Page 105 of Crimson Love

“BP is dropping.”

“We don’t have time to wait for a full blood panel.”

“Prepare to pump her stomach and continue to flush fluids through her. Keep her oxygen on high. We don’t have to intubate yet.”

I don’t look away from the woman who has me in knots in ways I have no desire to find myself out of. She’s got me, lock and key.

And she’s on her death bed.

Closer to death than I ever was.

And it’s because someone was targeting me.

I don’t move the phone away, but I speak to the doctor. “Is she going to die?”

“Fuck,” Devon bites. “I’ll call Moretti. We’ll be right there.”

The doctor spears me with a grave expression. “We’re doing everything we can.”

M inutes stretch into hours. Over three to be exact.

I may lose my mind if someone doesn’t come out to give us an update soon.

They officially kicked me out when one of the machines went haywire. Harlow, Devon, and Patrick showed up a few minutes later. I’m not sure if I was going to implode or throw a chair through the waiting room windows.

The Winslet Community Hospital is small enough that there’s one waiting room for the whole place, but big enough to handle moderate traumas.

Can they turn around a patient who has possibly been poisoned?

I pray they work miracles.

Harlow hasn’t left my side. Devon and Patrick are both pacing the cold tile floors in front of me. Dean Moretti confiscated the rest of the gift basket and made sure no one else ate anything in it. He sent it to the largest town near Winslet with a full lab to test. Patrick has been on the phone with corporate security since he got here. I guess they’re working with Devon to study the surveillance videos to see who delivered it.

I can’t worry about that now. That’s for later when Lennon is healthy, and I have time to track someone down to murder them.

Or the alternative, if she’s not healthy or worse, which I can’t think about right now.

My head pops up from where I was cradling it in my hands when the security doors open from the trauma rooms.

I rush to my feet when I see the doctor who’d finally had enough of me and kicked me out.

I don’t say anything. I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life. Not even my own mortality. Not when I was in the Army and not when I was slowly dying from PKD. Mortality sucks, but I wasn’t afraid of it.

But Lennon’s?

I’m fucking terrified.

Harlow stands close to me and Devon next to her. Patrick flanks me on the other side, but no one touches me.

Fucking finally, the doctor breaks the silence, but not with words that soothe my soul. “We think it was a fast-acting toxin. We treated it as such since we had no time for a blood panel. We pumped her stomach and administered antidotes that wouldn’t hurt her after what her body went through today.”

I force myself to breathe, but it’s damn hard. I also can’t speak for fear of what I’ll ask and what the answer might be.

The doctor keeps talking. “Based on the reaction of the antidote, we believe the toxin was plant-based. The kind that disrupts oxygen and cardiac rhythm. The two together...”

She lets that thought trail off. I can’t take it another moment.

I take a step forward and feel Harlow’s grip around my forearm to hold me back when I demand, “Is she dead?”