Page 97 of Don't Go
He had been holding it for the better part of an hour, and during all that time, he hadn’t said much of anything. He stayed beside me. He stayed still. He was the quietest I had seen him in the eight weeks I’d known him.
Dr. Reyes came in.
He had on his white coat. His glasses were pushed up into his hair. A chart was pressed against his chest. I knew, the second I saw it, that the chart wasn’t going to contain the news I wanted.
He sat down across from me.
“Sabrina, she is stable and sedated. She is in the cardiac unit on the fourth floor.”
“Is she gonna be okay?”
He breathed in. “Sabrina, this is the cardiac event I’ve been afraid of.”
I closed my eyes.
“The seizure wasn't just a seizure — it was her heart's electrical system breaking down. That specific rhythm, the one the paramedics caught on the monitor in the ambulance, was the one I've been warning the foundation about for months. Her heartbeat is already cutting off its own blood supply. The committee can’t sit on her letters and slow the process.”
My heart was breaking into pieces I couldn’t imagine.
“I’ll write to the foundation tonight and start calling tomorrow morning. I’ll call every morning after that until they schedule her. I’ll even call the chairman at home if I have to.”
“I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Reyes.”
I hadn’t, until that moment, fully articulated that the chairman of the foundation was the man sitting on the floor beside me, holding my hand.
I was articulating it now.
I didn’t say it aloud.
Saying it would become its own thing, and saying it here, in this lounge, wasn’t going to fix anything. I didn’t have room in my head for whatever would come after.
“How long will it take?”
Dr. Reyes looked at me.
“Sabrina, I don’t have a number.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He didn’t look away. “I’m concerned. I’m — Sabrina, I’m very concerned. Tonight is what I’ve been preparing you for. We may be looking at weeks. I don’t know if it is weeks. I’m hoping it’s more than weeks. But I’m no longer in a position to tell you it’s months.”
I started to cry.
It came without permission. Fast. Bigger than the lounge had asked me to be.
Beau pulled me into him.
He held me.
One hand pressed against the back of my head. The other arm wrapped around my back. His face was buried in my hair. He held me tightly, hard enough that it should have been enough.
It wasn’t enough.
It was never going to be enough.
18.Beau
The ICU called for her.
