Page 123 of Shadowed Hearts: Frost
Raw exhaustion wars with adrenaline that has nowhere to go. Rage is gone, leaving behind something worse—this hollow ache where certainty used to live.
Footsteps echo from the elevator bank. Familiar gait: Kade's measured stride beside someone moving with urgent purpose. Miguel appears, still in surgical scrubs, medical bag clutched tight. His professional composure cracks the instant he finds me outside the room.
"Where is—" He stops mid-question, gaze locking on Vanessa through the small window. The change is immediate, devastating. Doctor dissolves into big brother watching his baby sister fight for consciousness.
His face crumples for exactly three seconds before medical training reasserts itself. But those three seconds reveal everything. This man who saves lives daily, reduced to the same helpless terror clawing at my ribs.
"Miguel." I straighten, extending my hand.
His grip is firm despite the tremor I recognize too well. "How long has she been like this?"
"Forty-seven since initial exposure."
He nods, processing timelines with clinical efficiency, but his eyes stay fixed on Vanessa's still form.
"I told our parents she has a severe flu. That she can't have visitors while she's contagious." Guilt shadows his features. "I never lie to them, but—"
"They don't need to see her like this."
Understanding passes between us. We've both watched people we love hover between life and whatever comes after. Some burdens don't require sharing.
Miguel moves toward the door, brother and doctor warring in his expression. When he looks at me again, something shifts in his assessment. Recognition, maybe. Or just a man acknowledging another willing to stand guard over what matters most.
"I need to examine her. Check her responses, review the treatments." His voice steadies into professional territory, but his hands shake slightly as he reaches for the door handle.
The team. Kade dropping everything to bring Miguel here. Jax handling the extraction. Even Cole monitoring communications while I maintain this vigil. They're here—not just physically present but invested in outcomes that matter to me.
Miguel pushes through the door, and I follow close behind. He rushes to Vanessa's side, yanking a stethoscope from his bag like he's done countless times before.
"Her breathing's changed," he says, leaning over her still form. "More labored in the last few minutes."
The monitors confirm it—oxygen levels dropping, heart rate climbing. Her small face contorts as if fighting something invisible and terrible.
Miguel's medical bag hits the floor with a metallic crash as he reaches for emergency supplies.
"She's going into crisis."
thirty-two
Asher
"Heart rate one-twenty. Respiration twenty-six. Oxygen at eighty-nine."
The numbers click through my mind like ammunition being loaded. Twenty-five hours since Miguel walked through that door. Twenty-four and a half hours since Vanessa went into full crisis mode, her body convulsing in seizures that lasted forty-three seconds each.
Twenty-four hours since I called Remy.
The medical room's fluorescent lights buzz at sixty hertz, casting harsh shadows across her face. Too pale. Too still. I've positioned myself close enough to monitor every breath, far enough to stay out of the way when the doctors work.
"Blood pressure holding steady. One-ten over seventy-two." The relief in my voice surprises me.
Remy checks the dialysis machine humming in the corner, the one that saved her kidneys when they started shutting down. His green eyes are bloodshot, stubble darkening his jaw. He hasn't left either, not since I called him in as backup.
"Temperature's been normal for eight hours." Remy's fingers move over the IV lines. "Kidney function's back to eighty percent."
Miguel sits in the chair he claimed yesterday, tablet balanced on his knee as he reviews her latest blood work. The dark circles under his eyes match mine, but his hands are steady now. The brother-panic from yesterday morning has been boxed away behind clinical training.
"The neurotoxin's almost completely metabolized." Miguel's voice carries the careful control he's maintained since Remy pulled him aside twelve hours ago.
