And I was afraid.
Absolutely terrified.
“Please…can you…will he be okay?”
Her gentle hand squeezed my shoulder. “You need to rest.”
“I need to be with him.”
“He’ll be okay. I won’t let him crash again.”
“You can do that? You can stop a man from dying?”
“I can try, and my track record is pretty good.” She let me go. “In all honesty, if he’s hung on this long, he has something to fight for. He’s in good physical condition. His heart is responding to treatment, but…”
When she didn’t continue, I flinched and asked, “But…?”
“Logically, we should wait seventy-two hours before attempting to set his legs and explore any further injuries. Administering anaesthesia so soon after cardiac failure can cause increased risk of perioperative mortality. However, his bones need setting, so we might cast and assess when he’s awake. If you are his family, you need to give us permission to continue with this course of care.”
“I give consent, but only if I can stay with him.”
“Does he have any other family?”
I flinched again.
Drake…
He killed him.
His parents?
He killed them too.
I shivered.
I was in love with a murderer.
But he was also my friend and future…my forever.
“No, just me.”
She nodded with a small smile. “In that case, stay by the wall, don’t be a nuisance, and we’ll do our best to piece your husband back together again.”
* * * * *
It took three days.
Three days for the doctors to be confident in Sully’s strengthening pulse to attempt surgery on his ankle. I wasn’t allowed to follow as they wheeled him into the theatre to remove shattered bones and implant steel rods to repair the damage falling into the sea had done.
Sully hadn’t woken in seventy-two hours.
And I hadn’t slept.
My eyes saw double. My tongue slurred. And I paced and paced until the shiny linoleum was dull from my borrowed sneakers.
They took Sully to surgery in the early afternoon and returned him to me by early evening.
His bed was wheeled back into his private room where I’d been given permission to sleep on a cot beside him. Mrs. Bixel, Sully’s housekeeper in the Geneva manor, had brought me a few extra overly big clothes and a toothbrush. The hospital delivered my meals, and the longer Sully refused to wake up, the more I suspected their leniency toward my presence wasn’t because of my obvious distress but because Sully’s notoriety had paved the way.
That night, while he remained still as a corpse and white as a poltergeist, I padded from our shared room. I needed to walk. To exhaust myself. To find some way to turn off my terror and sleep.
Every time my mind blanked out from exhaustion, I woke a second later, screaming. A repeat of Sully falling off the bed. Of Sully grabbing his chest. Of Sully dying.
I relived that awful, awful moment.
I drowned beneath fear and failure.
I’d fallen in love with him while he’d played the role of god and monster. He’d captured my heart and stolen my trust, making me believe a fantasy that he could never be hurt because he was untouchable.
Those lies had now unravelled, and he was just a man.
A man still dancing on the border of life and death.
A man who might never wake up…
A man who might not remember me.
My eyes ached from three days of sadness as I patrolled the empty corridors and nodded at the night nurses. I found evidence of Sully’s sway in the hospital thanks to the cardiology wing and the patronage sign naming it Sinclair’s Triage.
Was it serendipitous his donations had been used to benefit the cardio ward?
Or fate playing a sick joke?
The sudden panic that he’d died after being in surgery urged my legs into a run. I bolted back the way I’d come and shot into his room.
A nurse nodded and passed me by, a regular visitor with her hourly rounds.
The interruptions, the tests.
I was grateful but also possessive.
She closed the door behind her, and my eyes soared to the heart rate monitor. My ears begged for the steady beep, beep, beep of a healthy heart.
The faint beep.
The comforting vision of Sully still lying in bed. Both legs had some version of a cast. One leg was almost fully encased, leaving just his thigh where the harpoon had shredded his muscle. That had been tended to and rebandaged, and antibiotics once again administered intravenously. His ankle and foot stayed above the bedding in a low sling while a white bandage wrapped around his torso to protect his cracked ribs.
His bruises and cuts from Drake’s fun and games stood out starkly against his sickly pallor. His cheekbones were sharper. His five o’clock shadow grown thicker with a short beard.
Dragging the yellow comfy chair from the window—sunshine yellow for hope and patient morale, I supposed—I sat beside Sully and took his cold hand in mine.
“Can you hear me?” I murmured. “Can you feel me touch you?”