Page 27 of The Golden Hour

The world stops.

Because he sees his mother-in-law covered in blood jumping out of the ambulance behind the EMTs. Her hands, her chest, even her face. There’s a little trail of blood running down from a cut at her hairline, but Melissa doesn’t seem to notice it.

Her eyes find Mason’s, wild and furious and terrified.

And he knows.

God, he fucking knows before he even drags his eyes to the patient.

Pale.

Bloody.

Honey blonde hair.

Her eyes are closed, but he knows they’re warm chocolate brown. She’s wearing the yellow floral sundress he loves, the one that always makes her look like sunshine. It’s soaked dark at the hem, clinging to her legs, and her belly rounded with their daughter.

His wife.

Honey.

“Honey!”

Her name tears from his throat, cutting through all the noise around them. Even the people walking outside the hospital pause. The EMT stops reporting for half a second, looking at him in confusion. Dr. Lowell looks at him too, waiting for direction.

Mason has no direction to give.

All he can see is his wife.

“Honey, baby!” Mason stumbles to the head of the stretcher and cups her face between his hands. “Oh my God—Honey, baby, what happened? What happened?”

“What the fuck?” Lowell asks, sharing a look with the EMTs.

“She was bleeding!” Melissa shrieks, her voice raw. “She stood up, and there was blood everywhere. She collapsed. You weren’t answering your fucking phone⁠⁠—”

It’s in his locker, but he doesn’t tell her that.

His world is crumbling around him right now because his wife is on a stretcher, unconscious, pale, and—oh my fucking God, she’s still bleeding.

He works with blood. He has been elbow-deep in blood. He’s covered in it almost every day, under his fingernails, in his hair, in his shoes. The metallic scent of it is almost comforting at this point. But he has never been so horrified to see it. Honey’s blood. Blood that should be inside her body.

“Mason, we have to move!” Jaden, one of the EMTs he’s grown friendly with, snaps as he and his partner start wheeling Honey into the hospital.

Mason is numb as he moves with them because he cannot let go of her, staying by Honey’s head as he brushes damp hair away from her forehead. His fingers shake as he presses them to her neck.

A pulse. Fast, but there.

Please stay there.

Please.

“Where are we going?”

“Where’s OB?”

“We need help over here!”

“Where the hell are we going?”