Chapter 38 Thirty-eight

• The ventilator hisses with each breath it pushes into Dante's lungs. Beep. Hiss. Beep. Hiss. A rhythm that tells me he's alive, if nothing else.
• His skin is pale against the white hospital sheets, tubes snaking from his arms, his chest, his nose. He looks smaller somehow, less intimidating than the man who crashed through that warehouse door to save me. The man who took a knife meant for me.
• I stand at the foot of his bed, my fingers gripping the metal rail. It's been twenty-four hours since they wheeled him into surgery. Twenty-four hours of waiting, of praying to a God I'm not sure I believe in anymore.