Page 59 of Vital Signs
His fingers tightened around mine. "I won't."
Tyler Graham was dead because Wright saw homeless addicts as lab rats. And I was the only one with medical training who could help prove it.
I just had to survive long enough to matter.
"Stay with me," I whispered, and for the first time in four years, I chose trust over control.
The empty water bottlehit the van wall with a hollow crack.
"Fuck." My voice broke on the word. Four hours since we'd run out of water. Four hours of watching Hunter suffer with nothing to ease it. No relief. No way to stop the pain that ripped through him in waves.
Hunter writhed on the makeshift bed, skin slick with sweat despite the frigid January air creeping through the van's insulation. His lips cracked and bled where his teeth worried them raw. Dark shadows carved hollows beneath his eyes, and his hands, those capable hands that had made me scream hours ago, now clenched and unclenched without purpose or control.
Two days ago, I couldn't have imagined caring whether Hunter Song lived or died. Now I couldn't imagine breathing without him watching me like I might vanish.
"Water," he croaked, reaching toward where I'd thrown the bottle. His hand trembled so violently it might as well have belonged to someone else. "Please."
"It's empty." My throat tightened. "They're all empty."
Hunter's face contorted as another wave of pain crashed through him. A muscle spasm seized his left leg, twisting it at an angle that looked wrong, and the sound that tore from his throat wasn't human. Animal. Raw. Something dying by degrees.
I glanced at my phone, where Wright's files glowed in the darkness. I'd been studying them during Hunter's brief moments of sleep, trying to find something—anything—that proved Tyler's death wasn't an accident.
Tyler's file made my stomach turn. The dosage increases after his ER visit weren't just aggressive—they were deliberate. "OLEP Initiated–see ALT 5.3 log." Clinical language hiding murder.
My mortuary training let me recognize the pattern: escalating doses, no justifying diagnostics, death filed as "natural causes." But I needed real medical expertise to prove it.
The Laskins could have helped. Hunter could have helped if his hands would stop shaking long enough to read a chart.
Both options I'd destroyed by choosing this path.
Hunter moaned, another spasm seizing him. The files could wait. He couldn't.
I pressed my palm to his forehead. Burning hot. His pulse hammered at one-twenty-four under my fingers, dangerously high from dehydration.
I'd been rationing the last water bottle for hours, giving him drops when he could keep them down. It was gone now. And without water, his body would start shutting down organs. Kidneys first, then liver, then heart.
I could watch him die of dehydration, or I could leave him alone for twenty minutes.
Both options felt like abandonment.
"Hunter." My voice came out hoarse. "I need to go get supplies."
His eyes flew open, panic replacing pain for just an instant. "No." The word came out shredded. "Don't leave me."
"You're dehydrated. Your pulse is racing. You need fluids and electrolytes, or this will kill you." I kept my voice steady despite the fear carving a hole in my chest. "I'll go to that 24-hour Walmart. Twenty minutes, tops."
His hand shot out, gripping my wrist with surprising strength given his condition. "People die in withdrawal. Alone. I can't—"
"I won't let you die." I covered his hand with mine, my voice hardening. "I will not let that happen. Not on my watch. Not ever."
"Everyone leaves." His voice cracked on the words. "Everyone always leaves."
“Not me.” I grabbed my phone, wallet, and the stolen keycard from the clinic. Google Maps showed a Walmart Supercenter four miles away.
The drive was a blur of dark roads and swirling snow. Black ice gleamed under the streetlights as I navigated toward town. Athens slept like the dead in winter, storefronts dark and shuttered against the cold. Only an occasional plow truck rumbled past, throwing up walls of dirty slush. My phone buzzed as I turned onto East State Street. Xander. The tenth message in the last hour. I ignored it like all the others.
I pulled into the Walmart parking lot around 4:30 AM, the van's quarter tank of gas enough to get us back but not much farther. Fluorescent lights washed everything in a sickly yellow.
