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The door swung open as Dr. Morgan came in with an older gentleman at his side, their expressions unreadable.
Strong.
“Mrs. James. This is Dr. Sheldon. He’s the physician in charge of your husband’s care.”
“This is Quin, she’s their daughter, and I’m her fiancé, Alec.”
Dr. Sheldon pulled a rolling stool to my mother’s bedside, angling it to face us as he sat. Leaning forward, he placed his elbows across his thighs and folded his hands together.
“When Charles––”
“Everyone calls him Charlie,” Mom interjected.
“When Charlie was brought in, he was unconscious and the paramedics had to do an emergency tracheostomy in the field, meaning they inserted a tube into his neck to breathe for him because his trachea had swelled to the point there was no oxygen getting through. From what I understand, he was trapped in the fire for a period of time so his level of exposure to the smoke was a great deal more than yours, Mrs. James. We’ve run numerous tests and I’m afraid we don’t have much good news.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, even though I really didn’t want to know the answer.
“Besides the damage to Charlie’s lungs, the lack of oxygen caused his heart to go into an arrhythmia. We’ve been working hard to stabilize both his heart rate and his blood pressure with medications since he arrived. He hasn’t regained consciousness and he isn’t responding to painful stimuli, which is highly concerning. We’d like to run an electroencephalography to check his brain activity.”
Fearless.
CHAPTER 13
Allesandro
FOR TWO DAYS, we held vigil at Charlie’s bedside and prayed for a miracle which never came. The doctors tried everything, even taking his body temperature to a hypothermic state in a last-ditch effort to reduce the swelling around his brain from the lack of oxygen, but the damage had been too much to overcome.
In the interim, we learned the reason Charlie had run back into the house from Keaton, who arrived at the hospital with Waverly and Duncan six hours after his initial call to me.
The Intensive Care Unit had a strict three-visitor limit at the bedside, which they’d graciously ignored for our family. Still, there were too many of us to fit in the small room with all the equipment, so we’d been taking turns. I hated leaving Quin’s side for even a minute, but the text I’d received from Gabe had me quickly excusing myself and trekking the short distance to the waiting room where my brothers were located.
The moment I walked through the door, I saw red.
“What the fuck happened? You were supposed to be protecting them.”
Keaton Clarke appeared wrecked. His clothes were soot-covered and disheveled and there was dried blood covering the front of his shirt. The attitude I was used to getting from the young FBI agent was nowhere to be found.
“Take it easy, del Toro.” Duncan stepped in front of my target. “Have a seat and listen to what the kid has to say before you condemn him.”
“I’ll stand.”
Clarke shuffled his feet nervously before he began speaking, his eyes glued to the floor.
“I noticed a flicker of something coming from the side of the house, but I was too far away to see what it was so I got out of my car to take a closer look. When I approached, I saw the man from the pictures I gave you throwing gasoline on the house. Next thing I knew, I was waking up with a hell of a headache and the house was fully engulfed in flames.”
“You never saw a second person?” Luc questioned.
“No.” He shook his head. “I ran to the front door and reached for the handle, but it was too hot, so I kicked it open. The Jameses were about thirty feet away. I rushed inside to guide them out, except when I turned to help them down the steps, Mr. James took off back through the house.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, running my hand through my hair. “Go on.”
“After I got her away from the house, I went back inside. I could hear him yelling so I followed his voice. When I got to the top of the stairs, all hell broke loose. He was coming out of a room on the right-hand side at the end of the hall when some of the ceiling beams crashed down, blocking his exit. The smoke was getting thicker by the second, and we were coughing so hard I knew I couldn’t stay in the house much longer without risking us both. I rushed into the room on my left, broke the window with a lamp and gulped in some fresh air. Then I tore the linens off the bed and ran back out into the hallway. By the time I got to him, he was on the floor, not moving. I threw the sheets over the beams and scrambled across, then I got him the hell outta there.”
“Jesus Christ,” my brothers said at the same time.
“Which room was he coming out of?” I asked.
“End of the hall. Last door on the right.”
