Chapter 50 A False Alarm
Harper's POV,
I broke every traffic law between Monica's office and Seattle Grace Hospital. Red lights became suggestions. Speed limits were theoretical. My hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel and my brain was stuck on a loop of worst-case scenarios.
Overdose. Relapse. Seizure. Heart attack. All the things Dr. Kim had warned about during Crew's discharge from rehab—the medical complications of withdrawal, the stress on his body, the dangerous first ninety days.
Thirty-three days clean and I was about to lose him anyway.
I abandoned my car in a loading zone and sprinted through the ER entrance. The woman at the desk took one look at my face and didn't even ask me to slow down.
"Crew Lawson," I gasped. "Someone called me, Dr. Rahman—"
"Fourth floor, room 412. Elevators are to your left."
I punched the elevator button seventeen times like that would make it arrive faster. When the doors finally opened on the fourth floor, I ran past a nurse who yelled something about visiting hours.
Room 412. Door half-open. I shoved through it and...
Crew was sitting up in bed, looking annoyed and alive and completely fine.
"Harper." He saw my face and immediately reached for me. "Hey, I'm okay. I'm fine."
"You collapsed." My voice came out strangled. "They said you collapsed."
"I did. But it's not—it's not what you're thinking." He pulled me against his chest and I could feel his heartbeat, steady and strong. "I'm not using. I swear to god, I'm not using."
Dr. Rahman appeared in the doorway—a small woman with graying hair and kind eyes. "Ms. Sinclair? I'm the one who called you. I apologize for alarming you, but Crew insisted we contact you immediately."
"What happened?" I pulled back to look at Crew's face, searching for signs of lies or evasion. But he just looked tired.
"Panic attack," Dr. Rahman said. "Severe enough that he hyperventilated and lost consciousness briefly. We've run a full tox screen, it's clean. No narcotics in his system. His collapse was purely psychological."
Panic attack. Not overdose. Not relapse.
I sank into the chair next to his bed because my legs wouldn't hold me anymore.
"We're keeping him for observation for a few hours," Dr. Rahman continued. "But he's medically stable. The NA meeting facilitator made the right call bringing him in, given his history. Better safe than sorry."
After she left, I just stared at Crew. He looked guilty and embarrassed and like he wanted to disappear through the floor.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to scare you."
"What triggered it?" My voice was steadier now. "The panic attack. What happened?"
He was quiet for a long moment, picking at the hospital blanket. "Ryan was at the meeting. Brick. He shared about his five-year sobriety anniversary and everyone clapped and I just... I couldn't breathe. Because five years feels impossible. Thirty-three days feels impossible. And I started thinking about how I'm supposed to move to Vancouver and play hockey and be normal, and what if I can't do it? What if I relapse the first time I get hit wrong or the pain comes back or I have a bad game?"
"Crew-"
"And then I thought about you at that settlement meeting, dealing with Brianna and lawyers and all the shit I can't help with because I'm too busy trying not to fall apart." His voice cracked. "You deserve someone who has their shit together. Not someone who collapses at NA meetings like a fucking disaster."
I climbed onto the hospital bed with him, shoes and all, and wrapped myself around him like I could physically hold him together.
"You are not a disaster," I said into his chest. "You're thirty-three days clean. You went to a meeting even though it was hard. You called me when you needed help. That's not falling apart, that's doing the work."
"Doesn't feel like it."
"Because you're used to measuring strength by how much pain you can ignore. But that's not strength, Crew. That's just suffering alone." I pulled back to look at him. "Asking for help is stronger than pretending you're fine."
He kissed my forehead, then my nose, then my mouth, soft and desperate like he was trying to memorize the shape of me.
"How did the settlement go?" he asked. "Before my dramatic hospital adventure interrupted everything."
"Eight hundred thousand. No NDA. Brianna showed up and apologized. Joel left her. She's going to be a single mom and she's terrified." I rested my head on his shoulder. "I almost felt sorry for her. Is that weird?"
"You're allowed to feel however you feel. Even if it's complicated."
"Everything's complicated." I closed my eyes. "We're supposed to move to Vancouver in two weeks. You're supposed to start training with the team. I'm supposed to be planning my clinic. But right now it feels like we're barely holding it together."
"Maybe that's okay though." Crew's hand moved through my hair, slow and rhythmic. "Maybe we don't have to have everything figured out. Maybe we just have to keep showing up."
We stayed like that until a nurse came in to check his vitals and gave me a disapproving look for being on the bed. I moved back to the chair. Crew held my hand across the blanket.
"They're discharging me in an hour," he said. "Dr. Rahman wants me to follow up with my therapist this week. And she gave me some information about anxiety medication, if I want to try it."
"Do you?"
"I don't know. The idea of taking any pills right now makes me want to throw up." He laughed bitterly. "But she said anxiety medication isn't the same as painkillers. That it might actually help with the panic stuff without being addictive. I'm supposed to talk to my addiction counselor about it."
"One thing at a time," I said. "Right now you just need to get out of this hospital and eat something that isn't cafeteria food."
"What I need is to get you home and horizontal." He raised an eyebrow. "And I mean that in both the innocent sleeping way and the very not innocent way."
"You just had a panic attack severe enough to knock you unconscious."
"And now I'm fine. And you're beautiful. And I've been in this hospital bed for two hours thinking about all the ways I want to thank you for running here like the building was on fire."
I felt my face get hot. "Crew—"
"I love you." He said it simply, like it was the easiest truth in the world. "I love you and I'm terrified and I'm probably going to have more panic attacks and bad days and moments where I don't think I can do this. But I love you. And that makes everything else feel manageable."
"I love you too." I squeezed his hand. "Even when you scare the shit out of me."
"Especially then," he said, grinning.
The nurse came back with discharge papers and instructions to "take it easy" for the next twenty-four hours. Crew nodded along seriously while clearly planning to ignore all of it.
We left the hospital hand in hand, and I tried not to think about how many more crises we'd face before Vancouver. How many more panic attacks and bad days and moments where everything felt too hard.
But then Crew stopped in the parking lot and kissed me under the fluorescent lights, and I thought: maybe we don't have to survive perfectly. Maybe we just have to survive together.
That felt like enough.