SAVING CASSIDY

SIX

        The wait was long and hard. Ben had never had to wait for someone he loved in an ER waiting room. He was used to being behind the closed doors filling in the assessment on his tablet. He balked in disbelief when he was barred entrance past the double doors.

        "Are you family?" the nurse asked. And she had him. He wasn't family. He wasn't even her fiance and that was on him. He backed away, more than a little devastated.

        He paced frantically, kept going to the desk and asking for information and getting none.
He assumed when there was news, they would share it with him because he lived with her. Loving her, however, gave him no rights and they may not tell him even then.

        There was no wrapping his head around what had happened. She had no heart history, no seizure history. Except for her emotional state, she was a perfectly healthy 25 year old woman. And even her emotional state had been so good lately. Ben was completely lost.

        The thought of leaving the hospital without her made him feel sick and he finally had to sit down. Just when things had gotten so good. She'd seemed so much better.

        And the realization hit him like a punch to the gut, now that the adrenaline was wearing off: She was dead when I found her. Dead. If I hadn't been worried, had gone out for a beer with Jim instead of coming straight home...it would have been too late.

        Ben physically shook himself, banishing the thought of what could have happened.

        How long had she been dead?

        "Mr Marx?" someone called, and his head snapped up. Ben leapt to his feet.

        "How is she?"

        "She's stable right now. It was touch and go for a bit. Her heart wasn't happy."

        "But what HAPPENED?" Ben cried. The doctor frowned and started guiding him down a side hall.

        "Let's talk out here." Once in the deserted hallway, Ben turned on him.

        "What is it? A heart attack? Because she didn't have-"

     "Technically, she did go into cardiac arrest. However, it's what brought this on that has me concerned."

        "Which is-"

        "Mr Marx, your girlfriend took a lethal dose of Xanax and Ativan." The color rushed out of Ben's face. He shook his head in disbelief.

        "What?"

        "She overdosed. And as much of the medication we found in her system, we can rule out accidental overdose. This was intentional."

        "She would never do that." In all of her years, through all she'd endured, she'd never tried to kill herself.

        "Nothing like this has happened before?"

        "No. Never." Ben's voice was cold.

        "Has anything been going on? Something that may have triggered this? Have you noticed any changes in her?"

        "Actually she's been happier in the last three months than I think I've ever seen her."

        "And before that?" Ben hesitated, dropped his head.

        "She's had some problems. But she's always been tough. She's never-" then he stopped, remembering the night on the water tower more than seven years earlier. Despondently, he shook his head. "I didn't see it coming." He raked his fingers through his hair.