Chapter 34
Chapter 34:
When my mum was alive, she always told me that life is too short not to live it with the people I love. She was fierce in showing how much she loved me. So fierce that on the day she died, I nearly lost my mind facing the truth that I had lost the only person in the entire world who loved me more than life itself.
The doctors had to shackle me and place me in a psychiatric ward for more than a week. Well, I wasn’t counting—the days blurred together. My aunt Kate took the liberty of counting them for me. But the day I regain pieces of my sanity, I prayed to God never to let me go through that pain again. I feared that if I ever did, I might not survive.
I never could have imagined that a pain worse than that waited for me nine years later.
The nurses are screaming. I can hear Sandra crying. Ethan is cursing. That sharp, sterile signature scent unique to hospitals burns my nose so badly that it makes me want to puke.
But the discomfort, the noise, and the searing pain tearing through the muscles of my bleeding leg are nothing compared to the agony of watching Asher’s body lying so lifelessly on that damn wheeled stretcher.
He looks like a corpse. His face and skin are ghostly pale, his green veins pressing hard against his flesh. His chest isn’t rising or falling. His knuckles and fingers are already turning white. The skin around his eyes and mouth is rapidly losing its color—just like I am rapidly losing my mind.
The nurses are wheeling us both on stretchers toward the emergency unit. Sandra is yelling my name, telling me how much she loves me and how she’ll never offend me again. Ethan is spewing every curse he can think of at Kai who, in absentia, is dead—probably lying in some morgue by now.
Victor and his squad sent him on his journey to hell so fast and so brutally that I doubt even the devil will recognize his face when he arrives there.
With the monster dead, Victor helped untie my hands. I rushed over to Asher on the floor, but it was already too late. That bastard had already shot him.
Right now, in my helpless state, I don’t want to believe Asher is dead. I don’t want to believe he’s gone from this world.Instead, I try to focus my eyes…
Thick with tears, the white walls of the hospital flash past me in a blur as the nurses wheel Asher and me frantically into the emergency unit.
I feel Sandra’s hand slip away from mine. I manage to hear the nurses telling her and Ethan to wait outside.
The atmosphere of the emergency unit looks like a chaotic war zone. The noise and the machines ring in my ears, sending buzzing signals to my tired brain. I want to shut down every nerve impulse in my body, to close my eyes and rid myself of the pain, anguish, and regret tearing me apart.
But Asher’s body lies helpless, lifeless, and bloody beside me. He isn’t blinking. He isn’t moving. And that alone is enough reason why I can’t allow myself the relief of escape when he is over there, losing his precious life with each passing second.
is where the magic begins
I watch in agony as the nurses crowd around him. A doctor rushes over. Immediately, his sparkling white coat is stained crimson with Asher’s blood.
“He’s losing a lot of blood! Nurse Jane, we need about four pints! Now p>
A brunette nurse breaks from the crowd and dashes out of the unit, slamming the door shut behind her.
My head spins. Fear grips my throat, choking me. What did I could hear?
My bleeding leg acts faster than my messy brain, trying to push me up from the bed. I wince as two male nurses jerk me back down, their eyes flashing with worry and alarm.
“Miss Isla, stay calm p>
“You don’t understand!” I scream. “He’s losing a lot of blood. He’s dying! Asher p>
I yell his name, hoping he can hear me from whatever oblivion his unconscious body has drifted to. I will never forgive myself if I lose him.
I will never recover if the man I love dies. I’ve lost someone I loved before. I can’t lose another, because if it happens, I don’t think my body or mind will survive it.
I want to yell Asher’s name again, to scream that I love him, to tell him to stay with me, but my throat is closing. I can no longer feel the blood in my legs.
Despite the hot tears streaming down my cheeks, my entire body begins to drift out of this noisy, chaotic world.
Calm. Peaceful.
Sedated.
I turn my eyes to the male nurses holding me down, catching sight of another nurse, a woman, injecting some liquid drug into the vein of my arm.
“What are you p>
“Stay calm, Miss Isla,” she says with a smile. “You will be alright p>
I want to throw her sweet words back into her mouth, to tell her to stop feeding me that drug nonsense. I want to yell, to tell her that I don’t think I will be alright.
But my voice is failing me, slipping out as nothing more than a tiny, slurred whisper. My muscles feel paralyzed.
“Asher p>
His name leaves my lips in a whisper as my eyes start to flutter closed, despite my desperate fight to keep them open.
“Prep the both of them for surgery. They don’t have much time. Especially him p>
The doctor’s commanding voice is the last thing I could hear as my senses finally shut down, slipping into the dark silence of oblivion. I let myself go, surrendering to the strange peace of that realm between reality and the afterlife.
I don’t know how long I will be in this oblivion. Maybe hours. Days. Weeks. But I know one thing: I am not yet ready to die. I am not ready to settle in the afterlife.
My journey in this world is not yet complete.
I haven’t told the man I love—the man who loves me—that I love him too. I pray we both survive this.