Ambition

Chapter 18

 Rosalie

When your life demands full attention over something- your mind doesn’t have time to slow down and understand the realization of what has happened.

 Step one: flip him.

Step two: airway. No obstruction. This is good. Move on.

Step three: breathing. Breathing, but barely. Small chest rise. Okay, move on.

Step four: circulation. Check the carotid. Pulse: faint but there.

This is where most people’s partners come in handy. But here, I have none. The reality f the situation kicks in and threatens to overcome me.

Stop. Focus. Next move.

And that’s all there is, your next move. I race into the house and into my bedroom. In the back at the bottom of my closet sits a large plush duffle bag. I grab it hastily and race back to Filly’s desperate whines. I throw down the bag, unzip, and tear through its contents before pulling out a bag mask and the small green oxygen tank.

Fitting the mask to the face, I tighten the strands and set the tank to deliver 4 mL oxygen; more than I usually would set in this situation but under the so far situation splitting professional with personal situations I feel as though I’m doing fairly well.

Scanning the body for additional injuries I find nothing aside from small scratches along both knees that tore through the right pant leg, and several scrapes along the palms. No other emergencies.  He’s fine, I tell myself, he’s fine.

Except then I remember. I broke the number one rule. I rolled him. I rolled Harry and I knew that he’d fallen- but I was unsure of how he landed.

Concussion. Neck trauma. Spinal injury. Brain… I can’t recall how my phone came to be in my hand, how an ambulance or one of my best friends got to my house- how they’d opened the gate, how they’d known where to find us.

I can only remember screaming.

***

I watch as they reassess Harry, check all of my interventions, apply a collar, and drive us both away. I wasn’t allowed to stay in the box with him, but Jen insisted they allow me the courtesy of shotgun. The vehicle tore down the sloping roadway and pulled out into the highway in what felt like only moments. There are no sirens, but there are lights. Our path is bathed in an aura of red, and even the trees turn to blood.

“You did all the right things Rosalie,” the driver says next to me. His voice is familiar, but I cannot place him. All my thoughts are of the mangled version of a shirtless man, unconscious and cold in the grass.

Harry

Screaming. Too full, too long, and blood churning. The sound fear would make if he were man. It engulfs me. It does not hesitate, it does not pause for breath. It shrieks without break until is suddenly withers away.

I forget what happens next.  

Rosalie

The room the doctors finally deliver us to is crisp and white. The walls a tall but short in width, and there is a large square window overlooking a parking lot in the corner next to a set of plush beige chairs.  The temperature is depressingly cold, and I have disapprovingly abused the emergency button located on the side of the bed reserved for patients in quest for warmed blankets. The entire atmosphere throughout the hallways has been unsuccessfully renovated with decorative plants and falk paintings; an attempt at resorting happiness or something along that collective emotion. The air conditioning clicks on again above and I groan before rising in search for another cup of coffee to warm my hands and throat. The long hallways snake easily in a large rectangular pattern. If anyone were to ever get lost, four right turns and you’d be back at where you’d started- Ohio styled. A pass a few nurses whose faces have become familiar but names I have not cared to notice. We have been here long enough for me to notice that many of them have changed shirts, indicating that it must be around seven by now- my phone died on me many hours ago and I am forced to rely on the sporadic hanging clocks. I find the coffee station, freshly stocked- thankfully, and refuel. By the time I have returned to the room all my blankets have been removed from the chair and are out of sight. I huff, setting the coffee on the side table and reaching for the emergency button that rests alongside Harry. He arm has shifted and he is now covering half the cord. I click the large red button and he stirs beneath me.