Skittles made no move to flap after him, either aware her wing hurt or smart just to let her brother have his temper tantrum.
Finally, Pika once again dive-bombed Sully, landed on his head, and buried himself in Sully’s hair before squeaking with grief. His little feathered chest flurried from exertion, and his eyes closed, rubbing his beak through Sully’s strands, preening him with the softest chatter of sadness.
Oh, God.
How could a tiny parrot symbolise everything I was feeling?
The chaos for a cure? The impatience for this to be over? The ever-constant panic that he might never wake up? And the all-powering need to be close, to ensure he kept breathing even if it meant I had to force that breath into his lungs myself?
“Eleanor.” Dr Campbell looked up, catching my stare.
Everything inside me froze. One giant blizzard frosting everything. “What…what is it?”
“Call the other doctors. I think we have a problem.”
“What? What problem?” My screech sounded like Pika’s, manic and desperate. “What’s happened?” Launching onto the bed, I smothered myself alongside Sully.
His skin was on fire.
Sweat drenching him.
No!
Skittles joined Pika in Sully’s hair as I hugged him and kissed him and cursed, cursed myself.
I hadn’t been touching him.
I’d forgotten while welcoming Skittles.
This is all my fault!
“Don’t do this, Sully. I’m here. See? Feel me? I’m here.” I clutched his fingers. I kissed his palm. “Wake up.”
The heart rate monitor let out a tattered screeching beep, bringing the Geneva doctors running from the living room. Louise took one look at Dr Campbell’s concern and my mania beside him and leaped into action.
Checking Sully’s vitals, she stayed calm even as the monitor screamed with a slew of irregular thrums.
Sully’s heart wasn’t crashing like normal.
His pulse wasn’t dropping or growing weak.
It was skyrocketing.
“He’s at two hundred and thirty beats per minute.” Louise snapped her fingers and pointed at one of her colleagues. “Get the defib ready. If he flat lines again, be ready.”
“God!” I pressed my head into Sully’s neck, inhaling the wrongness of him. The sickness, the staleness. “Come on. What are you doing? Stop it, Sullivan. Just wake up and stop this!”
His heart rate climbed again.
“Two forty. Shit!” Louise shoved Dr Campbell aside as she wheeled a machine toward the bed.
“Do something. Stop it!” I cried.
“We can’t stop it,” Louise barked. “This isn’t treatable, not in his current condition. We have to deal with the aftermath once his system reboots.”
“He’ll die.”
“He’s moments away from cardiac arrest. His heartbeat is too fast. The only thing to do is to shock him when he reaches the end.”
“What about a beta blocker?” Dr Campbell asked. “Elixir has a habit of causing arrhythmia. Beta blockers—”
“No. All drugs are risky in his current weakness.” She crossed her arms. “Beta blockers might crash him.”
“Two-sixty!” one of the other doctors yelped. “He’s not going to make it.”
“No! NO!”
Pika screeched as I swooped to my knees.
Skittles hopped out of my way as I cupped Sully’s head and pressed my lips to his.
I kissed him.
Properly kissed him.
I drove my tongue down his throat, and I tasted the death that Sully had ingested. I blew air past his tongue and drove my hands against his mayhem-mangled heart. And I snarled with every temper and fury I ever felt.
I embraced the heat.
I swallowed the fire.
If he wanted to die…so be it, but he would do it with my words chasing him to the grave and my broken heart scattered at his feet.
“Sully Sinclair, you listen to me. Whatever you’re doing. Whatever you see or hear or feel…stop it! I love you. That’s all you need to focus on. I. love. You. I love you, and I’m not leaving, but if you leave me, you son of a bitch, I will never think about you again. I will erase all memory of you. I will sell myself to the nearest bastard and let him hurt me until the day I die because no one could ever hurt me as much as you are right now.”
I slapped him. “So fight. Fight for me, you bastard. Otherwise, you kill both of us. Do you hear me? You die, I die. Is that what you want? Because if it is, keep going. Die for all I fucking care. Give up after everything we’ve done for you. Go on. Take my fucking heart and—”
“He’s in a tachyarrhythmia. Three fifty BPM.” Louise lost her calm bedside manner.
Pika took wing.
Skittles scurried away.
And I went fucking wild.
Chapter Twenty-Four
SOMETHING STRUCK ME.
Over and over.
Pain on top of pain.
But the external pain was nothing, fucking nothing, to the hellfire I now existed in.
I remembered.
All of it.
Thanks to Eleanor, she’d unlocked my broken mind.
Her stories of our beginning.
Her murmurings of love at first sight and belonging.
Fuck!
It unlocked the gates.
It granted back my sins.
It poured them down a chute until I drowned beneath them.
Memory after memory.