Chapter 2 - The Cold White Room
“Speak,” Ethan rasped, his voice raw, stripped of all its commanding baritone. “Tell me what is wrong with her.”
“She has a grade-four splenic rupture and extensive retroperitoneal hemorrhaging,” Gregory said, tossing the bloody gloves into a biohazard bin with a sharp snap. “She has been bleeding internally, slowly, insidiously, for at least eight weeks. Every time she stood up, her blood pressure cratered. Her liver is under immense ischemic stress, and her hemoglobin was at a level where most people are in a deep coma.”
Ethan leaned against the cold concrete wall, his lungs failing to pull in enough oxygen. “How? She doesn't fight. She doesn't leave the perimeter without an escort.”
Gregory let out a sharp, mocking laugh that bounced off the stainless-steel counters. “You really don't know, do you? You sit in that glass office on the fiftieth floor playing God, and you have no idea what happens fifty feet from your gate.”
Ethan stepped forward, his eyes burning with black fury, but the doctor didn't flinch.
“In August,” Gregory said, stepping directly into Ethan’s space, “your convoy was ambushed on Route 9. Your security team claimed they eliminated all three shooters. They missed one. A runner slipped down the ravine toward the service entrance behind the conservatory.”
Ethan went entirely still.
“Clare was out there,” Gregory continued, his words falling like hammers. “She was cutting hydrangeas for your study. She saw the gunman approaching the back doors where the kitchen staff and the young delivery boys were unloading supplies. The man was wounded, erratic, holding an automatic weapon. Do you know what she did, Ethan?”
Ethan couldn't speak. His throat felt full of glass.
“She didn't scream. She didn't call for your guards because she knew by the time they reached the orchard, the kitchen boys would be dead. She took a heavy iron pruning spade and struck him from behind. In the struggle, he smashed her against the stone fountain and kicked her in the flank three times with steel-toed boots before the garden dogs finally tore him down.”
Ethan grabbed Gregory by the lapels of his white coat, his fingers bunching the fabric until seams popped. “Why wasn't I told? Why wasn't there a report? Who buried this?”
“She did!” Gregory snarled, ripping Ethan’s hands off his chest. “She brought the kitchen staff into her confidence. She made every single one of them swear on their mothers' graves not to tell you. Because you were in the middle of closing the Voss acquisition, and you told her two days prior that if the estate security failed again, you would purge the staff and replace them with mercenaries.”
The memory struck Ethan like a physical blow. He had screamed at the head of security in the dining room over a minor gate breach: *“If one more idiot lets a shadow slip onto my land, I will clear this house down to the floorboards. I don't care about their families. I don't care about their excuses.”*
Clare had been setting his coffee down at that exact moment. Her hand had shaken.
“She came to my clinic in the city alone,” Gregory said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “She told me she fell down the stone steps. I didn't believe her, but she refused the scans. She took a couple of painkillers and told me she couldn't stay because you were coming home for dinner and you hated an empty house.”
Ethan’s knees finally buckled. He caught the arm of the chair to keep from hitting the floor.
“She bled into her own belly for two months,” Gregory said softly, ruthlessly. “Carrying your house. Soothing your capos. Listening to your insults. And when the pain finally became too great to bear, she tried to ask you for five minutes of your precious, untouchable time.”
“Can you fix it?” Ethan whispered, looking up through eyes that burned with unshed tears. “Gregory. Money is nothing. Fly in whoever you need. Take my blood. Take whatever organs she needs. Can you fix it?”
“We stopped the primary bleed,” Gregory said, turning his back toward the double doors. “We removed the damaged tissue. But she lost too much, too fast, and her body went into hypovolemic shock on the table. Her heart stopped for ninety seconds, Ethan.”
The world narrowed to a sharp, screaming point.
“Did she...”
“She’s in a medically induced coma,” Gregory replied. “If the swelling in her brain doesn't subside within forty-eight hours, she won't wake up. And even if she does... her body may simply decide it has had enough of carrying your weight.”
The doctor pushed through the doors, leaving Ethan alone in the fluorescent white corridor.
The phone in Ethan’s pocket vibrated. It was Julian Voss.
Ethan took the phone out, looked at the name of the man who had occupied his every waking thought for six months, and threw the five-thousand-dollar device against the marble wall, shattering it into a hundred useless pieces.
He walked to the ICU window and pressed his palm against the glass, right where her pale, motionless face lay in profile.
May you like
“Clare,” he murmured, the name tasting like ash on his tongue. “Don't you dare close your eyes on me.”
***