Page 118 of Shadowed Hearts: Frost
"Push five of ativan," Remy orders. "We need to stop the seizure before—"
The convulsions intensify. Foam forms at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes roll back, showing only white.
A sound tears from my throat, part growl, part plea. My hands shake as I reach toward her, then pull back, useless. Every calculation, every probability assessment, every mathematical certainty I've ever relied on dissolves into chaos.
"DO SOMETHING!" The roar erupts from deep in my gut. "FUCKING DO SOMETHING!"
The seizure lasts forty-three seconds. I count every one. When her body finally goes limp, the silence feels worse than the violence.
"Vitals stabilizing," a medic announces. "Seizure's stopped."
But the monitor beside us starts stuttering. The cardiac rhythm becomes erratic, jumping between normal and dangerous. Then a high-pitched alarm cuts through the room as the green line flattens.
Flatline.
The sound that emerges from my throat doesn't belong to me. It's raw, animal, desperate as something inside me shatters completely.
"She's in full arrest," Remy shouts, grabbing the defibrillator paddles. "Everyone clear!"
The medical team swarms around her. Someone tries to pull me back from the table.
"Sir, we need space—"
"NO." I throw them off, my vision tunneling to nothing but Vanessa's still face. "BRING HER BACK!"
"Charging to 200," Remy calls out. "Clear!"
Vanessa's small body arcs off the table. The monitor continues its flat, merciless tone.
"Still no pulse. Charging to 300. Clear!"
The paddles hit her chest again. The monitor's merciless tone continues unbroken.
Blood pounds in my ears. Every heartbeat that isn't hers feels like theft. A shadow falls across her face as Xander steps between us, his massive frame blocking my view.
"Frost, you need to give them room to work—"
Something inside me explodes.
I spin and drive my fist into his face. Blood erupts from his nose as my knuckles connect. He staggers backward, shock replacing his usual confidence.
"What the hell—"
He's trying to separate me from her. Fatal error.
"Brother, they need space!" Xander grabs my shoulders, trying to pull me toward the door. "Let them work!"
"GET OFF ME!" I break his hold and tackle him, driving him backward out of the medical bay and into the adjacent equipment area. We crash through the doorway as my fists connect with his ribs, his jaw, anywhere I can reach.
The hallway erupts in chaos as we slam into a bank of monitoring equipment mounted on the wall. Sparks fly as screens shatter, the smell of burning electronics filling the air.
Xander tries to restrain me again, but fury transforms me into a different creature, one that measures angles of devastation rather than accurate bullets.
"BACK OFF!" The words come from some primitive part of my brain where logic doesn't exist. "DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME!"
Jax moves in from the medical bay entrance. "Asher, you need to—"
I catch him with a vicious elbow to the chest. He doubles over, gasping, before I grab him and hurl him into a steel cart loaded with medical supplies.
