Page 8 of Pumped

It takes a second for me to move. I don’t want to sit. I want her to tell me what happened. I want to go see my brother. My big brother. My hero. My best friend. Because if I can just see him, then everything will be alright. Everythinghasto be alright.

Stiffly, I sit where she’s indicated, hands braced on my knees to keep them from bouncing.

The doctor pulls a chair over and sits down across from me. In the same even-keeled tone I use on my own clients, she explains the situation. “There was a multi-car accident. They were in the backseat of a cab and weren’t wearing seatbelts. The car flipped over and was hit multiple times.”

A choked sound claws at my throat, but I swallow it back down.Keep it together, Lambert. Lock it down.

“I’m afraid Jeremy didn’t make it.”

Air rushes from my lungs as the doctor’s pronouncement punches me in the gut.

“Eden’s on life support, but there’s no brain activity.”

My diaphragm spasms, unable to contract and draw in oxygen.

“I’m so sorry.”

My lungs burn. The room tilts. My ears ring. I’mthis closeto passing out before I’m finally able to force myself to breathe.

This can’t be right. I must have heard her wrong. But the doctor’s watching me with a wary look in her eyes, like she’s waiting for me to break down into sobs or to freak out in a rampage.

I’m not going to do either. Because neither will make this situation any easier. Instead, I nod, the movement abrupt and jerky.

“I’ll give you a moment and get someone to take you to see them. Eden’s room is on this floor, but Jeremy is down in the morgue.”

I flinch at the word. The morgue—but that’s where they put the corpses. If Jeremy’s down there, then that means… No. Don’t go there. Don’t feel. Don’t succumb to emotions. This isn’t the time.

“I’d like to see him first.”

The doctor hesitates like she’s not sure she should let me.

“Please, I need to see him.” The words come out rough. I clear my throat and shove my emotions back down.

An orderly leads me down to the morgue, and the entire way, a stray thought dangles at the back of my mind.Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe it’s not Jeremy. Maybe this whole thing is just a big mistake.I don’t let myself reach for the thought, but I don’t bat it away either. I can’t afford to cling to false hope, but I also can’t quite give it up altogether. I balance precariously in the in-between until the coroner’s assistant leads me to a body covered with a white sheet.

My hands curl into fists, my nails dig into my palms.Don’t let it be him. Don’t let it be him.

The coroner’s assistant waits for my nod before lifting the sheet and folding it back.

I stare.

It looks like Jeremy. The hair is dark like mine. The same nose, same chin. He has a scar above his left eyebrow from playing basketball. He looks… normal. Like he’s asleep. Like I can reach out and shake him and he’ll open his eyes. He barely has any scratches on his face.

But— I don’t— He can’t— I just saw him earlier in the week. We grabbed coffee after the meeting he had in my neighborhood. I’m supposed to go over for brunch next weekend. How— What?—

“Mr. Lambert suffered massive internal bleeding,” the coroner’s assistant reads from a chart. “The paramedics rushed him to the emergency department, but he’d already lost too much blood. There was nothing the doctors could do.”

My control slips and a riot of emotions surges forward. Bile shoots up from my stomach, burning my esophagus. I spin and race out of the room, away from the sharp, stinging odor of formaldehyde. I gasp as I burst into the hallways, trying to breathe past the sudden bout of nausea.

Fuck. FUCK.

I slam my fist into the concrete wall and the pain radiating through my hand and up my arm helps to clear the nausea from my stomach. I shake out my hand and slump back against the wall, banging my head against it a couple times when the nausea threatens to return.

It’s true. I don’t know how, but it is.

Jeremy is dead.

“Mr. Lambert?”

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