I sat taller, his emotions pouring down the line, doing their best to infect me. “Slow down. What’s going on?”
His voice caught like any worried father. A father who’d felt death threaten his world. “It’s Hope. She’s been in a car accident.”
I was running before the phone hit the ground.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Jacob
* * * * * *
“HOPE MURPHY, WHERE is she?” I yelled, barging into the hospital where Hope had defended my honour against town gossip, where Hope had cared enough to get me treatment, where Hope had driven me, sulking and arguing, when she barely knew me.
Fuck, Hope.
A nurse manning the reception desk for the emergency department jumped as I slammed my hands on the counter. “Where is she?”
My temper was real.
My fear was real.
Hot emotion thawed massive chasms in the ice around my heart.
“I’m sorry, who?” She blinked, shying away from me as I towered over her.
“Hope Jacinta Murphy. She was brought here.”
I welcomed the panic.
I embraced the anxiety.
It meant I was still alive when all I’d wanted was to be dead.
I couldn’t die.
Not when she needed me.
“When?” She scooted forward on her chair, tapping the keyboard.
“I don’t fucking know when. She was in a car accident.”
“No need for profanity, sir. I’m only trying to help.” Her fingers shook a little on the keys. “Um, there doesn’t seem to be anyone by that name.”
“What do you mean? There has to be. Her father told me you guys called him.” My temper unfolded into fury, dragging me back into humanness. “Check again. Now!”
My voice had power. My hands had strength. My chest crawled with concern and cowardice, dismay and dread.
Emotions. So, so many emotions.
All of them.
All at once.
Bombarded and alive.
“Oh…” She squinted at the screen. “Ah, okay, wait a minute, please.” She scrolled with the mouse, stealing every shred of my patience.
“Well?”
She bit her lip, her eyes locking on medical text. “Ah, yes, here we go. Hope.” She slouched. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.” Her gaze met mine, no longer full of fear but sympathy.
Sympathy?
Why motherfucking sympathy?
“What? What is it?” I wanted to snatch the goddamn computer and look for myself. “Tell me!” My roar echoed around patients awaiting help, dragging their attention, pinning me in place.
My dread turned to depression. My cowardice to grief.
I’d been here before.
I’d stood at this counter and demanded they give my father back to me.
I’d been a kid then.
Now, I was a man, and the same childish terror that they’d keep Hope from me snaked around my heart.
“I’m so sorry to tell you this, s—”
“Tell me what? Spit it out. Goddammit, just take me to her.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not possible. She passed away.”
“What?”
“She, um, she died due to surgery complications. I’m so very sor—”
The world vanished.
Light and sound and people and furniture all sucked up in a hurricane.
White noise muffled everything else.
Horror replaced heartbeats.
The ice that suffocated my chest exploded in a mushroom cloud of black, dripping disaster.
Dead?
Dead?
She’s dead?
No…
That can’t be.
My lungs constricted, and my heart decided it no longer wanted to pump blood but acid instead.
I clutched my chest, clawing at the suffocation, gasping at the horror.
She’s…dead?
I killed her.
I let her leave Cherry River.
I should’ve stopped her.
I should’ve told her the goddamn truth.
I should’ve been better.
Kinder.
Softer.
I should’ve—
I couldn’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Dead.
All of them.
Dead.
I gasped for air even though I didn’t want it. My body overrode my attempts to just die and be done with it. Instinct made me grunt and groan, tripping sideways as fog crept over my brain.
“Are you okay? Sir?”
I fell forward, clutching at the counter as my knees gave out.
Grandpa John died hours before.
Hope died only minutes ago.
And I’d been too late to save either of them.
The nurse leapt upright as I stumbled, my vision shooting grey, my ears ringing louder and louder and louder.
Death.
All I saw was death.
Coffins.
Cremations.
Ash and dust and death.
No.
I-I can’t—
My strength vanished, slamming me to the floor. I grabbed something, anything to stay upright, but my hands didn’t work anymore, my arms had no power, and I plummeted to the hospital linoleum with a rain of sign-in forms and pens scattering morbidly like mourners to Hope’s funeral.
She’s dead!
And I fucking killed her.
Then the trembling began.
The awful nausea and vertigo and stress and panic.
Panic.
Bone-deep, skeleton-crushing panic.
It gushed through me, suffocated me until I had a heart attack and begged for death to take me instead.
To no longer be the one left behind.
To be the one with the ticket for a change.
A ticket to a new destination where hopefully pain didn’t exist.
Loud shouts sounded.
Hands grabbed me.
My panic turned to sheer rage, and I shoved them back.
“Don’t touch me! For fuck’s sake, don’t touch me!”
My eyes flickered with grey and light—grey for the grave and light for life. Orderlies and doctors came running. Someone tried to speak to me, only to be sucker-punched in the jaw.
My throat closed up, squeezing and strangling.