AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They agreed to let me in once they had cleared the apartment, and it was the longest two minutes of my life. I waited at the doorway, just inside the living room, which they had immediately cleared as safe. I didn’t miss the corner of June’s belongings and the knives behind them. My blood ran cold at how quiet it was as the officers banged open doors and cleared the kitchen, the bathroom, and then finally, they shouted, “Over here!”
I ran forward before they’d given me the green light. June’s bag wasn’t in the living room, so I went for her bedroom. Just as I arrived, they yelled, “We’re clear! Let him through!”
I ran past them, only barely glimpsing a small man’s inert form handcuffed at June’s feet. But my eyes weren’t even on June with her blue lips and pale skin. I saw her bag near the man. I swiped it up, ripped open the main pocket, and pulled out the albuterol inhaler. I knelt next to June, shook the inhaler within an inch of its life, and administered four puffs of medicine while holding her lips around it. While I pressed the button on the inhaler, I inspected her for any evidence of blood or wounds, but she looked otherwise unharmed.
“Come on, June,” I whispered. I saw her chest working hard to suck in air still, but her pulse fell under my fingertips and her respiratory rate was less than thirty. Albuterol wasn’t working. “Where is EMS?” I asked angrily.
“Here,” a voice said behind me. I didn’t bother to move out of their way. Ordinarily, I would have. When June had gone to the hospital the first time, I had gladly stepped aside—but I wasn’t taking any chances this time. “Ipratroprium, CPAP, and IV epinephrine,” I said without looking away from her.
While the medics got a blood pressure cuff, oximeter, ECG leads, and IV started, I took the CPAP mask from the EMT first, placed it over June’s mouth and nose, and then took the ipratropium and administered it through the airtight mask. “Epi?” I asked.
“I can’t get a vein, switching sides,” the nervous EMT said.
“Just give me the epi, I’ll administer it intramuscularly,” I said. I took the syringe, popped off the cap, and stabbed her thigh.
“Should we reassess airways?” the female EMT asked as she tried for another IV.
“No, I’ll get a line in, and then we’ll push hydrocortisone.” There was no point in assessing her airways when she was non-responsive and blue in the lips. I took the IV needle from the EMT, who looked at me like “WTF are you doing here?” Understandably. I ripped off June’s sling, and knowing full well she was going to feel thiswhenshe woke up—because there was no acceptable situation in which she didn’t—I slid the IV in place on her hand and gave her the steroid that would hopefully help to open her airways.
“O2 sats rising,” the male EMT next to me said. “Seventy-four, seventy-seven,” he continued.
That was a good sign. June’s chest rose and fell, working with the CPAP machine that pushed oxygen forcefully into her lungs. Her body exhaled it back out on its own, which was another encouraging sign. “Okay, transport her,” I said. “We can stabilize her en route.”
The EMTs knew the routine. We got her on a stretcher, and I followed along, checking her vitals and looking for signs that she was waking up. As the stretcher jarred and bounced to the ambulance, June cracked one eye open.
If my heart had had feet, they would have crumpled in relief. I felt my pulse slow down, although the adrenaline sharpened my senses still. “Pulse/ox?” I asked the EMT who had loaded her.
“She’s tachycardic and O2 is seventy-nine,” he said.
She was bound to be a little tachy with that many stimulants accelerating her heart rate. “We need to get her to ninety. Let’s give forty of magnesium and repeat albuterol, but watch that tachy,” I said, standing next to her and feeling some gratitude that we could look at monitors now that we were in the rig. She still had a capnography waveform that resembled a shark fin, but it was starting to even out.
June’s eyes popped open fully, and she inhaled, wheezing audibly. That would be a nasty shock to wake up to a CPAP pushing air into your lungs and wires everywhere. “Ketamine,” I said before leaning over her and taking her face in my hands. “June, relax baby. I’m here. You’re safe.”
She tried to take the CPAP off, but I blocked her with my elbows. “I know, it sucks,” I said. “The more you relax, the faster we can take it off.”
Her eyes hooded as the ketamine rushed through her veins, but I gave her the credit. “Good job, June. Keep that up. Work with the machine. It’s pushing oxygen in, and you need to push it back out. Stay calm.”
“Archer,” she gusted out.
I shook my head. “You’ll never see him again. I guarantee it.”
She closed her eyes, and then screwed them shut as she fought against the CPAP. Feisty June. It was good to know she could be a pain in the rear even with her life on the line.
By the time we got her to the ER, she was looking better. She was maintaining her oxygen, and her breathing had become more deliberate. The bronchodilators and steroids were doing their job. She was also more alert, which was equal parts annoying and gratifying because she was mad about the CPAP. But that also meant she was okay, and for that, I could have cried.
I didn’t, but I could have—and a vulnerable part of me recognized I would need to sit with that at some point. Until then, my focus stayed on June as she stabilized, my eyes on her monitors and my heart thudding along with thebeep, beep, beepof June’s. She woke up several times, and even after we took her off the CPAP, she wanted the oxygen mask removed, and then the cannula, and finally, I threatened to tie her hands to the bed if she didn’t sit still.
Her eyes had hooded in desire, of course. The minx. My life was going to be one enormous jumble of stress and joy with June Matthews in it. And shewouldbe in it. I needed that inevitability like I needed a vagus nerve. The question was, did June feel the same? She had said she wasfallingin love with me. And she’d said she was afraid of it. If what June had said about her struggles with letting herself connect with others was true, then she might not return the depth of my feelings. Hell, even I hadn’t accepted the depth of my feelings at first.
They were illogical.
Anomalous.
Preposterous.
And yet, despite my intense misgivings about our sprint from animosity to infatuation, I couldn’t deny how June made me feel. I couldn’t imagine a single day without her capricious unpredictability. I didn’t want to. On the drive to her house, when I had imagined a hundred ways she might leave this life, I’d had to face that possibility. I had decided that if I was given the chance to keep her, I would. I would grab on with both hands and never let ineffably luminescent June disappear again.
I’d also decided that if anyone dimmed her light again like Archer Holmeyer had done, I would personally snuff theirs out. Fortunately for him, the authorities had him in custody, and his brief bout of unconsciousness from June’s foot smashing his nose up to his prefrontal cortex had not saved him from detention. Two officers from the incident had come to take June’s statement, and she’d told them about finding Archer in her home and fighting for her life as he’d threatened her with a knife.
