She was going to bleed out! The moment I thought it, my vision blurred and burned from the tears in my eyes. This couldn’t be the way Melody died. She was Melody. She’d come back from worse. The world revolved around her. She would go out in some epic sort of way, not like this…not…not like Sedric.
1:06 PM
“Mrs. Callahan?”
“Mrs. Callahan?”
Again I turned and again it was a nurse staring at me. He looked me up and down, a small frown on his lips.
“Would you like to change? We have some spare scrubs—”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I replied, reaching down to take off my other heel, walking away from him and toward the OR doors again. Then I saw him: Liam, perfectly dressed, standing right in front of the doors like he was some sort of gatekeeper…
“Liam,” I called out, but he didn’t move or speak.
Walking beside him, I placed my hand on him but still he didn’t move, didn’t even blink, just kept staring at the door.
“Liam, she’s going to be fine. She’s Melody, fucking Melody, no one can stop her. Let’s not panic—”
“I’m not panicking, Mina,” he whispered. Finally, his eyes moved to me. “I’m dying. I can’t feel her…so little by little, I’m dying.”
He meant it, and I believed him.
Dear God, none
of us deserve it—all of us are the worst, of the worst, of the worst—but save her anyway. Save her for the sake of all the people Liam will kill if she dies. If you take her from him, he will take as much as he can from you before he goes.
FIFTEEN
“No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.”
~ Rose Wilder Lane
LIAM
2:52 PM
This felt different.
Melody and I had a running joke that the hospital was her second home. Between the two of us, she was the one that always ended up there, first when she was stabbed and lost our child, then after her car accident where her mother shot her. After that, there was her pregnancy with Ethan, which led to her kidnapping. She also had issues with the births of Dona and Wyatt…and now this. On her way to the hospital, she ended up in the hospital.
I would have laughed…if she were beside me. I would have laughed and said she had the worst luck in history. But she wasn’t with me, and for some reason, this time felt different from all those times. The more I thought about it, the further into a black hole I fell. My hearing seemed to be the first thing to go. Everything was silent…then my vision seemed to tunnel, no matter how hard I tried to focus.
I was dying…and that scared me because it meant she was dying.
Our kids are fucked.
Ethan would never smile again.
Wyatt would just break down. He wouldn’t make it.
Dona…my princess…with us both gone, I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine the person she’d become.
Why is it so hard for me to protect them? Why am I always failing her? I should die. A man who cannot protect his family doesn’t deserve them—I should die.
“LIAM!”
Glancing up, my blurred vision cleared enough to see the doors opening.