Page 69 of It Happened on a Sunday

Sly

I watch in horror as Sloane collapses onstage.

Pauline shouts in alarm and dives to catch her, but Sloane goes down too fast and slams into the stage face-first.

My whole body is numb as I rocket up the stairs, my mind screaming no, no, no as I race to get to her.

“Somebody call an ambulance!” Pauline screams into the mic as she drops to her knees beside Sloane.

I leap across the stage and land on the other side of her, then grab onto Sloane immediately. She’s a dead weight as I roll her onto her back, her eyes closed, lips and skin tinged a horrifying light blue.

For one long, terrifying second, I can’t do anything. I can’t think, can’t breathe. I can only kneel there in horror as I realize she isn’t breathing. Her chest is as still as the rest of her.

“Fuck, no! No, no, no! Sloane, corazón, please, don’t do this to me. Don’t do this,” I repeat, my world turning inside out as I slide my hand up to her neck to check for a pulse.

It takes several seconds—each one agony—before I find it. It’s faint, really faint, but it’s there.

“What the fuck did you do to her?” Pauline demands as she leans over and slaps Sloane’s cheeks several times.

Sloane rallies for a second, her eyes opening and lips moving like she’s trying to speak. But then her eyes roll back in her head and she goes completely still again.

“Sloane Walker!” Pauline slaps her again. “Come on, baby. Wake up for me.” When that doesn’t work, she grabs her shoulders and shakes her like a rag doll. “Wake the fuck up, Sloane!”

This time there’s no response at all, not even an eye twitch.

“What did you give her?” Pauline demands again.

But I’m too busy trying to remember my college CPR to answer.

Tilt her head back.

Pinch her nose.

Cover her mouth and breathe out.

“Did someone call an ambulance?” Pauline yells into the crowd.

“I did.” Marco levers himself onto the stage, phone in hand. “It’s chaos down there, so G and Jaime are at the door, waiting for them to get here. What can I do?”

“She’s not breathing,” I tell him as I tilt her head back to try to clear her airway and see if she can breathe on her own.

When that doesn’t work, I pinch her nose, lean over, and breathe into her mouth, watching the quick rise and fall of her chest as her lungs inflate with my breath. I do it two times, then lay my hand on her chest.

Please, please, please. I can’t lose her. I just fucking found her. Just let myself believe in a future. And now the universe is calling game over before we ever reached the end zone?

“Please, Sloane. Breathe, baby. Please.”

But there’s still no response.

“Ambulance is five minutes out,” Marco says as he puts his phone on speaker.

“She won’t last five minutes without oxygen!”

Tilt her head back.

Pinch her nose.

Cover her mouth and breathe out.

Even as CPR protocol runs through my brain on a continuous loop, I can’t believe this is happening. Not to mention trying to figure out how it happened. She was perfectly fine ten minutes ago, laughing and talking and—

I bend down and deliver two more breaths. Then check her pulse again. It’s even fainter now. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Marquis, Drew!” I yell. “See if they have an AED!”

“I thought you said she had a heartbeat,” Pauline whimpers.

“I just want to be prepared,” I tell her as I bend over and deliver two more breaths, making sure Sloane’s chest rises and falls.

Marco takes over monitoring her pulse while I breathe for Sloane over and over again as we wait for the ambulance to arrive. Somewhere in the middle of it, Marquis jumps onstage and says, “There’s no AED, man.”

“It’s okay. She’s still got a pulse, right, Marco?”

He checks again. “It’s still there, but it’s really hard to find.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Are you sure we don’t need to start CPR?” I ask the 911 operator.

“Not if there’s a pulse,” she responds. “Just keep breathing for her. The ambulance is close.”

“How close?” Pauline shrieks.

Just then, I hear a siren in the distance and can only pray that it’s for Sloane.

“Come on, baby,” I mutter. “Come back to me. Please, please come back to me.”

I give her two more breaths just as the paramedics burst through the venue doors and come racing for the stage.

“What happened here?” the female paramedic asks as she pushes me out of the way and checks vitals.

“I don’t know. She passed out onstage, and by the time I got to her, she wasn’t breathing. There’s a heartbeat, but barely.”

“She’s nonresponsive,” the male paramedic says into his phone as the woman begins compressions. “Pupils dilated, pulse thready, no respiration.”

He’s pulling stuff out of his bag even as he’s speaking.

“What kind of drugs is she on?” his partner asks. The way she looks at Sloane—like she’s a problem, not a person—makes something hot and ugly coil in my gut, even when I know it’s her job to do so.

“None,” I tell her. “She doesn’t do drugs.”

“She’s not going to be in trouble for it,” she tells me. “We just need to know what she took—”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t think she took anything . Something else is going on here.” Even as I say the words, I know how naive they sound, even before the two paramedics exchange a look.

“What’s her name?” her partner asks.

“Sloane.”

I can see the second it hits him. He looks at Sloane sharply, then up at me, then over to Pauline, and then back at me. “This is Sloane Walker,” he tells his partner.

And just like that, any chance I have of convincing them that this isn’t an overdose goes out the window.

This is how it starts. The whispers, the headlines, the assumptions. The Black Widow caught in her own web until it strangles her.

“We’re going to give her Narcan, see if it gets her breathing,” he tells me.

“If it does?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

“If it does, she’s on an opiate,” the other paramedic answers. “If it doesn’t, we’ve got bigger problems.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” I tell Pauline, but she’s not listening. She’s staring down at Sloane like will alone can revive her.

“Here goes,” the paramedic tells his partner as he inserts what looks like a nasal spray canister into Sloane’s nose and depresses the bottle.

Please, please let it work .

Even as I beg God and the universe and fate for the Narcan to work, I doubt it’s going to.

Because nothing I know about Sloane, nothing I’ve seen in the months we’ve been together, has given me any reason to believe she uses.

I know we haven’t been together in person that much and that addiction can be a hidden disease.

But we’ve talked every single day, multiple times a day, since our first date, and she never sounded anything but stone-cold sober.

And she doesn’t drink, either. Not the way I’d expect someone with substance abuse problems to.

“How soon will we know—” I start.

Before the paramedic can answer, Sloane gasps for breath, her entire body coming off the ground with the force of it.