Page 77 of Breaking Danger
No. He shook his head, the movement slow and weary. She wasn’t dead.
She couldn’t be. She’d just given him life.
But she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t moving.
Suddenly, the energy of panic suffused him. She’d somehow exhausted herself healing him, used up all her body’s reserves. Stopped her own heart.
He’d start it again for her. Because he wouldn’t let her die. Couldn’t.
With newfound energy, he rolled Sophie over, not allowing himself to see her head loll listlessly or the utter stillness of her body.
He was suddenly frantic. Every bit of his medic training, which had been extensive, came back to him. This was a wounded comrade who needed his help. This was the woman who’d saved his life, risking her own. This was the woman who held his heart. If she was no longer in the world, then neither was he.
He leaned over her, placing his left hand over her heart, right hand angled over it to strengthen the pressure and began pumping, trying to replicate with his hands pushing her chest muscles what the heart had stopped doing.
He leaned in heavily, working hard. Chest compressions had to be at least 5 cm deep, at 100 compressions a minute to manually make blood flow through her heart. And he wasn’t going to stop until her heart pumped on its own.
He would stay here forever, with his Sophie, until she came back to him.
He had no notion of time, none. All he knew was that the sweat pouring off him was pooling in the small hollow of her neck. All he knew was that his world was reduced to his two hands over Sophie’s heart, working, working…
“Jon.” Nick’s voice was low. His hand landed on Jon’s shoulder. He shrugged it off angrily. He couldn’t miss a beat, not one. Because it might be the pump that jump-started Sophie’s heart, that would bring her back to him.
Nick’s voice was louder. “Jon, she’s gone. I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”
“No!” he screamed. That wasn’t true, she wasn’t gone, she was still with him. Jon’s hands didn’t stop for one second. He was curled over her now, shoulders blocking her from the sun because he didn’t want her blinded when she opened those beautiful eyes. Which she was going to do…any second now.
Vaguely, he realized that several people were standing over him, in a circle, watching him. He didn’t give a fuck. Let them watch. Let them watch him forever because that’s how long he’d stay here, letting his hands pump blood through Sophie’s heart until her own heart could do it. It was only fair, because she held his heart in her hands. Her still, cold hands.
He wished there were two of him. One would continue applying CPR, the other would hold her hands, make sure she knew—wherever it was she’d gone—that he was with her. The other Jon would kiss those cold, still lips, bring her back like some prince whose princess had been put under a spell by an evil witch.
He was no prince but she was his princess. She owned him. She’d saved him and she owned him, forever.
His hands continued, tirelessly, while the people around him were murmuring, voices becoming louder. He heard his name, hers. The crackle of a commo communication. Nick’s voice.
“Jon.” Nick’s hand landed on his shoulder again, and stayed there even though he shrugged angrily. “Elle says to reach inside her heart. She says you know how to do that.”
What?What thefuck?
Was she saying to slice open Sophie’s chest using his knife as a scalpel and try manual massage, as field surgeons somehow did?
No, she meant something else, but he couldn’t figure out what. Reach inside her heart? How could he do that? What the fuck did that mean?
And then—the world slipped sideways, fractured. And his hands reached inside to touch Sophie’s heart. At one level, his hands were still on her chest, over her rib cage, working hard. But at another…his hands touched her heart, reached in and touched it because her heart belonged to him and only he could do this.
He reached, with his mind not his hands, and touched.
And Sophie coughed.
God.
Everyone was shocked into silence. Nick kneeled beside him.
Sophie coughed again and drew in a long, choked breath.
Jon’s eyes were dripping water, falling now on Sophie’s chest and he couldn’t wipe his eyes because his hands had to be over her heart, the heart that was now…
Beating. On its own.
