Chapter 11: Please Don't Die

"Code!" my father bellowed from his bed. "Somebody get a nurse! I'm having a heart attack!"

Every head in the corridor turned toward room 412.

The two officers at the station spun around.

"Officers!" Glenn yelled. "Over here! My chest!"

"Dad," I hissed.

"Go," he whispered, lowering his voice for me alone. "Go, Binnie. I'm fine. I've waited my whole life to do this."

I could have kissed him.

Bree was already pushing a wheelchair through the door.

We got Jude into it, all two hundred and thirty pounds of him, with Ollie lifting the dead weight.

Behind us the officers had reached Glenn's bedside, and my father was clutching his bandaged chest with the grand dramatics of a silent-film star.

"The service elevator," Bree whispered. "Supply B. No cameras, I checked once for a bad reason."

"Bree."

"Don't thank me. Move."

Supply B was a windowless room of shelves and boxes, and it smelled of bleach.

We laid him on the floor on a stack of folded blankets.

Bree slapped a portable monitor on his chest.

The rhythm on the screen was a mess: spikes, runs, a long ugly dip.

I started an IV in the back of his hand, pushed fluids and put oxygen on his face.

"Come on," I said. "Come on, come on."

"Sabine," Ollie said from the door, white as paper.

"Don't talk to me."

"Doc..."

"Don't."

I pressed both hands flat on his breastbone, where the pulse should be.

I felt the scratch under my palm, that tiny rough sound, and it was wrong.

"Jude," I said. "Open your eyes. That's an order."

Nothing.

"Without argument, remember?"

Nothing.

I put my face down by his ear.

"Please don't die," I whispered. "Please. I'm not done with you."

His chest rose.

The monitor spiked, slowed, and began to steady.

His eyelids fluttered, and I looked into those pale, blurred eyes and couldn't speak.

"You swore at me," he rasped.

"I did not."

"You said I was impossible."

"I said please," I said, and began to cry. "Idiot."

Bree quietly pulled Ollie out and shut the door.

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