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“Ruari.”
“Ruari, I can tell that you’re very upset. I need you to take a breath for me. Can you do that?”
He couldn’t. His chest was locked tight, every muscle clamped down. The operator kept at him until Ruari dragged in a breath. It shook on the way out.
“Good. The ambulance is on its way. I’m going to stay on the line with you until they arrive. Is his airway clear?”
“I cleared it. I got it out of his mouth.”
“Is there any more vomit coming out?”
Ruari looked. Cassian’s lips were parted, a thin trail of bile running from his mouth onto the pillow. “No. Not any more.”
“Keep watching his mouth and nose. If he’s sick again, make sure it comes out. Don’t leave him alone except when you let the paramedics in.”
“I won’t.”
He laid his hand flat on Cassian’s ribs. His chest contracted in shallow, uneven movements that were too fast and too light, as though Cassian’s lungs were only filling to half capacity.
Ruari counted each breath. One. Two. Three. Four.
If he’d slept ten minutes longer, if the kick hadn’t woken him, Cassian would have drowned in his own sick while Ruari lay beside him drunk out of his mind. And Ruari was the one who’d rolled him onto his back.
Five. Six. Seven.
His eyes stayed on Cassian’s face. His lashes were clumped together, and he looked so, so small.
Eight. Nine.
“You’re doing brilliantly, Ruari. They’ll be with you very soon.”
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
Ruari kept counting.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They took Cassian through a set of double doors Ruari wasn’t allowed past.
He got as far as the threshold before a hand caught his arm, and a woman in scrubs steered him sideways, away from the path of medical staff. Behind her, the paramedic who’d ridden in the back of the ambulance with them was already delivering the handover to the triage team, his voice carrying over the squeak of trolley wheels on lino.
“Male omega, twenty-two, suspected alcohol poisoning with aspiration. Vomited in his sleep, partner cleared the airway manually prior to our arrival. GCS was eight on scene, currently ten. Sats eighty-nine on room air, ninety-four on supplemental. IV access established en route.”
The doors swung shut, leaving Ruari standing in the corridor with vomit drying on his shirt and his hands hanging at his sides.
The nurse came back for him. She had a clipboard, the pen tied to it with string.
“I need to call Colin,” Ruari said.
“Is Colin his next of kin?”
“He’s…yeah. Colin Huxley. He’s the one who…” Ruari’s mouth opened and closed around the shape of a relationship he didn’t have a single word for. Guardian wasn’t right. “He’s Cassian’s person.”
She wrote the name down. “Do you have a contact number for him?”
Ruari read it off his mobile for her.
“How much had he had to drink tonight?” The nurse’s pen was poised over the form.
