Sloth (Sinful Secrets 1)

I nudge his shoulder. He fumbles and chokes. I push his chin up. “Swim!” Rich boy—can swim. “Toward the shore!” I hit him and he gasps.

“My shoulder...” Water laps around his head. His face is pained. I grab a breath of air and sink and shove him with both arms. Resurface.

“Fuck...” I give his back a shove, but I can’t move him. He’s too fucking heavy.

Fuck... That slimy—duh, the ground! That’s the ground under my feet! “Kellan...”

I just barely get my arm around his neck before his eyes roll back into his head. My feet are mired in mud... I try to swim, to kick against the awful slimy ground. I cry as I struggle... then it’s shallow; I can stand completely but I can’t lift him. I struggle to the shore with him, pulling his torso out onto the mud. He’s bleeding... from his nose? His mouth?

I look around for help, but I don’t have my phone. I start to cry. I touch his head, his bloody face.

“Oh God! What do I do?” I wrap my hand around his mouth, feeling for breath. There it is, a little bit...

I’m running toward my car when I hear sirens.

“YES, I REALIZE NO VISITORS right now, but I just want an update.” I smack my fist against the front of the looming counter in the Emory University Hospital ER and bite my tongue so I don’t cuss this fucking woman out.

My hair is damp from sticking my head in the bathroom sink, the crevices of my fingernails are stained with Kellan’s blood, I’m wearing scrubs and paper shoes and my head aches—and no one will tell me shit.

“I’ve called a doctor, and we’re waiting on her, ma’am,” bitchy receptionist explains. Bitchily.

I glare at the yellow smiley faces on her hot pink scrubs and whirl around to sit back down.

The ambulance ride was awful. I mean... I’m glad one came, of course. Apparently a fisherman heard the wreck and called 9-1-1, which is a good thing, but the ride itself? Traumatic.

The EMTs pulled two Fentanyl patches off Kellan’s bare shoulder, which explained his blue lips, but after they got an oxygen mask on his busted face, they couldn’t figure out why he was bleeding so much from his nose and mouth. They wrapped his left arm against his bruised chest and I held his right hand until someone stole it from me to stick an IV into him.

They kept talking about overdoses and something called “narcan,” which I’ve since learned can help people who overdose on opiates. I said I was his girlfriend and they started asking me the basic questions like his age. I got his hand again, the fingers curled and cold, the wide, cool palm swathed in tape, an IV line curling around our joined hands, and as I stroked his fingers, I realized I know almost nothing about Kellan. I don’t even know his real, true, legal last name.

I explained what I do know to the EMTs and told them that I thought he might use a doctor at Emory, and someone, somehow, sometime confirmed that we were headed here.

The ride was long. My eyes swept up and down him as I folded his big hand between my warmer palms. I could see the awful, awful bruising on the left side of his ribcage as they tucked his arm against it... strapped it down and then they covered up his pretty abs, his perfect arms and shoulders.

The blanket was gray... and underneath the plastic mask his face was gray. The female ENT kept pulling the mask off and wiping his face with this white cloth thing, but it didn’t work. His nose and mouth kept bleeding. The few times his eyes would open, he looked hurt and scared and looked around until his gaze found me, and I would touch his hair and rub his shoulder as his body shook.

There was a neck brace on him, I noticed. When did that happen. His body was hidden under blankets but I watched his feet... stripped of their Keen sandals. His toes would curl as the EMTs shown light into his eyes and pulled the blanket back to stick a needle in... his thigh? He jerked. Their voices moved too loud and fast. The crackle of the radio... my mouth kissing his fingertips.

The male EMT prodded the inside of his left elbow and nodded at the female. “Lots of tracks there,” he said, covering the arm again.

“Track marks, like from shooting up? Needle marks?” I wailed.

The female EMT screwed up her face. He gave me a no shit look, and I started to cry. I never really stopped, just tried to keep it quiet as they labored over him, and Kellan’s eyes opened and shut and I said sweet things to him.

By the time we reached the ER drop off, Kellan’s face was snow white. The female EMTs told me to “stay put,” Kellan was in shock and needed blood. I had to let go of his poor, cold hand and stop myself from running with them as they spirited his cot into the ER.

Someone brought me dry pants and these weird shoes, and I cried some more, and talked to a cop who was nice and handed me a towel from his trunk.

Someone from the hospital—some sort of advocate woman—popped up and took her own notes as I answered questions for the accident report. And then the advocate told me she’d find out about Kellan, and she led me to a plastic chair.

That was coming up on three hours ago now. Physically, I might be the healthiest person in this room, but I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. I feel like I’m being psychologically tortured.

Just when I think I’m going to end up wringing smiley-face receptionist’s neck, a short-haired brunette in a white coat comes through the double doors. Her eyes dart around the room as she says, “Cleo Whatley?”

I rise and she blinks at me. She seems distracted, almost skittish. She tries to smile, stops half-way, and pushes a strand of short gray hair out of her green eyes.

“Cleo.” She waves me to her. “Has anybody spoken with you yet?”

I shake my head. She ushers me down a short, white hall, into a small, white room with a brown table and three chairs. She sits on the side with only one chair and nods at the two in front of her, which makes me cry because if Kellan was with me there would be two of us for two chairs, but that makes no sense...