I swallow a few times trying to catch my breath as all the air leaves my lungs, and my knees buckle beneath me. As I’m searching for the courage to ask the question I already know the answer to, I hear the ambulance sirens in the distance and I don’t need to ask anything.
Wiping a tear from the corner of my eye, I bolt out of the room and take the ten flights of stairs down to the lobby where security is waiting for me. I can hardly think, but I know I can’t lose her. I can’t lose my best friend, my soul mate, my smile, my laugh—my everything.
They say she’s already on her way to the hospital in the ambulance. I want them to take me to see her now. No one knows what happened, just that someone heard screaming and called security. This car ride feels like the longest fifteen-mile drive of my life. My phone keeps ringing, but I can’t answer it. I just have to see her, my beautiful, perfect girl. I need to know she’s okay.
I slide open the photos I have of her. Some are serious, some are funny, some are quirky, and some are downright hot. All of them a reflection of her beautiful face, and the tears I’ve been holding back start to flow like the unease I feel about my inability to keep her safe.
Absorbed in my thoughts and the quiet of the car, I can barely even hear my own breathing. The heat is blasting and even though I’m not wearing a coat, I’m sweating. The security chief is talking to me, but I’m not listening until I realize he’s telling me we’re at the hospital. Rushing through the emergency room doors, I make my way through a very packed waiting room toward the small glass window at the reception desk. As I get closer I think I see Dahlia back behind it, but once I’m there, I realize it’s only wishful thinking.
Holding myself up against the counter, I feel slightly queasy. My nerves are getting the best of me. My heart is pounding a thousand beats a minute, my stomach is in knots, and the chill running through my body is making the shivering painful.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Putting aside any preamble of a greeting, I blurt out what I need from her. “My fiancée was just brought in and I need to see her now!” I’m raising my voice at this nurse and getting looks from others waiting behind me, but I don’t give a shit. I’m desperate to find my girl.
Her standard reply throws me into a tailspin. “Sir, are you family? Only family members are allowed back,” she says, handing me a form to fill out that reads: Non-Family Member Patient Inquiry.
I’m trying to keep my patience but losing the battle as I take the clipboard from her and repeat, “I told you, we’re engaged.”
She looks up at me with an expression that says she’s heard this before. “Sir, like I said, access is for the patient’s family only. Please fill that out, and have a seat. We’ll inform you of her condition once we get her permission.”
“She has no fucking family! I am her family!” I frantically yell through the window.
Taking a deep breath, I pull myself together. I complete the form and hand it back to her. I stand there trying to figure out what to do when I see the doors to the emergency room corridor open, and a patient is being wheeled out with her leg in a cast.
Looking at the nurse behind the desk engaged in talking to someone behind her as my clipboard lays idle in front of her, I know I have to do something. So without thinking of any consequences, I quickly walk through the open doors and enter the never-ending long hallway of drawn curtains. Once inside, I pause for a minute deciding the best way to go about finding her. I’m praying she’s actually back here and not in some operating room. Starting with the first curtain, I poke my head in trying not to disturb the person in there.