Strong For Too Long Trilogy ✔️

19. A Little Visit...A Long Goodbye

CHAPTER 19: A Little Visit...A Long Goodbye
(Aaron's POV)

Three more weeks of just rummaging through papers. He had an alibi on the day my girl was ripped from me. I look down at my hands, as if I could still feel her fingers gripping me the second she awoke from the surgery. I felt a part of me leave with her when her eyes had looked up at me, purely empty and I saw the life leak out of her eyes like tears running down her cheeks. All of me drained that day when the others were laughing from the time Branson shot me, a story, a memory I wanted to share with her, along with many more memories of her and I.

My arms were caging around her, still with one hand against her abdomen, warming her while laughter courses through the others as her dainty fingers run along my caress knuckles. I was happy in the fact I could provide her with this kind of warmth, "It was an accident," He complained, half glaring at me as Samsara snorts and Reynolds chuckles as he looks up at her from where he sits, "-we made a truce that you wouldn't speak of it again." I lean further down, intertwining our fingers, she didn't have a lot of strength, and I understood that, but I still needed to feel her grip on my fingers while I study her. I smile softly down to her, her green eyes staring up into my plain brown ones...she had no idea how in love with her I am.

"Fern lashed out and made us do sixty laps on the field before taking us down, one-by-one. Worst damn week of my life." Branson says, shaking his head as Harrison winces in remembrance. I look over to them, swirling my fingers along Olive's. She needed rest soon enough. I turn back to her and catch her eyes staring into me, I smile and wink down at her, but her expression doesn't change.

I rub her arm, "It's alright, just go to sleep, I'll be here when you wake up. Then, I'll be drilling into the fact we're creating more rules and boundaries, love. Not just in the field. I want to take you out...on a date. Maybe take you dancing, hell-you might be the one teaching me-" I look up slowly and stare into the same eyes that don't move...that hasn't moved.

"Olive." I say her name once.

Reaching for her shoulder, "Olive, baby?" I ask again. Before the laughter echoes and then the heart monitor rings a long beat. My body starts shaking as I sit up, "OLIVE!" I yell out her name. Samsara runs to the bed, I'm shoved out of the way by two doctors who get the electric fibrillation tool out and begin patching at her chest.

My eyes flicker. Tobias and the others stare at her, "No. No. No." Tobias murmurs and shakes his head, turning his eyes to mine. I shake my head profusely at him and spring back to Olive, gripping her cheeks, opening her eyes.

"Olive! Come on! No! DON'T DO THIS! OLIVE!" I scream for her, yelling at the doctors to keep going but after ten to fifteen minutes, the doors slam open and Pierce-be sprints around and breathing hard, two hands to her chest.

"Come on, young lady. No! Don't do this, I'm not losing another, sweetheart. Fern, get the advanced medical kit, there must be something in there to restart her heart, an antidote...infection must have...spread...we need to...we need to...NO!" He roars, gripping her cheeks and shaking her shoulders as Fern rips out the kit, almost slamming fists into the frozen doctors while I press one press, then two into her chest and I keep going.

I check her pulse, "It's not working. It's not working." I repeat, over and over again. Samsara cries out and falls back into Reynolds' awaiting arms, they both fall to the floor as Branson steps in next to me.

"No, she was fine before!" He yells at me as I sway on my feet, lips trembling as my eyes glass over, my fingers twitch at my sides and I stumble back as he checks for a pulse that I couldn't find no matter what I did. I wipe my eyes and strut over to the cabinets, slamming my fist into the locked ones and reading every vial imaginable. Nothing was strong enough. Nothing we were equipped for as Fern slides down on his knees and wheezes, hair gripped in whitening fingers.