Page 144 of Ghost Ribbon

Dimitri caught me.

His hand came down on my shoulder. “Wait,” he said. “You can’t go in. The doctors are with him.”

I breathed like an animal.

That was the only way to describe it. My vision narrowed, the edges blurred, the world reduced to a tunnel with the door at the end of the hallway as its only focal point. Everything else existed only as obstacles.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked.

Dimitri pressed his lips together. “I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“He seemed fine. They were studying. He was sitting on the couch, he was fine, and then he wasn’t.”

He was fine and then he wasn’t.

That was the story of Marco’s life. That was the story of his body. Fine and then not fine. Okay and then not okay. Breathing and then not breathing.

“Where is he?” I demanded.

“Alexei—”

“Where. Is he.”

“Room four. They’re working on him. They said to wait—”

“I’m not waiting.” Dimitri’s grip tightened on my shoulder, holding me in place. “Alexei,” he said. “If you go in there and disrupt them, you could make it worse. Let them work. You going in there like this helps no one.”

I turned and looked at him properly. I could see the understanding in Dimitri’s face - the recognition that I wasn’t operating on logic right now, and that was ironic because I was always using logic, not my feelings, to act.

“What is it to you how he is?” The voice came from behind me.

I turned my head.

It was Rei.

He was standing a few feet away, near the row of plastic chairs against the wall. His silver hair was a mess and his face was wet. Tears tracking down his cheeks in continuous streams, his mouth pressed into a trembling line that was trying very hard to be a glare.

It was a glare.

Directed at me.

I directed it right the fuck back.

“None of your business.”

“I think it is my business,” his voice was shaking. “My best friend is in there and I don’t know why. And something tells me you know.” His gaze shifted from me to Dimitri.

The glare intensified, and something accusatory, something that said you knew too - made Dimitri lower his head. Just enough to confirm what Rei was suspecting without saying a word.

Then his eyes came back to me.

“And you,” he said, stepping closer. “He called your name. Did you do something to him? Why did he call your name?”

His voice was shaky. He was distorted. Wrecked. But all I could think of was - he called my name.

Not his mother’s. Not his father’s. Not Rei’s, who was right there, who was holding him.