Page 139 of Requiem
The memory slams into me with a brutal force.
Emma’s fingers twitch weakly against mine again, drawing my attention back. My girl is hanging on.
The ambulance suddenly jerks sharply around a corner before slowing enough that the paramedics immediately begin shouting to each other again.
“We’re here,” one of them says.
The back doors fly open to a flood of fluorescent white light and freezing air as people immediately swarm the stretcher. Voices overlap in Russian while hands move everywhere at once, disconnecting equipment, lifting Emma, shouting vitals I can’t follow fast enough to understand.
I climb out after them.
“No—”
“I’m staying with her.”
The words come out low and dangerous enough that nobody tries arguing twice.
The hospital doors burst open ahead of us, warm air hitting my face alongside the overwhelming smell of antiseptic and something sterileenough to make the blood drying on my skin suddenly feel even more grotesque.
And then I see Heather.
She’s sprinting toward us down the corridor, blood still soaked across the front of her clothes, while another team rushes Micah past us on a separate stretcher.
For a second, everything collides.
Micah doesn’t look conscious anymore. Heather grabs onto the side of his stretcher while doctors shout over each other. Someone barks a concerning sentence in a language I don’t fucking understand.
Heather looks up at me then, panic breaking apart her composure. “Jude—”
But before she can say anything else, they yank Micah away toward double doors at the end of the hall.
Heather tries to follow, but a nurse catches her arm. “???.”
“He’s bleeding internally!” she shouts desperately, yanking away. “I’m a nurse, let me help him!”
The doctors barely slow down, and the doors swing shut behind them a second later.
Gone.
Heather freezes there for one horrible moment before another team takes over Emma’s stretcher too.
“No,” I snap instantly, moving with them. “No, I’m going with her.”
“???.”
“Yes, the fuck I can.”
Emma stirs weakly at the sound of my voice rising, her head turning slightly toward me as they wheel her backward down another corridor.
“Jude…” she whispers.
The sound of my name coming from her like that destroys whatever’s left holding me together. I move after her, but two staff members block me before I can follow through the surgical doors.
“You need to wait here, sir,” one of them says in choppy English.
“No.” My voice cracks. “No, I’m not leaving her again.”
One of them says something calmer then, slower English this time. “Let us help her.”
