Page 133 of We Are Yours

“Just take the fucking needle out of her arm!”

When he didn’t do it fast enough, Isla did it for him, as if she were focusing on the same thing, needing it as badly as I did. She chucked it across the yard.

Reaching for my cell phone in my pocket, I frantically pulled it out, my hands shaking. I was on the verge of losing my shit, not knowing what the fuck I should do.

Feel.

My vision began tunneling.

The sounds around me echoed in the distance.

My hands started to sweat.

My mind swirled back to the last time we found her like this. I was eight, and the ambulance had to give her Narcan. I thought we lost her then, but this was much worse because her lifeless eyes were staring right at me.

Anxiously shaking away the images, I called, hitting the speaker.

“911, what is your emergency?” she said on the other end.

“Melody! I mean… my mother… our mother… she’s… she’s not breathing… I…”

“Sir, you need to calm down. Help is on the way, but I need you to listen to me and do as I say so we can help your mom until the EMS gets there, okay?”

With wide eyes, I confessed, “I don’t want her to die, but I think she’s already dead…”

Tears brimmed my eyes.

“Is she in a safe place? Anything around her that she could hurt herself with?”

“No, she’s in my brother’s arms. She had a needle in her arm.”

“The EMS is en route and will be there in one minute.”

“Melody!” Julius yelled in a panic. “Come on, don’t do this to me! Don’t you fucking do this!”

I watched my brother fall apart in front of my eyes.

“Sir, you need to calm down, too. You can’t help her like this. She needs you to be strong. Can you do that for me? Can you do that for her?”

My eyes snapped to the front door when I heard knocking, seeing the red and white lights flashing through the front window. “Come in!” I shouted, ending the call with the operator.

They must have been near. They’d never gotten here that fast.

Two men and one woman dressed in uniforms rushed into the room, ushering us out of the way.

“Please! Help her!” Isla yelled, backing up to the adjacent wall. Using it to support her weight.

“Please! Help her!” I repeated, my vision zeroing in on her.

I dragged my hands through my unruly hair, trying like hell to shake the feeling that this was just our fate.

“Sir, calm down,” the woman coaxed with her hands out in front of her while the two men hovered around my mother, holding her down much harder and firmer than Julius was.

“You’re hurting her!” I shouted. “You’re fucking hurting her! Can’t you see she needs help!”

“They’re not hurting her, Kraven.” Julius grabbed me. “I promise they’re just doing what they’re trained to do.”

“Calm down?” I spit. “You want me to calm down when we just found our mother with a needle in her arm?!”