Chapter 149 Drugged

Chapter 149 Drugged
Grey
The world had shrunk to a box of wailing metal and strobing light. Outside, the city was a smear of nothing. Inside, every detail was a razor’s edge. The metallic scent of blood. The frantic, rhythmic hiss of the bag valve mask. The too-calm voices of the paramedics, carving up my failure into clinical data.
“Pressure’s eighty over fifty and dropping!”
“Heart rate’s one-thirty,thready!”
“O2 sats at eighty-eight percent!”
Each number was a verdict. My own training, the knowledge I’d worn like a badge, had become a curse. I understood the language of dying, and they were speaking it fluently. I was trapped on the jump seat, a ghost in my own nightmare, my hands painted with a rust-brown that was already drying. Powerlessness wasn't an emotion; it was a physical weight, crushing my lungs.
I shoved past the lead medic. “Greyson?”
Her voice was a whisper,a spiderweb straining against the siren’s roar.
I caught her hand. It was so cold. “I’m here, Cassie. I’m right here. Don’t talk. Just fight. Save your strength for the fight.”
“My father… tell him…”
A wet,gurgling cough. A speckle of blood on her lips, a fresh horror on the canvas of her skin.
“No.” The word was a plea, a command. “You’re going to tell him. You’re Cassie Hunter. You don’t quit. You don’t ever quit.” I was begging her, begging the universe, bargaining with any god that would listen.
The ghost of a smile touched her mouth—the same defiant twist she’d given me a thousand times. Then, her eyes rolled back, and the fragile connection snapped.
“BP’s crashing! Seventy over forty!”
The ambulance lurched, the siren screaming a dirge. I pressed my forehead to the back of her hand, my world reduced to the cold of her skin and the frantic, fading beep of the heart monitor. “Hold on,” I breathed into her flesh, a sacred oath. “Please. I have so much to fix. You can’t leave me. Not now. Not ever.”
The sudden, violent stop at the ER bay hurled me back into my seat. The doors flew open, and a trauma team swarmed, a coordinated storm of blue. I stumbled out after the gurney, a planet pulled from its orbit.
A hand, firm and final, planted on my chest. “Sir, you need to wait here.”
The words died in my throat. I'm her… what? Her mistake? Her unfinished business? “I’m all she has,” I choked out, the pathetic truth of it ringing in my ears.
The electric doors sighed shut, a final judgment. The hallway was a sterile, buzzing purgatory. My legs dissolved. I crumpled into a plastic chair, the rust on my hands now a brand of shame. My phone vibrated incessantly in my pocket—Matt, the Brigade, the world I’d left behind. My fingers moved on their own, tapping out a message to the void, a raw, unvarnished truth I didn't even know I carried.
Cassie's been shot. St. Vincent's. It's bad. She has to be okay. She's my wife. She has to be okay.
Wife.
The word glowed on the screen, a confession and a prayer, leaving a hollow ache in my chest where it had been hiding.
Time lost all meaning. Matt arrived, a solid, worried presence I couldn’t console. Then, the doors hissed open again, and the air itself grew cold.
Aiden Massa moved like a blade through the sterile light. His gaze, cold and surgical, found me instantly. He didn't walk; he converged. In one fluid motion, he had me by the jacket, slamming me against the wall with a force that stole my breath.
“What. Happened.” The words were barely audible, laced with a promise of violence.
“My fault,” I rasped, offering my throat. “They followed her to me. I led them to her.” I met his eyes, let him see the wreckage inside. “Aiden, I love her. It’s the only true thing left. If she doesn’t make it…” My voice shattered. I turned my head, tears of shame and terror carving paths through the grime on my face.
He released me with a shove, but the fury in his eyes had banked, replaced by a terrifying, shared understanding. “She believed in you,” he said, the quiet statement a more devastating blow than any punch. “Then you’d better pray she does.”
The trauma bay doors opened. A doctor, his face a carefully composed mask, stepped out.
“Family of Cassie Hunter?”
“I am,” I said, stepping forward. Aiden was a statue of silent fury at my back.
The doctor began his report, a stream of medical jargon—damage, repairs, statistics. I clung to one phrase, a life raft in a storm. “She’s stable for now.”
A sob of pure, undiluted relief hitched in my chest. “So, she’s okay? She’s going to be okay?”
“The next twenty-four hours are critical… but she’s a fighter. Those are all good signs.” He paused, and his tone shifted, dropping into a lower, more intimate register. “Sir… were you aware that Ms. Hunter is pregnant?”
The word was a depth charge.
Pregnant.
Six weeks. A life. A future. Our child. The reality of it unfolded inside me, a flower of pure, unadulterated terror and wonder, blooming in the ruins of my soul. I swayed, grabbing the wall for support.
“The fetus appears to be unharmed. Frankly, it’s a miracle.”
I followed him into the ICU in a daze. Cassie lay amid a tangle of wires and tubes, pale as moonlight, the ventilator breathing for her. But the monitor sang its steady, rhythmic song. She was alive.
I took her hand, my other hand finding its way, trembling, to her stomach. “I’m here,” I whispered, the words a vow. “We’re here. You’re both going to be okay. I will burn the world to keep you safe.”
“An O’Malley heir,” Aiden’s voice rumbled behind me, thick with a new, terrifying weight. The legacy, nearly erased by my hand.
The doctor, who had lingered by the door, cleared his throat. The look on his face had changed. The neutral mask was gone, replaced by a stark, clinical alarm. He held a tablet like a shield.
“We’ve just received her initial toxicology report,” he said, his voice low and grave. “There’s an anomaly. Something you need to see.”