Chapter 6 - THE STERILE TRUTH
The ICU was a labyrinth of glass doors and beeping monitors.
The air was colder here,
a clinical,
artificial chill that made my skin crawl.
I found the lounge,
a small room with plastic chairs and a TV muted on the news.
I paced the floor,
counting the tiles,
until a man in a white coat entered.
"Mr. Miller?"
He asked,
looking over a clipboard.
"I'm Dr. Aris.
I've been treating Sarah."
"What's wrong with her?"
I asked,
stepping toward him.
"Is she conscious?"
The doctor sighed,
a sound of practiced sympathy.
"She's in a medically induced coma for the moment,"
he said.
"Her body went into shock after a massive internal hemorrhage."
I felt the blood drain from my face.
"Hemorrhage?
From where?"
The doctor looked at me,
his eyes assessing my reaction.
"Mr. Miller,
did Sarah tell you about her condition?"
"No,"
I said,
my voice cracking.
"I saw her a month ago.
There was some blood on the sheets,
but she said it was nothing."
The doctor shook his head slowly.
"It wasn't nothing.
Sarah has an advanced stage of a rare vascular disorder."
He explained the medical terms,
words like 'aneurysm' and 'systemic failure.'
But all I heard was that she had been dying for months.
"Why didn't she tell me?"
I whispered,
sinking into one of the plastic chairs.
"She didn't tell anyone,"
the doctor said.
"She's been refusing treatment for the last six weeks.
She told us she wanted to live her life without the hospital walls."
Six weeks.
That meant she knew when she saw me in the bar.
She knew when we walked on the beach.
She knew when she came back to my room.
She didn't sleep with me because she wanted a second chance.
She slept with me because she wanted to feel alive one last time.
The red stain wasn't a mistake.
It was the beginning of the end.
"Can I see her?"
I asked,
my vision blurring.
"Briefly,"
the doctor said.
"But be prepared.
She's very weak."
He led me to a room at the end of the hall.
Through the glass,
I saw her.
She was surrounded by tubes and wires,
the machines breathing for her.
She looked so small in the hospital bed,
lost in the vastness of the white sheets.
Her skin was the color of parchment,
her hands resting lifelessly at her sides.
I walked in,
the smell of ozone and medicine filling my lungs.
I took her hand,
feeling the coldness of her fingers.
"Sarah,"
I whispered,
leaning close to her ear.
"I'm here.
I'm so sorry I didn't see it."
The monitors continued their steady,
unfeeling beep.
She didn't move.
She didn't wake up.
But I felt something in the room,
a presence that wasn't there before.
It was the weight of the "something darker" the nurse had mentioned.
It wasn't just the illness.
There was a reason she had kept me as her contact.
And as I looked at her,
I noticed a small,
black notebook tucked into the drawer of the bedside table.
The nurse saw me looking.
"She had that with her when she came in,"
May you like
she said.
"She told the paramedics it was for you."
