Redeeming the Darkness

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Zane

MARCH

I don't know what Ivy's obsession with spring cleaning was all of a sudden, but she had Sandro and I helping her. She was in the living room hanging curtains on the window she hated and I was upstairs in my closet sorting through clothes. Apparently, I didn't need as much as I had.

"I don't understand why I have to go through my stuff," Sandro complained. "I don't even live in the house."

"I don't know, dude, just do it so we don't get yelled at again." She'd turned into a spitfire recently. Cleaning and organizing junk. Throwing away things I'd forgotten I even owned.

Ever since Christmas, when our families were here, I was beginning to feel differently about what I wanted my future to look like. I didn't like questioning the thing I'd worked so hard for, but I found myself doing exactly that. I didn't know that I wanted to act forever, now. I just knew I wanted Ivy and whatever future came with that.

The few times she'd brought up the contract, I tried to change the subject. I was so scared she'd want to walk away with the million dollars and leave me in the dust, so I chose to ignore the topic. I didn't want to hear her say that our love wasn't worth more than that to her. It would break me, more than anything I'd ever faced in my life, Ivy leaving would break me.

I heard the front door open and wondered what Ivy was taking outside until I heard a male voice. A voice I'd know anywhere.

"Richard watch out!" Ivy yelled.

"You stole them from me," he roared. Sandro was hot on my trail as I ran down the stairs, but before I even hit the bottom step I heard a loud crash and it felt as if my heart literally stopped.

I bolted into the living room and saw Ivy lying beside the ladder she'd been on. She wasn't moving and my dad was on his knees, looking at her with huge, frightened eyes.

"I tripped on the table," he slurred. It was like things were happening so fast, but my mind was working too slow to keep up with it. I knelt beside Ivy and moved her face so I could look at her. I placed my hand on her chest and realized it wasn't moving.

"Baby?" I asked.

She wasn't breathing.

She wasn't breathing?

Oh my God, she wasn't breathing.

"Sandro, call an ambulance!" I yelled. Ivy wasn't breathing, and, like a movie, my mind played back every conversation we'd ever had about CPR. I remembered her voice, "See how she tilted her head back? She's opening the airway."

"Open her airway," I whispered to myself. My hands were shaking uncontrollably, but I tilted her head back just enough and I held her nose shut as I pulled her mouth open. I breathed my breath into her and waited a moment before doing it again. I placed an open hand on her chest and put my other hand over it before I pushed down twenty times, the I moved back to her mouth.

I don't know how long it lasted, it felt like too long, like a lifetime, but someone had to eventually pull me off her. They placed something over her face and got her onto a stretcher before I realized the paramedics were in my living room. I looked around for Sandro and found him standing against a wall. He had tears running down his face and I imagined I did as well.

"Where is he?" I asked.

Sandro looked to the floor beside him and I moved to see my father laying down, crying. He had blood coming from his nose and I figured it was Sandro's doing.

"Make sure they take him. I'm going with Ivy."

He nodded at me and I walked out behind the men pushing my wife into the ambulance. I climbed in and felt numbness until I heard one of them say they got a heartbeat.