Collision

♥ RAYMOND'S POV ♥

She goes rigid in my arms before I can even get a proper look at her face.

"Hey. Hey, stay with me." I lower her carefully to the pavement, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other pressed to her wrist. Her pulse is there, but it's wrong — too fast, then too slow, stuttering like it can't decide what rhythm to keep.

I don't panic. Panic doesn't help anyone.

"Someone call an ambulance," I say, loud enough to cut through the small cluster of onlookers already gathering with their phones half-raised. "Now."

Someone finally moves. I keep my eyes on her face — pale, slack, a thin sheen of sweat along her hairline despite the cold — and something in my memory snags on her features, familiar in a way I can't place until the porch light catches her properly.

It's her.

Two years, and I'd know that face anywhere. The last time I saw it, it was streaked with blood that wasn't hers and terror that was, standing over Jasmine in a stairwell with her knuckles split open and her voice shaking as she told me to call someone, “...now, please, hurry.”

She never gave me her name. She left before I could even get her a chair to sit down in, slipping out while the healers worked on my sister, and by the time I turned around to thank her properly, she was gone.

Jasmine cried for a week straight asking me to find her. I never did. I sank the miserable bastard who hurt them in the sea but I couldn't find her.

The ambulance arrives faster than I expect, pack-owned and pack-staffed, and I climb in after the paramedics without waiting for permission.

"Pinnacle Hospital," I tell the driver. "Not the pack clinic. Pinnacle."

"Sir, protocol says—"

"I don't care what protocol says. Pinnacle. I'll clear it with dispatch myself."

He doesn't argue further. I pull out my phone as the doors slam shut, dialing before I've even sat down properly.

Forrest picks up on the second ring, voice thick with sleep. "This better be good, it's—"

"I found her," I say.

A pause, then something sharpens in his voice. "The woman from the stairwell? Jasmine's—"

"Yeah. She's in shock. Pulse is erratic, went down cold on the sidewalk outside Alcaraz Tower. We're four minutes out from Pinnacle."

"Four minutes—" I hear him moving already, fabric rustling, keys jangling somewhere in the background. "What triggered it? Injury, attack—"

"I don't know yet. She was already unsteady before I caught her. Something happened before I got to her."

"Vitals?"

I glance at the paramedic monitoring her. "Heart rate's climbing again. Blood pressure's low."

"Okay. Okay, I'm calling it in now, get Dr. Amado on standby too. Don't let them sedate her until I've seen her bloodwork, understood? Whatever's happening, I want to see it raw."

"Understood."

The line goes dead. I look down at her the rest of the ride — the shallow rise and fall of her chest, the tremor still running through her hands even unconscious — and I remember, unbidden, the way her scent clung to Jasmine's hair for days afterward, how my wolf had gone restless and strange every time I caught it, pacing under my skin for reasons I never let myself examine too closely. I told myself it was gratitude. Some primal instinct thanking the person who'd protected my blood when I couldn't.

I'm no longer sure that's all it was.

Forrest is waiting at the entrance when we pull in, white coat half-buttoned, another nurse already flanking him with a gurney.

"This way," he says, already moving. "Talk to me."

"Collapsed outside Alcaraz Tower. No visible injury. Shock symptoms, erratic pulse."

"Alcaraz Tower," he repeats, something flickering across his face before it's gone. "Alright. We've got her."

They wheel her through double doors that swing shut in my face, and just like that, I'm standing in a hallway that smells like antiseptic, with nothing to do but wait.

••••

Hours pass like wet cement.

The ICU doors stay shut. Nobody tells me anything, because I'm not family, I'm not pack, I'm nothing to her except a stranger who happened to catch her before she hit the ground. 

My phone buzzes.

Jasmine: Omg Raymond have you seen this?

A link follows. I open it without thinking.

The video loads and I watch it twice before the sound of it fully registers — a rooftop, a crowd, a man's voice sneering “I reject you, fat ass” on a rooftop full of people who cheer like he's said something worth celebrating. And there, in the middle of it, swaying but upright, is her. The same woman currently behind those double doors, fighting for a steady heartbeat. The same woman who once stood between my sister and something unspeakable and never once asked for anything in return.

Something in my chest goes white-hot.

Jasmine: It's her.. she's the one who saved me that night, remember?

I don't answer her. I can't, not right now, not with my jaw locked this tight and my hands curled into fists I don't remember making. She has no idea the woman in that video is the one fighting for her life behind the ICU doors.

The same doors open before I can spiral further.

Forrest steps out, mask pulled down, exhaustion etched into every line of his face.

"She's stable," he says first, before I can ask. "For now."

"For now?"

"Raymond." He rubs a hand down his face. "I need you to understand what we're looking at here, because it's not simple shock. Her body's saturated with corticosteroids at levels I've genuinely never seen outside oncology patients."

"I don't—" I shake my head. "Explain it like I'm not a doctor."

"Corticosteroids regulate stress response, inflammation, metabolism — in small, controlled doses, they're medicine. In the amount she's carrying, they've been hammering her adrenal system for what looks like years. Suppressing it, overworking it, until tonight something pushed her past what it could handle and the whole system just—" He snaps his fingers. "Shut down."

"Years," I repeat.

"Years, Raymond. This isn't a one-time overdose. Someone has been feeding this into her system consistently, for a very long time."

The hallway goes very quiet around me.

"She didn't do this to herself," I say. It isn't a question.

Forrest holds my gaze, grim. "No. I don't think she did. If anything, that might be the reason she's so overweight.”