Page 30 of Seven Minutes
Michael stepped closer, voice rough. “You won’t help him by falling apart. Go rest. Eat something. You can come right back.”
I looked at Eli again. The rise and fall of his chest. The steady blink of the monitor. The faint hiss of the ventilator keeping a rhythm for him.
Leaving was a betrayal. Walking away from everything I’d failed to protect.
But the room tilted, just slightly, and I realized I was shaking. My limbs ached, my skin prickled beneath the crust of dried sweat and panic. Then I looked down—and froze. I was still wearing the same scrubs I’d had on when they wheeled him into my ER.
Jesus fuck.His blood was still on me.
“I’ll only be gone an hour,” I whispered. It sounded like a plea for permission.
Melissa nodded. “Go on, sweetheart. We’ll stay.”
I stood on legs that didn’t feel like mine, leaning on the rail for balance. When I bent to press a kiss to Eli’s forehead, my lips brushed the edge of tape and tubing. “I’ll be right back,” I murmured. “You hear me? Don’t you go anywhere.”
Then I turned toward the door.
The hallway beyond was filled with life. Every sound was an offense—the squeak of a gurney wheel, the laughter from some other corridor where good news existed. My hand found the wall just to steady myself.
By the time I made it to the elevator, my vision had blurred. I could still smell him—soap, antiseptic, the faint trace of the hospital that clung to him like a second skin—and the thought of washing that away made me sick. But that wasn’t Eli’s real scent, and thinking I might never get to smellthatversion of him again made me sicker.
When the doors slid open, I stepped inside, and it hit me how wrong the air felt without the sound of his monitor.
I went home because they’d asked me to. Because I had no fight left. Because I was afraid that if I stayed another minute, I’d shatter completely.
But as the elevator doors closed, I whispered to no one, “Please still be breathing when I get back.”
Chapter 15
Ghosts
ADRIAN
When I pulled into the driveway, the first thing that hit me was the empty space. Eli’s car was gone. Scrapped somewhere, twisted beyond recognition. The house looked the same, but it felt wrong. Hollow. Because I knew he wasn’t inside waiting for me.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the quiet. The fresh linen plug-in assaulted my nose. Citrus cleaner lingered from the last mopping. Familiar, domestic scents that should’ve felt safe. Instead, they burned in my lungs, a cruel imitation of normal.
The house smelled alive, but Eli wasn’t in it.
In the kitchen, my body moved on autopilot. I opened cabinets, the fridge, and closed them again without seeing a thing. My hand brushed over the pile of mail on the counter, the rhythm of ordinary life mocking me. I poured water but forgot to drink it. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Then I saw it—the vase. The one I’d bought him years ago. A blue swirl decorated the base of the blown glass. I’d told myself it was thoughtful. Romantic. But it had become a ritual of guilt. Every bouquet an apology for the half-finished conversations, cut short by a pager or a late-night call from the hospital. Every bed made for two, but slept in alone.
The sight of it undid me.
“Fuck!”
I swiped it from the counter, the crash ringing through the kitchen like a gunshot. Water and shards scattered everywhere. I didn’t even feel the sting as glass cut into my palm. I just kept shouting his name over and over, tearing at my hair, sinking to the floor.
The sound that came out of me didn’t belong to a doctor or a husband. It was something feral, grief stripped down to the bone.
I stayed there on the floor, knees drawn up, back pressed to the cabinet, the tile cold under my ass. The water from the shattered vase crept toward me in slow streams, soaking the hem of my scrub pants. It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
I let my head fall back against the cabinet door and just breathed. The quiet pressed in, thick and absolute—until it wasn’t. For a second, I could swear I heard the clatter of a pan, the rhythm of a knife hitting a cutting board. I almost laughed. The brain was cruel that way, dragging me through wreckage one heartbeat, and memory the next.
Steam. Garlic. The faint burn of olive oil in the pan. Eli shaking his ass as he stood barefoot in one of my old T-shirts, sleeves rolled to his elbows.
“Don’t hover,” he said without looking up. “You’re making me nervous.”
