“No, it’s not finished,” Beau choked out. “Not you and me, Ari. We’re just beginning. You hang on. Don’t you dare give up. Do you hear me? This isn’t finished!”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head, hot tears sliding down his cheeks.
“Don’t go, Ari. Don’t leave me. I love you,” he said brokenly.
He bowed his head, pulling her closer into his body even as his fingers stroked her neck, searching for a pulse. There’d been so much blood. So much mental strain. How could anyone survive something like this?
Her breath, so light and erratic puffed and then stuttered against his skin. And then she went utterly still. No rise and fall of her chest. No air exchange. No pulse. Nothing.
“No!” Beau roared in fury, denial raging in his mind, heart and soul. “Goddamn you. Come back to me, Ari! You can’t leave me. You can never leave me!”
Zack and Gavin managed to pull Ari from Beau’s grasp and they laid her on the floor of the helicopter so they could begin CPR. But it was all distant. Like it wasn’t really happening. As though Beau was watching it happen to a complete stranger with mild curiosity.
Only this was no stranger. Ari was his entire world. Without her to share it with him, it simply wasn’t worth getting up in the mornings.
She wasn’t responding to Zack and her father’s urgent attempts to bring her back. It was simply too much for Beau to handle any longer.
He dropped to the floor and gathered Ari’s limp body in his arms and rocked back and forth, his face buried in her hair.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Please don’t leave me, Ari. Stay. Fight this. Fight for us. Just please don’t leave me when it took so long for me to find the other half of my soul.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
BEAU paced the interior of the waiting room like a caged lion, edgy, raw, his nerves so jagged that any sound whatsoever set his teeth on edge. Every time one of the medical staff opened the door to the waiting room, he surged to attention, hoping it was someone bearing news about Ari.
He hadn’t wanted to be separated from her, not even for a minute. But the nurses hadn’t been swayed by his harsh demands, pleas or frustrated raging. Not even her parents had been allowed back while the doctor and other nurses worked rapidly to stabilize her. He’d drawn no comfort from that fact, because while he wanted to be with her, absolutely, he just didn’t want her to regain consciousness alone and frightened.
And judging by the restless, worried expressions on her parents’ faces, they weren’t faring any better than he was.
He closed his eyes, remembering the warning from so long ago. Tori’s dream. In reality, not that much time had passed, but so much had happened since then that it seemed a lifetime ago. Him, covered in blood, on the floor. He’d been right about one thing. It wasn’t his blood in his sister’s dream. It had been Ari’s. But Tori hadn’t seen something that had already occurred. She had seen the future. Ari’s fate.
Dane, Eliza, Capshaw and Isaac had arrived an hour and a half after the helicopter had touched down on the roof of the hospital. If the personnel had been taken aback by the strange aircraft, they hadn’t let on. They’d set about briskly and efficiently doing their jobs. Saving Ari’s life.
But Beau was worried about the amount of blood loss she’d incurred. It seemed she’d lost over half her volume. Just what she’d lost with the multiple and continuous psychic bleeds would be enough to fell anyone. Add a gunshot wound on top of that?
She had lost and regained a pulse numerous times on the helicopter flight to the hospital. Upon arrival they’d intubated her and began CPR again.
That was hours ago. What the fuck could be taking so long? Didn’t they know there were people out here dying a slow, agonizing death waiting to know if Ari lived or died? Would it kill them to give some kind of update?
But then if she’d died, they would have already reported that, so he took comfort from the fact that not a single person had been out to give Ari’s status.
Beau had been on the phone with Caleb and Ramie every hour since Ari’s arrival at the hospital. Ramie had wanted to fly out in Caleb’s plane immediately, but Beau had convinced her not to. There was little she could do and Beau would prefer they not leave Tori alone with only Quinn for protection. His little sister was still in a very fragile, vulnerable state, and subject to anxiety attacks if left alone for more than a few hours.
Quinn, too, had called, though his younger brother hadn’t even met Ari. Apparently Caleb and Ramie had filled him in, though, because he was anxious over the condition of his “future sister-in-law.”