Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(124)

“I’ll come with,” Yari says.

“I’m gonna call the sitter.” Iris fishes her phone from her jeans pocket. “I know August is on his way home, but I need to talk to her myself.”

“We’ll be right back,” I tell her.

Once outside, the “fresh air” Billie needed is a smoke break. Yari and I step a breathable distance away from her noxious puffs. It’s later than I realized. Or rather, earlier. It’s morning. We arrived in the middle of the night, and the sun has already started its climb, illuminating another day. A vise cross-stitched from anxiety and fear still grips me by the throat, but with each passing second, I breathe easier. He’s not out of the woods yet, but he will be. Void of complications, he’ll recover. I cling to that and try to clear my mind of the scenarios that tortured me while I tried to reach him.

“Glad the rain stopped,” Yari says, leaning against the brick wall a few feet down from the glowing tip of Billie’s cigarette.

“I know.” Billie takes a long draw. “It supposedly never rains in Southern California.”

I’m about to agree when I hear it. The faintest whisper I’ve learned to trust.

Look up.

And I see what I’ve only ever seen once before. The thing most never witness once in a lifetime, I’ve now seen twice. Colors set aflame, an omen streaking through the clouds. A fire rainbow.

“No.” The word ejects itself from my body. A denial. A rebuttal to the sky’s prophecy. “No.”

“What?” Billie asks. “No, what?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I sprint back to the hospital entrance and down the hall, my legs and arms pumping, my heart exploding. I barrel around the corner and into the waiting room. Iris sits there alone, still chatting with the sitter, I presume.

“Iris,” I say in a rush of breath and terror. “Something’s wrong. I have to go to him right now.”

Eyes widening, she says a hasty goodbye and disconnects the call. “But the doctor said—”

“I don’t care what the damn doctor said,” I scream and start down the hall I saw Dr. Madison take, dragging Iris with me.

“Wait!” Iris resists, digs her heels in and stops us. ”You heard Dr. Madison. We can’t see him yet. Void of any complications—”

“I need you to come with me, Iris. Please shut the fuck up and help me find him.”

Yari rushes in, chest heaving. “Lo, what’s wrong?”

“If you can calm down,” Iris says soothingly, “and tell me what—”

“I won’t calm down,” I screech, ignoring their wide eyes and gaping mouths. “There’s something wrong. I know it!”

Billie rounds the corner, frantically searching our faces. “What’d I miss? What’s wrong?”

“Lotus wants to see Kenan now,” Iris says. “But, honey, we can’t see him yet. We—”

“Come with me,” I beg, my voice breaking on a sob. “I need you, Bo.”

Her eyes lock with mine, and something, I don’t care what—my desperation, our lifelong bond, the desire to placate me—persuades her and she nods.

“I don’t understand.” Iris’s sigh is resigned. “But I’ll come with you.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, pulling her down the hall behind me. “Thank you so much.”

I speed-walk past the reception desk, ignoring the woman yelling at me to stop. I check each room, peering through the windows and jerking open doors.

“Lotus, you can’t do that,” Iris hisses a warning from behind me. “I got the receptionist to wait on calling security, but you’re gonna get both our asses dragged out of here.”

I ignore her and keep walking until goosebumps scatter across my arms. My steps stutter, and my breath shallows as cold assaults my flesh.

“It’s this one,” I whisper.

I push open the door, startling the medical team with paddles poised over Kenan’s chest. My magnificent man, a massive frame barely contained by the hospital bed. The specter of that night, of that premonition in MiMi’s house, can’t compare to the reality of seeing my beloved still and lifeless. For a moment, I have no words and can only make the wounded sound of a snared animal. I’m that trapped and helpless.

But only for a moment.

“Do it,” I bark, pointing to the paddles.

“Miss, you can’t be in here,” Dr. Madison says gently, not bothering to question why I’ve burst in on the chaos of the room. “We’ve done it several times.”

She said you were the strongest of us all. She said all the power we didn’t want passed on to you.

Aunt Pris’s words drift back to me, spurring me on, building my confidence.

“You haven’t done it with me here,” I say sharply. “Do it again. Just do it again, please. Do it again. Do it again.”

The words become a chant, an incantation tumbling from the lips of a madwoman.

“We’ll break his ribs if we continue the compressions,” a nurse tells Dr. Madison.

“If he’s dead,” I spit out, “will it matter if his ribs are broken? Do something. Please. Please. Please. Please.”

“Okay.” The doctor shifts his eyes from the equipment to the technician. “Prepare to do it again.”