Chapter 424
She was wearing a baseball cap pulled low and oversized sunglasses, though there was no sun down here. Jeannine’s driver stood by the door, a silent sentinel.
“Dr. Evans will be with you shortly, Mrs. Koch,” a nurse said, handing her a clipboard. “Just fill this out.”
Eliza took the pen. Her hand was trembling.
Reason for visit:
She hesitated. Then she wrote: Nausea. Fatigue. Possible pregnancy.
She handed it back.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
Then, faintly, a rhythmic beeping came through the wall. The alarm of a medical machine. Beep… beep… beep…
Eliza’s heart synced with it. It was a familiar sound — the sound of the ICU.
A wave of dizziness washed over her. The room tilted. The floor seemed to rise.
“I need water,” she whispered.
She stood and reached for the cooler in the corner.
Black spots danced at the edges of her vision. Her knees buckled. She didn’t feel the impact when she hit the floor.
Thud.
In the next room, Dallas’s eyes snapped open.
“What was that?”
“Just someone in the waiting room, Boss,” Simmons said, glancing nervously at the door.
“It sounded like a body.” A strange, cold dread seized Dallas’s chest — not logic, but raw instinct. “Who is out there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Check.”
Simmons hesitated. “Boss—”
“Check!” Dallas roared. The effort sent the dialysis machine blaring a pressure warning.
Simmons, his face grim, stepped out into the hallway. A moment later, his voice came back — tight with alarm.
“It’s — it’s Mrs. Koch. Eliza. She collapsed.”
The words cut through every layer of fog and pain. Dallas didn’t think of the tubes. He didn’t think of the consequences. He tried to push himself upright, his muscles screaming in protest. The dialysis machine shrieked, its red lights flashing as the lines strained.
“Boss! No — you’ll tear the lines!” Simmons’s voice was urgent, but Dallas barely heard it.
“Eliza!” The word tore out of him, a desperate, rattling sound. His vision swam. He was too weak. Too broken. The strength that had always been his weapon had deserted him entirely.
Simmons rushed back in and pressed him gently but firmly back onto the bed. “She’s being attended to, Boss. Dr. Evans is with her. Lie still — you’re going to hurt yourself.”
Dallas fought, a primal sound tearing from his throat. His hand, still tethered to the machine, reached out blindly toward the wall — toward where he knew she was. He wanted to rip the lines free and crawl to her. But his body betrayed him.
The effort was too much. His heart, already barely holding on, sputtered. A sharp, blinding pain lanced through his chest, and his vision narrowed to a dark point.
He felt himself fall back against the bed, the world spinning away. But even as the darkness claimed him, a single thought echoed: Eliza. Protect Eliza.
The medical team stood frozen for a half second, staring. Dallas — unconscious and bleeding from the strained dialysis lines, his face etched with desperate anguish. In the hallway, Eliza was being lifted onto a gurney, limp and unresponsive.
.
.
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