His eyelashes flutter, his lids opening to show dilated pupils that can’t seem to focus on me. “I’seep, Daddy,” he says weakly.
“No, no. Don’t sleep.” Stroking his hair, I try to keep him awake. “Don’t sleep, buddy, okay?” I lift him into my arms, pressing him against my chest. “You can’t sleep yet.”
“I wan dede bew.” His teddy bear.
I don’t have time to look for it. I don’t even know if I have time to reach my phone. “Help me! Somebody, help me!” My shouts echo down the hallway, bouncing off the walls. Racing back toward my office with Roark in my arms, I find my phone on my desk and one-handedly dial 9-1-1.
“I’seep, Daddy.”
“No, no. Stay awake just a bit more, Roark.”
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” At the sound of another person on the other end of the line, all the urgency pours out of me.
“My … my son! He … he got into my … he took Ativan.”
“Calm down, sir, is he with you now?”
“Yes!” I tuck the phone against my ear to grip the back of Roark’s head, and gently lay him down onto the desktop.
His eyes are closed again, and if possible, his face a ghostlier shade of white.
“No, no, no! Roark, wake up!”
“Master Blackthorne, is everything all right?” At the sound of Rand’s voice, I hold out my phone.
“Talk to her for me! It’s emergency. Roark got into Amelia’s pills!” The moment he takes the phone from my hand, I turn back to my son. “Hey, buddy. You need to wake up.” I give a light shake and gently pat his cheek. “Roark, wake up.”
“Ambulance is on its way, Master.” Rand’s voice is a distant sound to the rush of blood pounding inside my ears.
“He won’t wake up. I can’t fucking get him to wake up!” I lean down, pressing my ear to his chest, listening for a heartbeat.
Nothing.
“Roark?” When I shift toward his mouth, I don’t feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. “He’s not breathing.”
“The operator says you need to perform CPR on him, Sir.”
“I don’t fucking know CPR!”
“Allow me, Master.” Setting a hand on my arm, Rand urges me aside, placing himself between me and my son, and within seconds, he’s going to work on his chest, while talking to the woman on the phone. Rounding the desk, I watch through a shield of tears as the only thing in this world that ever mattered, that ever gave me purpose, lies slipping out of my grasp.
Amelia enters the room, darting toward Roark, and at the sight of her, I imagine wrapping my hands around her throat. Squeezing until her face turns as ghostly white as Roark’s.
“What happened? What’s going on?”
A muscle in my jaw tics, as she stands beside Rand, stroking the boy’s hair.
“What did you do?” I grit past clenched teeth. “What the fuck did you do?”
The rage in my voice must reach her loud and clear, because she slowly lifts her gaze, eyes wide and cautious as if a monster stands before her.
“I didn’t do anything,” she says in that disgusting meek voice that, in this moment, makes me want to tear her vocal chords right out of her throat. “I swear I didn’t do anything, Lucian.”
“Your pills were in his room. Scattered on the floor around him.”
Her body jerks with a sob that she caps behind her palms, and tears spring to her eyes. She shakes her head. “I didn’t leave them in his room. I don’t know how he got to them.”
“He got to them because you’re fucking careless. Care. Less.”
“Master, please.” The desperation in Rand’s voice bleeds through his words as he resumes his compressions.
There’s no movement from Roark. No sign that his efforts are working.
Rand lifts the phone for the operator. “It’s not working. He’s not breathing, at all.”
“Keep with compressions until paramedics arrive,” I hear the operator say through the phone.
“Oh, God, Roark!” Amelia lowers her head to the table, her hand clutched to his face, and her sobs are nothing but an irritating distraction from the pain that waits to swallow me up. The agony that I can’t bear to face, for fear I’ll do something stupid.
Minutes tick until two men in uniform enter the room, followed by my mother.
“Lucian? Lucian!” Her voice is frantic, and when her gaze slides toward Roark, she collapses beside the couch across the room, holding her chest. “Oh, no. Oh, not my sweet boy. Not my sweet, baby boy!”
More minutes pass while they hook him up to machines and tubes and a contraption that pumps air into him. One of the men finally speaks into a radio comm, and all I pick up from that conversation is asystole and no pulse. He ends the conversation with, “I’ll notify dispatch. Thank you.”
“What’s going on? What’s happening? Are you taking him to the hospital?” The desperation and despair in Amelia’s voice is enough to curl my lip, and I fear what I’d do, if not for all these people standing around us.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s nothing more we can do. An officer is on his way. They’ll gather information for the coroner.”
“Coroner? As in … he’s … no. No.” She falls into one of the chairs behind her, wailing into her palms.
“He was talking. An hour ago. He told me he felt sleepy.” I can’t see through the blur of tears. “He asked for …” At the memory of his last request, I stride through the small crowd and out of the room, down the hall, to Roark’s bedroom. Scanning the toys lying about, I find his Dede tossed onto the bed. Snatching it up, I race back down the hall to find Amelia sobbing beside Roark, stroking his hair.
My father stands off to the side as emotionless as I’d expect.
I make my way around the desk, away from Amelia and the paramedics, and lower to my knees. Taking his small, cold hand in mine, I wrap his teddy bear in his limp arms.
“Roark, you have to wake up.” For a moment, it’s as if there’s no one else in the room except me and my son. I press my face to his soft baby cheek and inhale the scent of him. The lavender soap of his bath from earlier. “I should’ve left the paperwork. If I’d known …” The pain in my chest is unbearable, like an animal eating me from the inside out. The air turns thick and suffocating, and suddenly I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe. I slide him off the desk, clutching him against me as I fall to the floor. The agony rips through my chest as I rock him, just as I did the first time I held him in my arms. When he stopped crying. When he looked at me with trust and wonder in his eyes. And he stopped crying.
A broken sound of rage and suffering echoes through the room, and I realize it’s coming from me, as I clutch my son for the last time.
Voices reach the void inside my head.
I don’t even know how long I’ve stared at the spot on the desk where Roark’s body lay before he was taken away. An officer outside the office talks with my father, finally drawing my focus away, and in the thick of conversation, he makes eye contact with me and offers a sympathetic nod. When I lower my gaze, I notice the signet ring he’s wearing, and the conversation sharpens to clarity.