Pulse

ONE

Summers in Montreal are typically a comfortable 24 degrees, with the breeze bringing the real feel down a couple of centigrades but today happened to be punishingly warm and it wasn't even 8 in the morning.

That, coupled with the unavoidable morning rush he'd just pulled into, had Dr. Julien Choi-Levesque wind down the window of his 1978 Chrysler Cordoba to let what little cool air in as the AC had gone bust again.

After a minute, he realized that the lack of breeze made it almost insufferable. The sweltering heat centred on the skin of his arm like a magnifying glass to the sun wasn't helping either. He promptly wound the windows back up again and that was when he heard the unmistakable scream for help.

Julien stuck his head out the gap in the window and squinted at the traffic ahead of him, suddenly realizing that the hold up wasn't due to the usual sea of office workers on their way to their 9-5's. There had been an accident.

He promptly unbuckled his seat belt and let himself out of the car, jogging about 15 cars ahead of him where he was met with a horrific mess and a poor guy entangled in the middle of it; the 33-year-old's own blood pooling around him as he pleaded for someone to help him.

33-year-old Alex Gagne had been driving down the stretch of Cedar Avenue when the driver of a 10-tonne truck heading for Segal's Market lost control and smashed right into the back of his car. Both were gravely injured but Alex took the brunt of the collision, with a shard of glass from the windshield of his car piercing through his abdomen.

Julien got down on his knees and rolled his sleeves up, carefully assessing the situation before him as a crowd of onlookers exited their cars, some of whom were simply curious but most were ready to assist when and where they were needed.

"Is it bad?" Alex asked, his skin pale as cold sweat formed on the surface of it.

"You might have seen better days buddy but you're in good hands alright? I'm an ER surgeon, my name is Julien. What's yours?"

"Alex. I'm just the guy who does your taxes," Alex joked, trying to take his mind off of the dire situation he had found himself in. "Is..is the other guy alright?" he asked.

"Someone's with the truck driver now. He's gonna be okay."

"Am I gonna be okay, doc?"

Julien was silent as he attempted to stop the bleeding from the gash on Alex's arm with a makeshift tourniquet. "We're doing everything we can, Alex. I need you to stay calm okay?" he said, realizing that Alex might not survive the move from the scene of the accident to the hospital.

From the dark pool surrounding him, Julien estimated that he had probably already lost about 1/3 of the blood in his body and would go into shock any moment now.

"My girls. They're having their first ever concert recital tonight and I promised I'd get off work early so I could be there on time," Alex said slowly, trying to catch his breath as he did so. "I'm not going to make it, am I?"

Julien held Alex's hands and felt the cool, clammy fingers grasping his desperately, clearly in fear as the final minutes of his life ticked away loudly in his mind; the blood flow to his brain and the rest of his body gradually decreasing.

"What's the ambo ETA?" Julien asked aloud and got a "3 minutes" response in return. "Come on, come on," Julien mumbled under his breath, his attention split between looking out for the ambulance in the sea of vehicles surrounding him, and holding on to Alex, quite literally.

"Doc, can you call my wife....tell her I'm sorry. I'm sorry...we can't have..."till we're eighty and old" the way I promised her...on our wedding day," Alex said, struggling to breathe as tears flowed down his cheeks freely.

Julien heard the sound of the ambulance in the distance but he knew that it would be just a couple of minutes too late by the time it got to them. He focused his full attention on Alex, sitting down next to him as Alex's grip on Julien's hand loosened, the strength leaving his body the same way his blood was.

"You said you have 2 girls. Tell me about them," Julien said, holding back his emotions as best he could.

"Twins... Everly and Kenzie. They just turned 5.." Alex said, a smile forming on his face as his mind drifted away to the final memory his brain would ever register—his girls dancing and laughing away as they practised their dance recital for The Nutcracker in the middle of the Gagne living room.

Alex held their hands as he twirled them around and around in their flowy tutus, giving each of his girls a peck on the cheek as he lifted them up off the ground and whispered endless "I love you's".

And then the world went dark and the approaching sound of sirens was the last thing he heard.

-

She winced as Dr. Dylan Beaulieu held the 10ml syringe over the now-numb injection site, telling her that it'll only be a momentary sting.

"Told her not to bother with the lights and that I'd fix them when I'm back from work but she's the perfectionist in the relationship," Aiden Cloutier said, holding his wife Sierra's hand while she repeated that a broken light was the last thing their baby girl needed when the little one takes residence in her nursery 2 weeks from now.

"Ankle doesn't look swollen but we'd run a couple more tests just to make sure that everything else is fine," Dylan said. As he scribbled some notes on her chart, he asked, "When did you have your last scan?"

"During my final trimester check and everything was fine then. Oh no...my baby, she's alright isn't she? The fall didn't hurt her...?" Sierra asked, now frantic when she realized that falling from the ladder and hurting herself was the last thing she should've focused on when she had a growing mind and heart beating within her.

"Baby's fine," Dr. Siobhan Ouellet said, assessing the patient while pointing at a screen. "She's kicking. See?" Siobhan said, indicating the baby ultrasound monitor and the active baby on it. "Have a name for her yet?" Siobhan smiled, placing the ultrasound probe back in its original position.

"Milicent...Millie, after her grandmother," Aiden said. "...who has been waiting to meet her ever since we announced that we were expecting. Not to mention her kid brother who's been asking every single day on when he gets to hold his little sister," he added.

Dylan nodded in agreement at Aiden's statement. "I know how that feels. It's like the whole village wants to know how the baby and the mom are doing. But I guess the plus side is how the baby has got a whole village looking out for them even before they're out."

"How far along?" Aiden asked, instinctively guessing.

"My wife's in the late stages of her third trimester...twins. And everytime I'm out, I swear I come home with a new onesie. The kiddos have at least thirty onesies already...each," Dylan laughed.

"Well I guess the up side's how you probably won't need to bother with the laundry for the first month," Sierra pointed out.

"Good. Because I'm spending every waking minute with those two munchkins," Dylan said, thinking back to the day Alexie and him found out the news that she was pregnant.

They had been trying for a little over three years now and the last thing they had expected were twins, considering how neither had twins in their family.

"You'd make a great dad," Alexie had told her husband when he mentioned how nervous he would be for the next 9 months and for that matter, the rest of their kids' lives.

"Just trust me on this one. We're gonna wing it as mom and dad but it'll all fall into place. And I wouldn't choose anyone else to raise kiddos with but you."

Dylan had trusted Alexie with everything, including his heart, the moment he fell for her nine years ago and he had hoped that he could trust her this time but somehow, in the inner recesses of his heart, he felt a gnawing worry that failed to disappear despite his best intentions.

"Welcome to fatherhood. You'll never stop worrying so long as you both shall live. And really, you wouldn't have it any other way," Aiden said knowingly and in that moment, the two fathers-to-be shared a bond stronger than any brotherhood ever will.