers are rushed through. It’s a harrowing scene, causing a surge of nausea to roll through me.

Parker coughs and chokes, spitting more water into the grass, and I go pallid.

Is he okay?

Is he drowning before my eyes?

My vision twinkles with stars, tiny particles of light, and I feel myself teetering, a dizzy spell galloping through my brain and making my temples pulse and throb. “P-Parker… don’t leave me…”

The air crackles with daunting energy, something forbidding, and I feel Parker’s fingertips dig into my waist as he lifts up on his haunches, his face blurring before me as the background noise turns to static.

“Melody?”

Alarm infuses his tone, his grip on me tightening. With fluttering eyelids, I begin to float away, tipping over from my knees as everything becomes jumbled chaos.

“Jesus… someone fucking help her!”

His panicked words fade out, turning to ringing in my ears, and Parker catches me before I hit the ground, but he can’t save me from the darkness that swallows me whole…

These lights are familiar.

Sterile and unaesthetic.

Blinking through a sharp inhale, I reach for my wrist, thinking I’m back in that hospital bed after my suicide attempt—tangled in starched sheets, my vein and my heart bleeding out. I expect to see my parents’ tearful faces hovering over me, wracked with disappointment.

Panic seizes me.

No… I’m not ready.

As reality works its way back through me, my fuzzy brain begins to temper, and when my eyes land on my arm, there is only a fading scar staring back at me.

I glance at my opposite arm and wince. A long needle and white tape are secured to the underside of my elbow.

And then… memories assault me, a rush of noise and colors and lights.

Parker!

I sit upright, my heartbeats ricocheting off my ribs as I fumble for the call button to summon a nurse. The last thing I remember is Parker gasping for breath in my arms as paramedics swarmed us, and then I was captured by queasiness and dizzy lights.

He jumped off a bridge.

He jumped off a bridge right in front of me, and now I don’t know where he is.

Tears rush to my eyes while anxiety courses through me. My fingers fumble with the button, pressing it over and over until the mint green curtain shimmies before me, and a familiar face pokes through.

Dr. Whitley.

Bree.

“Melody,” she says softly, her chestnut ringlets piled high on her head. “How are you feeling?”

I swallow. “Why am I here? Where’s Parker?”

Her smile is easy, natural. Like mine. Bree paces forward with careful steps, coming up beside my cot. “You fainted. When you came to, you were overcome with panic, so we administered a sedative.”

Warmth radiates from bronze-tinged eyes as she reaches out to place a tender palm along my arm. It’s an intimate gesture, something beyond what a regular doctor would do.

But I suppose I’m not a regular patient.

---