Page 83 of Scythe & Sparrow
When I finally look at Lachlan, there are tears in his eyes too. There’s so much regret in the way he holds my gaze and looks into me. “I put so many expectations on you, and when that life you thought we wanted didn’t fit the neat little boxes you’d made, you started pushing everyone away. You’ve been running. From me. Rowan. Now Rose. You’ve been running from any love for so long you didn’t know when to stop. And that’s my fault.”
“What if I’m too late?”
Lachlan doesn’t ask the thousand things that could mean. He just leans closer. “I know you better than anyone. You’re going to get her into that ambulance. And you are going to save her, no matter what it takes.” He wraps his hand around the back of his neck and presses his forehead to mine. “She’s still fighting. So you keep fighting.”
When he pulls away, I face Rose with renewed determination.
He’s right. I will do whatever it takes to save her.
The minutes that pass crawl through time. I talk to Rose. I tell her to hold on.Keep fighting. Wake up, just look at me. She’s in a battle she’s losing. Her abdomen is swollen. The last hints of color slowly drain from her face. The pink of her lips lightens. I pressthe gauze to her wound as hard as I can as I lean down to kiss her cheek, her skin cold and pale.
Lark bursts into the room with two paramedics and three police officers on her heels, the gurney wheels squeaking on the concrete floor. I give them the information I have. I lift Rose onto the stretcher, her limbs limp across my arms. The paramedics strap her down and lift the frame, locking it into place, and then we run. I hold her hand. I don’t let go. Not as we lift the stretcher into the ambulance. Not as I climb into the back with her. I look back out the doors and my brother and Lark are there, flanked by officers.
Lachlan gives me a nod, his lips pressed into a tight line. I don’t miss the way Lark squeezes his hand. “Fight, brother,” he says. And then the doors close.
I turn my attention to the paramedic in the back as the other runs to the driver’s side. Sirens roar to life. “I’m Dr. Kane,” I say. The paramedic, a dark-haired young woman, looks back at me with determination. “What’s your name?”
“Jessica,” she says.
“This is Rose. And I fucking love her. I will not lose her. So here’s what we’re going to do.” Oxygen. Heart rate. Blood pressure. I remove the gauze as Jessica sets up an IV with tranexamic acid. I repack the wound with fresh hemostatic dressing. The ambulance speeds through the countryside as we work together against time. And Rose is barely clinging on. Her body temperature drops. Jessica pulls blankets from the portable warmer and lays them over Rose as I take hold of her hand. “Come on, Rose. Fight it out.”
And she does. Wherever she’s gone within herself, she keeps fighting. For every breath. Every heartbeat. As we pull into thehospital and the ambulance slows to a halt, I know that making it this far was just one battle. The war is ahead. It’s in the surgical room. But I don’t know if she has enough strength left in her to endure.
The ambulance doors are thrown open. I run alongside the stretcher as Rose is wheeled through into the ER. I give the doctors on call every scrap of information I can. It’s only moments before she’s whisked away into surgery. Her hand is pulled from mine and all I can do is watch as she disappears behind the double doors and into the heart of the hospital.
I’m standing in the middle of the ER, still watching the doors as though she might get up and walk back through them. The sounds and smells of the ward start to creep into my senses. The beep of monitors. The scent of industrial cleaners. The voices of patients and nurses and doctors. But all I see is the absence of Rose.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I finally break free of my stasis and look at the screen to see a text from Leander.
Just a friendly reminder. Whether your girlfriend lives or dies, we have a non-negotiable deal. My driver will be at the main entrance of the hospital at 6PM sharp to take you back to Boston for your flight.
I blow out a deep breath and look toward the door for a long moment before I type out my reply.
I’ll be there.
I pocket my phone. I look one more time at those doors. And then I turn away.
I will do whatever it takes to save her.
OUT OF TIME
Fionn
“Hard to say goodbye, isn’t it?” a voice says, and I inhale a sharp breath as I turn toward the door. I fumble to hide a tissue but there’s no fooling the sharp, cutting gaze of Sloane Sutherland. Or, more accurately, Sloane Kane. Her eyes shift between me and the backpack next to my chair. “Heading out soon?”
“Yeah,” I say. And then I turn back to Rose to watch the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she sleeps. “In a minute.”
I don’t watch as Sloane enters the room. I just want to absorb every moment with Rose that I can. There isn’t a detail I’ve not tried to carve into my memory, from the swirling waves in her hair to the precise angle of her nose to the gentle curve of her dark lashes. I wonder how much she’ll change when I’m gone. How much I’ll miss. I’ll think about her every day. The absence of her will be my first conscious thought in the mornings. My memories of her will be the last thing I think about when I fall asleep. I’ll hear her voice in my dreams. Her teasing laugh. Her broken cry.
How do I know?
Because all those things are already true.
And the only thing that will keep me going through this torture is knowing that my absence will keep her safe.
I swallow as Sloane takes a seat across from me. “Where’s Rowan?”
“Going back to our car with Conor to see if the guy who took Lark really did put explosives in our vehicle like he claimed when Lachlan found him. Didn’t really want to leave it there, just in case.”
