Page 10 of Midnight Between Us
They follow orders.
Once he’s out, I check his neck, his spine and my fingers moving on autopilot even though my pulse is all over the place.We wedge a backboard beneath him, careful, but not careful enough.He groans low when we shift him, his body arching like pain is pulling him from somewhere deep.
His fingers twitch.
Then his head lolls toward me, jaw slack.
And then—he speaks.
Barely a whisper.Just one word.
“Sims.”
And then ...nothing.
His chest stops moving.
No breath.No sound.
The world caves in on itself.
I drop beside him.“No.No, no, no.You don’t get to do this to me, you asshole.”
Two fingers to his neck.
No pulse.
“Get me my bag,” I snap.“And the defib.Now.”
My hands are already on his chest.Compressions start.I count them off like I’m not losing my goddamn mind.
One, two, three.
His skin’s cooling fast.
Four, five, six.
I don’t stop.I can’t stop.I can’t do this again—I can’t lose him again, not like this, not in a fucking trunk in the woods with his blood on my hands.
“Come on,” I whisper.“Come back, Keir.You don’t get to leave like that.I get to end you.”
The bag valve mask appears in someone’s hand.I don’t remember asking again, but they’re here, and we work.We shock him once.Then again.The forest blinks with white light, and I swear, everything holds its breath.
Still nothing.
And then—his chest jerks.
A sound punches out of him, low and strangled, like a body remembering how to live.
His eyes don’t open.But he’s breathing.
Barely.
“Load him now,” I bark.
“We could call a helicopter to take it to Boston.”
Can’t they see that he doesn’t have that long?“No more waiting.We’re taking him to the clinic.He’s not going to make it to the city.”
