Me:

Emergency with Alec!

@ Kennestone Hosp. I left you a msg.

pls listen to it & call for Dr. Shaw

Please reply . . . please please please . . .

E:

Don’t leave. I’m on my way.

Before I realized something was happening, several nurses rushed into the room. Alarms sounded, and I was pushed out of the way.

Oh no! Alec!

“Ms. Lang, we need you to step outside,” a nurse said.

“Wait, what happened? What’s wrong with him? Alec!” I screamed as I backed out of the door.

There was so much going on in that cold room, I couldn’t see Alec anymore, only the people crammed around his bed, frantically working on him. I focused on the backs of their heads. I don’t know why, but I did. Some of them were shaking their heads, others nodding, some were turning in different directions . . . looking around, I guessed, but for what?

“Please, help him, please, make him better,” I prayed.

I couldn’t tell what they were doing. There was so much yelling and noise. I kept my hands over my ears to shut out the pandemonium. Silence . . . oh, thank God, it finally got quiet again. I was relieved that Alec would be okay. Thank God,” I whispered. I didn’t know what I would do if I lost him.

I looked up and saw the doctor’s head had stopped moving, his eyes downcast. I strained to see what the hell he was looking at on the floor. Why was he just standing there? I stepped closer. I wanted to yell at him to move and call out orders.

But another voice stopped me cold. It was a doctor I’d seen Dr. Shaw talking to earlier. “Dr. Shaw, you need to call it. We did everything we could do,” he said.

Dr. Shaw’s head jerked up as he looked to him, then at the ceiling. “Damn it!” he swore. “Time of death . . . 2230 hours.”

What?

My head was pounding, my hands and feet suddenly felt heavy. My attention snapped to Alec’s bed. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. He looked so peaceful lying there. As a nurse drew the sheet up over his head, it jolted me out of my moment of peace.

“Oh my God! Alec! No, stop! Don’t do that! He’s not dead. He can’t be!” I cried. “No! Alec! Please, don’t go! Please!” I begged.

My knees were suddenly weak. I felt familiar strong arms surround me, and they held me tight. God, I had never thought I’d feel them again, but then, at that time, and for that reason, I wished so badly that I hadn’t.

“Sam, I’m here,” he whispered in my ear. His hands were warm as they rubbed my arms, a stark contrast to the cold I’d endured all day.

How had he gotten there so fast? He should’ve still been driving. It had only been a short while since I called him. He lowered me to a chair in the hall across from Alec’s room.

“What’s . . . what the hell’s going on in there?” He turned around toward the door of Alec’s room. He looked back at me, “Why were you in there? Is that . . . shit, please, please say no . . . Is that Alec’s room?”

I nodded as I wiped at my tears. I just couldn’t find my voice.

“Why the fuck is there a sheet over his head?” He looked at me with desperate, disbelieving eyes before turning back toward Alec’s room. “Oh fuck—no!”

He threw his hands up in the air, roughed them through his hair and slowly walked into the room. He stopped halfway between the door and Alec’s bed, and looked back at me with panic in his eyes.

He made it to the bed and sat on the edge, just staring at the floor. His hand switched from a fist to resting flatly on Alec’s chest like a broken lifeline. When he turned to look at Alec’s lifeless form lying under the sheet, I could see his lips were moving. I just couldn’t hear what he was saying. But every few words or so, he cried harder and harder.

As I watched the one-sided exchange, his body wracked with sobs, inadvertently pulled the sheet from Alec’s face. Emmett gasped and nearly fell off the bed, holding one hand over his mouth as the other was frozen in a sheet-clinched fist on Alec’s chest, and I cried even harder than before. I jumped up and ran down the hall, barely grabbing a mop bucket in time to throw up. A nurse ran out of another room and clutched me by my elbow, holding me steady.

“Miss, are you all right?”

I shook my head and pointed back down the hall where Alec’s room was. She helped me walk back to the doorway of his room. When she looked inside and saw Emmett sobbing as he held Alec in his arms, she slung her arm over my shoulder and pulled me closer.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” She stepped back and dug in the pocket of her scrubs for a Kleenex. “But he really shouldn’t be in there.”

“Oh God, please give him a minute. Please, we just need some time,” I said, wiping tears from my face.

“All right then, let me see if the chaplin is here,” she said as she walked away.

I leaned against the doorframe and tried to compose myself before walking back into Alec’s room.

“Please, Alby, please be okay. I can’t lose you. Please,” he begged as he rocked Alec’s body in his arms.

As I stepped inside, Emmett turned and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot, tears and snot running down his face.

Neither of us could speak. We just stared at each other as I walked over to Alec’s bedside. I finally looked down at Alec’s face as Emmett gently laid his head back down on the pillow. I couldn’t breathe. I started gasping for air as my tears began to flow down my cheeks again.

Emmett rushed around to the other side of Alec’s bed and sat down pulling me onto his lap in the visitor chair, he brushed one of his hands down my back. His other hand caressed my face. I couldn’t help but meet his eyes, and I was lost. The strong set of his jaw was angled down toward me, and his brows were knit tight with the pain of his loss.

But it was his compassionate, tear-strained eyes that broke the last of my strength. My own eyes pooled over again, and the tears streamed down both of our faces. Seeing his messy black hair, a darker match to Alec’s calico brown, ripped a strangled cry from my chest.

Emmett’s soothing voice both eased me and sliced through my heart at the same time. After weeks of nothing but coldness from him, of his total avoidance, hearing my name on his lips, and being comforted in his embrace, was just too much for me to bear. Not there. Not then. Alec was lying there dead. His light was out forever. We never even got to say goodbye.

My heart ached for fear that the last conscious memories or thoughts that Alec had were of torment because he knew I loved Emmett, too. Did he feel despair at the whole situation? Was epilepsy the big secret he was hiding? Why didn’t he think he could tell me? He wouldn’t have had to go through all of it alone.

I hated myself right then, because I knew I needed Emmett. I hated that he’d been pushing me away for weeks. But I loved Emmett with every ounce of my being. Alec had just died. I couldn’t breathe. It was too much. Everything felt tight. Alec, oh God, no. I couldn’t believe he was gone.

“No, please, no . . . Emmett, what have we done? Oh, Alec, I’m so sorry,” I cried the words.

“Sam, stop. You have to calm down. We didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice cracked as he turned his head back toward Alec.

I couldn’t stop the tears. I felt like I was going to hyperventilate.

“Breathe with me now, easy, Peach,” he whispered.

His choked endearment was my undoing.