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I lose focus and begin to panic. I turn Cambria over, noticing how bruised her shoulder is as I gently place her on her back.
“Isaac, we need to get them to a hospital right now,” I command, assessing Cambria’s wounds to the best of my ability with no formal medical training. No matter what I do or don’t find now, she’s in bad shape. Knocked out with a bad shoulder injury leaves space for so much worse. The longer we wait to have her treated, the worse the outcome.
My heart beats wildly in my chest as I wait for Isaac and James to pull one of their SUVs around to the back of the club. It takes the three of us to move both Cambria and Ariella without making their injuries worse, and we have to lie them down flat in the back to keep their necks straight.
I make James drive us so I can keep an eye on the girls in the back. Cambria groans slightly, but she doesn’t wake up. I try so hard to wake her, but she never responds.
My stomach turns as we approach the emergency department doors. I’ve always hated the emergency department, especially after what happened with Marcus. This place has never been anything more to me than the final stop before someone I love is gone forever.
Sometimes, I feel like there’s no point in even coming here if that’s the end result. You might as well die at home surrounded by the people you care about rather than being stuck with needles from all directions with machines whirring above your head. Maybe you’re drugged out of your mind. Maybe you’re scared. Either way, nobody ever enjoys coming here.
James runs into the front doors to get help, and the entire time he’s gone, a deathly silence fills the SUV. Isaac looks back at me periodically, perhaps waiting for his own commands or a word of comfort from me. But I have nothing for him. Watching Cambria’s expressions change from neutral to pain back to neutral is the only thing on my mind right now.
Within ten minutes, a large group of hospital staff emerges with two stretchers and a slew of other medical supplies that I don’t even want to begin to think about. I’m careful with Cambria as I gently lift her from the floor out of the SUV and into the arms of a nurse with a nose piercing and a hyper-focused aura. I don’t know her, but I trust that she wants Cambria to survive just as badly as I do.
Removing Ariella from the vehicle is difficult because it appears that she has a neck injury from whatever Fari did to her. It took the doctor three minutes to figure out that something was very wrong with her even though she wasn’t moving or speaking at all.
We watch helplessly as the doctors and nurses wheel Cambria and Ariella into the emergency department, telling ourselves that we did the best we could, that we gave them a shot at survival.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t convince myself that I did the right thing at all. I should have stayed behind to make sure that nothing like this would happen. I put business over Cambria’s safety, and while Josiah would’ve said that’s the right thing to do, I don’t feel that way.
Cambria reallymeanssomething to me.
The registration desk at the hospital makes us all sign in as visitors, which causes an irritating delay in seeing Cambria again. The thought that she might be dying behind a curtain somewhere while I fuck around with my ID and contact information infuriates me. I need to keep myself under control, but I want to lose my shit. I’ve never been good at keeping calm when the stakes are high.
Then, a doctor approaches.
“You can’t see the patient right now. We have to prep her for surgery. She’s bleeding badly into her brain,” he says with an unbothered tone. “We need to find the source of the bleeding and stop it immediately. It’s going to be pretty touch and go until we do that.”
I’m about to lose my shit. “Okay, so why don’t you go and fucking do the surgery then?!” I shout, sending a collection of papers and pens to the floor as I swipe them off the counter.
“Sir, it takes time to get a patient into surgery, even under emergency circumstances. I wanted to do you the courtesy of telling you myself,” he replies, mildly annoyed at my outburst but otherwise unperturbed.
I pause to make myself breathe deep, to consider my actions and the way they could affect Cambria’s outcome. I don’t want to draw attention to myself, much less get the police called on me, but the thought of losing her is sending my whole thought process sideways.
“Are you her husband?” the doctor asks, showing a little bit of curiosity now.
Her husband?
“What? No, I’m her boss,” I reply. The truth sounds so stale, so limited compared to what she and I really are.
But what are we?
“Ah. Well, I’m not going to pry, but perhaps she needs to find a different line of work,” he replies, turning and walking down the hallway to stick his hands into Cambria’s skull.
I want to scream after him, to insult him and demean him and his pretentious attitude. Then I remember that were it not for him, Cambria would surely die. No matter how much of a prick he is, I need to let him work with a clear head.
So, I sit down.
And I wait beneath the artificially white lights in complete silence, hands clasped together between my knees.
Two hours pass, and I don’t hear anything from anyone.
Two hours becomes five, and I’m pacing circles in the waiting room, agonizing over how helpless I feel.
I keep imagining her, wheeled into an operating room surrounded by strange people in masks, terrified as an oxygen mask is placed over her face as she drifts off to sleep. I imagine the doctor drilling holes into her skull to release the pressure of the blood. I picture her head, fixed to the surgical bed, bleeding down into a collection of blue sheets and towels as her blood pressure rises.
“Wasn’t she one of your dancers?” James asks as he approaches with two bottles of water from a nearby vending machine.
