“If you can calm down,” Iris says soothingly, “and tell me what—”
“I won’t calm down,” I screech, ignoring their wide eyes and gaping mouths. “There’s something wrong. I know it!”
Billie rounds the corner, frantically searching our faces. “What’d I miss? What’s wrong?”
“Lotus wants to see Kenan now,” Iris says. “But, honey, we can’t see him yet. We—”
“Come with me,” I beg, my voice breaking on a sob. “I need you, Bo.”
Her eyes lock with mine, and something, I don’t care what—my desperation, our lifelong bond, the desire to placate me—persuades her and she nods.
“I don’t understand.” Iris’s sigh is resigned. “But I’ll come with you.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, pulling her down the hall behind me. “Thank you so much.”
I speed-walk past the reception desk, ignoring the woman yelling at me to stop. I check each room, peering through the windows and jerking open doors.
“Lotus, you can’t do that,” Iris hisses a warning from behind me. “I got the receptionist to wait on calling security, but you’re gonna get both our asses dragged out of here.”
I ignore her and keep walking until goosebumps scatter across my arms. My steps stutter, and my breath shallows as cold assaults my flesh.
“It’s this one,” I whisper.
I push open the door, startling the medical team with paddles poised over Kenan’s chest. My magnificent man, a massive frame barely contained by the hospital bed. The specter of that night, of that premonition in MiMi’s house, can’t compare to the reality of seeing my beloved still and lifeless. For a moment, I have no words and can only make the wounded sound of a snared animal. I’m that trapped and helpless.
But only for a moment.
“Do it,” I bark, pointing to the paddles.
“Miss, you can’t be in here,” Dr. Madison says gently, not bothering to question why I’ve burst in on the chaos of the room. “We’ve done it several times.”
She said you were the strongest of us all. She said all the power we didn’t want passed on to you.
Aunt Pris’s words drift back to me, spurring me on, building my confidence.
“You haven’t done it with me here,” I say sharply. “Do it again. Just do it again, please. Do it again. Do it again.”
The words become a chant, an incantation tumbling from the lips of a madwoman.
“We’ll break his ribs if we continue the compressions,” a nurse tells Dr. Madison.
“If he’s dead,” I spit out, “will it matter if his ribs are broken? Do something. Please. Please. Please. Please.”
“Okay.” The doctor shifts his eyes from the equipment to the technician. “Prepare to do it again.”
I grab Iris’s hand and look in her eyes. “I need you to believe.”
“Believe what?”
“That he’ll make it,” I say, barely able to see her for the tears blurring my vision. “When you were in the hospital, and Michael wouldn’t come, we held hands. You hadn’t dilated for hours, but there was a moment when we held hands, and he came. The doctor said your body had a power surge.”
“Yes,” Iris says. “But it was—”
“It was us.” I squeeze her hand. “I need a power surge, Iris. The power of an unbroken line.”
“The power of a what?” Iris mumbles, consternation on her pretty face.
“Clear!” the technician yells, using the paddles and making Kenan’s torso leap.