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“They’re doing everything,” he repeats as the lift doors open, and he guides me down another corridor.
The smell of bleach is so strong that it burns my nostrils as we walk through empty glass-partitioned rooms. My feet can’t eat at the distance quick enough. I need to get to Eve. I need to see her and hold her.
“Where is she? Where’s my girl?” The questions keep rolling off my tongue. Loose words. Endless motions. When all I want is to set my sight on her again. My beautiful darling—the girl who changed my world. Who is my world.
“Just…prepare yourself,” Percival tells me as we round the corner to a corridor of endless doors.
“Where is she?”
“It looks bad, Henry,” he says, turning into me as we reach one of the doors. “She’s fighting, though.”
The door opens when a nurse steps outside. The pump and release of the machines is deafening, slamming into me with a force that threatens to bring me to my knees. The world is falling and smashing to smithereens beneath me, and there’s nothing for me to hold on to as the door opens wide and I see her through all the machines, wires, and tubes.
Fuck.
My body propels itself towards her, even as my mind tells me to turn around. To burn this entire fucking universe to dust along with every man and woman that put here. Along with me.
“Your Grace,” one of the doctors addresses me from the other side of the bed. His lips are moving, and the drone of his voice as he explains what’s happened and what they’re doing to try and fix it is whirring into my ears. But I hear nothing. I see nothing. I feel nothing. Except her and the machines keeping her alive.
I lose her, I’ve lost everything. The thought doesn’t stop battering into me as my fingers stroke over her hand.
“We have faith that if we continue with this treatment and she continues responding to it the way she is, everything will be fine.” The doctor gives me a terse smile before he checks the drip and syringe pump. “The key here is to keep her in the induced coma to avoid any more bleeding until the vitamin K has had a chance to neutralise the Warfarin.”
It's only when the doctor leaves with the rest of the staff that I walk around to the other side of the bed. There are fewer cables and tubes, and the dim golden light from the lamp on the back wall lights this side of her face enough that I can see the dried track of blood crumbling around her mouth and jaw.
“Don’t be scared, darling,” I tell her, recalling the conversation we had a while back where she told me she’s afraid of dying. “I’m here, Eve, and I won’t let you go. I promise.”
The flicker of her eyelids draws me closer. Maybe she can hear me. Maybe she feels me here as I lightly hold her hand, too afraid to cause any more damage with my rough touch.
“Please forgive me,” I whisper, leaning over her to press a kiss to her forehead. “Please forgive me for hurting you. I should’ve protected you better. I should’ve—”
“Henry,” Percival murmurs at the foot of her bed. “This isn’t your fault.”
My mouth opens to bark at him to leave, but the words ball in the back of my throat. He’s wrong—this is my fault. Eve shouldn’t be lying here like this, balancing precariously on the verge of life and death. But he’s also right; it’s not all down to me. There’s blame all round, and it’s time that the consequences fall at everyone’s feet.
“What’s in there?” I ask, nodding towards the double doors behind him.
“Emergency theatre,” he replies, looking over his shoulder with confusion pinching his face. “Why?”
“And all rooms on this floor are the same?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” He nods.
“That room.” I point towards the doors leading to the hallway. The wire glass panels look on to another set of doors to another private room. “Empty?”
“There’s no one else on this ward.”
“Good. Call everyone here.” When he doesn’t get going, I bark, “Now, Percival. Everyone. My mother included.”
Ryan comes in as Percival is about to leave. Instantly, his stare falls to the bed with a noticeable cringe. “How is she?”
All I can do is shake my head. Everything hurts, and the prospect of replying with words daunts me. I won’t verbalise what could happen. I won’t give it time to air or breathe.
“What do you want me to do with your girl?” he asks, standing at the foot of the bed with his hands clutching the bedding.
“Put her in there.” I nod towards the empty room opposite this one. “I want her and Warren in there.”
“What are you doing with them?”
