Fifth a Fury

“Heart attack?” one of the ambulance workers asked, opening his bag of tricks to create a miracle.

“I think so.” The leader nodded. “Shocked five times. CPR administered since cardiac failure. Pulse has restarted. Faint...but it’s there.”

“Good work, we’ll take it from here.”

I tried to breathe and couldn’t.

I tried to move closer...I fainted.

Chapter Fourteen

I WASN’T HERE NOR there.

I wasn’t alive nor dead.

I didn’t know what I was or who.

I sucked in a breath, only to find I had no such ability.

No lungs, no heart, no physical presence to control.

Darkness all around me. Coral spires and sand caverns, jewelled anemones and sleek oily sharks.

Was this reincarnation?

Had I traded a form that walked on land for one that swam in the depths?

And if I had...why couldn’t I see my new shape?

Why did no fingers or fins appear when I tried to move my extremities? Why did no bubbles explode from my mouth when I tried to exhale?

Why couldn’t I remember what I was before this?

I had a name; I was sure of it.

I had a life...I was convinced.

Yet the more I tried to remember, the faster it dissolved until I was just a speck.

An unnamed, unclaimed speck lost in the global vastness, adrift and unwanted.

Darkness thickened.

My speck vanished.

I was nothing.

Chapter Fifteen

“HE’S CRASHING AGAIN!”

I stood by the door, pressed against the wall so I wouldn’t be kicked out. The doctors had tried to keep me out of surgery while they worked on Sully, but...well, I fucking refused to obey.

Thanks to the housekeeper, I’d been dressed in a loose-fitting pair of track pants and a grey hoodie while I’d been unconscious. My useless body had been carried by one of the mercenaries as Sully was placed on a stretcher and wheeled into the ambulance.

I’d been given a ride too, my brief stint of weakness snapping me awake the moment the ambulance started.

The second time I’d ever fainted, and both were caused by Sully.

He owed me.

He owed me so much for the panic he’d put me through and the fear that even with his pulse flickering, he might not pull through.

I’m sorry for cursing at you.

My guilt weighed more than I could bear.

I’d yelled at him as he’d died.

The last things I’d said were awful and mean and...

God.

I choked on tears, fresh tears, old tears, forever tears.

“Charge to three hundred joules.”

“Clear!”

I hugged myself. I screamed silently. I watched as electricity that’d infected us with passion was now used to keep him alive.

His form absorbed the voltage.

His body jerked under its surge.

Nothing.

The doctors rushed and muttered, and I tuned them out.

All I focused on was Sully...once again dead and not caring just how much that killed me.

Come on! Wake up. You can’t keep doing this to me! I promise I won’t yell at you again. I won’t call you a son of a bitch. I won’t ever swear.

I swallowed curses.

I locked myself against the wall, so I didn’t leap onto the table and pummel his pathetic heart. Ever since we’d screeched into the ambulance bay and Sully had been whisked away, I’d fought a never-ending battle to let experts keep him alive instead of relying on our bond to drag him back.

Could he feel me there?

Could he sense my claws digging into his soul?

I wasn’t going to let go.

He could try to die, but he’d only half succeed because I was the owner of his heart now, and I fucking refused to give it back.

Come on, Sully. Fight!

A doctor threw me a dirty look over his mask.

Maybe I yelled that aloud or shouted in my mind. I didn’t care. I no longer knew reality from fable and hope from despair. I’d already proved to be a nuisance after I’d refused a wheelchair when we arrived at the hospital and glowered at anyone who tried to direct me to a waiting area and prevent me from staying with Sully.

I didn’t want to get kicked out...but didn’t they get it?

I couldn’t leave him.

I refused to leave his icy, sheet-shrouded side.

Not until he either woke or died.

And even in death...I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to walk away.

“Try again. Three hundred and sixty joules.”

I gritted my teeth. My fingernails dug into my palms.

Please.

Please, please, Sully.

I love you.

Don’t do this.

Please!

I was alone, shivering in shock and woozy against the wall as Sully was once again electrocuted.

No one else had come to the hospital.

I was in a city I’d never travelled to before and surrounded by strangers who I didn’t trust. Doctors who didn’t know that Sully was the most important patient of their career because if he died...

God!

I doubled over.

My cheeks stung with fresh salty tears.

“Got a pulse.”

I choked on air. My eyes swooped to Sully and his team of lifesavers.

“Administer lidocaine. Let’s keep him with us this time,” a woman doctor clipped, her face covered by a mask, her hair pulled back in a hairnet. Her group of emergency staff jumped at her commands, inserting needles and focusing on tasks to keep Sully breathing.

My legs gave out, slithering me down the wall as the heart rate monitor registered frail beats.

Stay with me this time.

You owe me that much.

I couldn’t keep doing this.

The highs, the lows.

The hope, the misery.

I’m not letting go, Sully, so stop trying to leave me and breathe!

I gulped my own advice, swallowing down gasps of air and praying my woozy head wouldn’t pass out again.

Satisfied that her colleagues had Sully’s life in their capable hands, the doctor turned her attention to Sully’s leg. Her gloved hands trailed from the infected wound in his thigh, down his kneecap, calf, ankle, and foot. Her forehead furrowed as she slowed over certain areas before repeating the exploration on the other side.

Finally, she sighed heavily and turned to look at me crunched at the bottom of a ventricular diagram of a heart.

The urge to be sick had never left, and it was a constant battle to keep stomach acid where it should be and not contaminate the sterile room where Sully’s existence hung in the balance.

Snapping off her gloves, she came toward me. Pushing open the swing door, she arched her eyebrow, cocking her chin for me to go through.

I threw Sully a look.

The swarm of doctors still hovered over him.

He resembled a ghost. His hair shockingly dark against pallid skin. His lips blue. His eyelashes black spiders on his cheeks.

I shook my head.

She cupped my elbow, yanked me to my feet, and ushered me through anyway.

Only once the door swung shut and she stood in front of it to prevent me from slipping back inside did she remove her mask and study me.

She was younger than I’d expected. Brisk and all business, the fine lines of early aging caused by a high-stress job didn’t detract from her auburn, freckled prettiness.

“You must be his wife?” Her Swiss-German accent reminded me all over again of the foreignness of this place and the lostness of being alone.