“Oh my God!” she cried, reaching out to touch my face only to stop inches away.
“I’m fine.” I caught her hands and folded them between both of mine. “It looks worse than it actually is.” Or at least I hoped so. “But we have to go.”
Her voice shook as she asked, “Where’s your EpiPen?”
“It’s in the truck, but I’d really rather just go to the hospital and let them handle it. I can breathe. I think I’ll be fine.”
She reined in her hysterics enough to shoot me a glare. “I don’t give a shit what you think, Bowen. You went from flush faced to Shrek in a matter of minutes. I’m not waiting around to see what the clock brings us next.”
She had a point. This wasn’t my normal reaction. I’d never actually had to use my EpiPen, but after Remi had insisted on learning how to use it in my office, I’d picked up one from the pharmacy that wasn’t three years expired.
I’d survived a plane crash for Christ’s sake. There was no fucking way I was letting a Goddamn nut be the thing that took me out.
“Fine. Come on,” I huffed.
Remi swirled around the house, grabbing both of our phones and her purse, and then snapped her fingers for my truck keys. After retrieving them from my pocket, I tossed them her way. I wasn’t a fan of the passenger seat, but my eyes were swollen to the point that I could only see through two narrow slits.
After helping me into my seat, she raced around and climbed in behind the wheel. “Where is it?”
“In my briefcase,” I replied as a wave of nausea crashed into me. I dropped my head back against the seat and focused on my breathing.
“It’s not in here,” Remi barked.
“Yeah, it is,” I rumbled, wondering how long it would take for her to ever consider having sex with me again after witnessing me throw up in her driveway.
“No, it’s not,” she snapped, panic creeping back into her voice.
Eyes still closed, I racked my brain. It lived in my briefcase. I hadn’t taken it out since I’d gotten it. “Check again,” I rasped, the act of talking becoming a chore. Not a good sign, I belatedly realized.
“It’s not in here!” she yelled.
I was aware of her opening and closing the center console and then the glove compartment as she frantically searched my truck, but my brain was no longer working on all cylinders.
“Bowen?”
I thought I replied, but her voice grew more panicked as she shook me.
“You’re wheezing. Oh God, Bowen!” Her tears felt like acid as they landed on my skin, but once again, there was nothing I could do to fix them.
Remi
“No more tears,” he whispered, stroking the top of my hair as I rested my forehead on the edge of his hospital bed.
I’d been sitting that way for over an hour. It was uncomfortable as hell, but I didn’t want him to see me cry anymore. Though it was clearly no secret.
Those minutes sitting in his truck, watching him struggle to breathe, were the scariest moments of my entire life. He’d stopped responding, his pulse was weak, and every breath became shallower than the last. I tried to keep my cool while talking to the 911 operator, but all I could see was the love of my life slipping through my fingers. At one point, right before the ambulance arrived, I thought he was dead.
And for a split second, it felt like I was dead too.
The paramedics were amazing. As soon as they arrived, they gave him a dose of epinephrine, and within minutes, Bowen was back.
A little woozy.
A little pale.
A lot sweaty and restless.
He’d managed a smile and told me to stop crying, but the tremble in his hand as they’d loaded him into the back of the ambulance was more than enough to keep the floodgates open.
I was not built for that kind of trauma. I always liked to think that in the face of an emergency I would be able to keep my head. But with one look at Bowen, knowing I was the only person standing between him living and dying, I’d lost it. Still, even hours later, I was paralyzed with fear. The what-ifs played in my head on a loop like an unescapable nightmare. I wasn’t going to be able to close my eyes for a week without seeing my strong, handsome man fighting for his life.
My shoulders rounded forward with a sob at the memory.
“C’mere, babe,” Bowen murmured quietly. “Get up here with me.”
I shook my head and croaked, “I’m not supposed to be in your bed. It’s a rule.”
“You think I give a fuck about hospital rules right now? Get up here, Remi. The other option is I climb into that chair with you, and I can promise that the nurses are going to be a lot more pissed about that.”
I let out a sigh because, based solely on his tone, I had no doubt he was serious. Also, the idea of being in his arms was more appealing than ever, so I risked a scolding from the hospital staff and crawled up beside him. Careful to dodge the IV they’d used to administer a healthy dose of Benadryl and the O2 sensor wrapped around his finger, I curled against his side. My head rested on his chest. It was our position and how we slept almost every night, but I’d never appreciated the steady rhythm of his heart more.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed.
His whole body spasmed. “Jesus, babe. What the hell do you have to apologize for? You did everything right. I owe you my life.”
I laughed, but it held no humor. “I almost killed you.”
“No, you didn’t—”
“I did, and it’s driving me crazy because I can’t figure out how. I spent over an hour at the grocery store yesterday buying all the ingredients for the spaghetti tonight. I checked every single label. Nothing was even processed in the same facility as peanuts. I called Aaron and he immediately went home to double-check everything. The only thing he used that I hadn’t specifically purchased was some dried parsley, but he sent me a picture of the label and it was nut-free too.”
The medicine had done its job. As he stared down at me, his face was almost completely back to normal—handsome, warm, and loving. “Cross contamination happens, babe. And not just at home. Companies don’t always label things correctly. And there’s always the possibility of an employee error even if they do.”
It was the same thing the doctors had said. None of it made me feel any better. He’d been eating food I had prepared for him. He hadn’t even asked if it had nuts or not. He’d trusted me and I’d failed him.
If anything worse had happened to him, I never would have been able to live with it on my conscience. The ache in my chest was agonizing and it was only a hypothetical. I couldn’t imagine the bone-slicing razor blade had it become a reality.
It wasn’t the time for blame, but there was something I couldn’t stop obsessing about. “Where the hell is your EpiPen?”
A groan vibrated his chest. “I have no fucking idea. It lives in my briefcase these days. The only thing I can figure is maybe it fell out at the office. It’s not small though, so I feel like I would have noticed. But I have no idea where else it could be. It’s crazy. I haven’t carried it in a long time, but then you made such a fuss about it that I started again. Then, for the first time in my entire life, I need it and it was nowhere to be found.”