Page 39 of Worthy or Knot (Serendipity Omegaverse #3)

Thirty-Nine

MARCUS

C harlotte’s draped herself over the arm of both our chairs and laid her head against my forearm.

Her soft sniffles cut through the overbearing silence surrounding us.

Without opening my eyes, I reach for her, palming her thigh without error.

Her shock bleeds through the communal bond, fainter than any of Cole’s emotions.

I keep my own emotions under wraps, bottling them up where they won’t hurt her.

Instead, I focus on the way her hair smells, the fruity overtone of her dry shampoo blending with her sage scent.

It’s a pairing I know intimately, and it helps settle my stomach in a way little else has today.

Megan adjusts on my other side, her arm brushing mine.

Her phone chimes, but she doesn’t say anything.

A minute passes, and then Charlotte’s crying grows more distraught, falling back into the way she’d been when I’d first gotten to the hospital.

That had been hours ago. Lunch has come and gone, but none of us have bothered to leave to get something to eat.

It’s hard to even imagine leaving here right now.

I adjust on the unyielding chair, crossing my ankles instead of my knees this time.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

I tighten my hold on her leg and kiss her temple, still keeping my eyes closed.

“Lottie, it’s okay,” Megan reassures her. “There’s nothing you could have done. It’s not like an epipen that anyone can just use. The emergency medications are finicky at the best of times.”

It’s something Megan’s told us both multiple times while we’ve sat here and waited for any kind of news from the medical staff.

Charlotte nods, and her crying quiets without fully dissipating.

Tears fall on my arm, wetting my already ruined sleeve.

I don’t bother to move her. A ruined Oxford is the least of my concerns right now.

Steps echo around the small waiting room, similar to nearly a dozen other times since being brought here.

This time, though, they pause rather than continue past us.

“Pack Harper?” an unfamiliar man says.

Charlotte sits up with a sharp inhale, her anxiety a flood through the bond. I take a long breath before opening my eyes and turning toward the voice.

Three people stand at the threshold of the small waiting room.

A middle-aged man with gray hair and beard and frameless glasses tucks his hands into black slacks, casually moving his white jacket out of the way.

A small, no-nonsense bit of embroidery sits just above the chest pocket: Dr. Faulks, Neurologist. The man and woman who flank him wear identical navy blue scrubs, their IDs naming them as ICU staff. The woman frowns as she looks at Megan.

“Megs?” she asks. “Oh, god.”

Megan gives a tired half-smile. “Hey, Brandy.”

The doctor clears his throat. “Hello, Pack Harper. I’m Dr. Faulks.”

I ease to my feet and shake his offered hand, taking the informal lead of the three of us.

“I’m Marcus. These are my partners, Charlotte and Megan,” I say, gesturing to each of them. His eyes skate over them both before returning back to me. His stark gaze lays me bare. Without a word, he nods and then pulls a chair up to our small group, casually steepling his hands between his knees.

“As I said, I’m Dr. Charles Faulks. I’m an OBS specialist with the Gallagher Clinic in Brooklyn.” Megan sucks in a breath, and he focuses on her. “I’ve been told that you were unaware of Mr. Fallon’s condition.”

“Harper,” I say with too much bite.

His eyebrow rises in question.

Megan is quick to fill the charged silence. “We were recently matched by the Council. We filed finalized paperwork on Friday.”

“Ah.” He visibly relaxes. “Good. That’s good.” His gaze swings back to me. “You were unaware that Mr. Harper has OBS?”

I nod and ease back into the uncomfortable chair.

Dr. Faulks sighs and runs a thumb along his forehead. “All right. From the beginning, then, so that you can understand exactly the crossroads we currently occupy.”

The nurses step closer, the man unobtrusively pulling sliding glass pocket doors closed on the room, leaving us in semi-privacy. I hadn’t even realized there were doors. Fuck, I was a mess today.

Dr. Faulks drops his hand and says, “Just over two years ago, Cole developed preliminary symptoms of the disease. Dizziness, nausea, brain fog. Then he couldn’t walk in a straight line.

He was off the coast of New Zealand at the time.

An emergency flight flew him to Auckland where he was initially treated for sudden onset OBS. ”

Megan stiffens next to me, understanding more of what that must mean.

“However, he was slow to respond to the typical treatment. His symptoms continued to progress. He was flown back to his own city and pursued more acute treatment. It took about six months for the final diagnosis to come through.”

“It’s not sudden onset?” Megan asked.

Dr. Faulks shakes his head. “It’s variant two, Ms. Harper.”

“Oh god,” she whispers, a wealth of grief and fear lacing the two words.

Charlotte tenses beside me, her worry like an ice cube under my sternum. I grab her knee to ground us both.

“What does that mean?” Charlotte asks after a minute.

“It’s the most aggressive form,” Megan says tonelessly. “If patients are lucky, they survive maybe ten years from onset if the Omega is never reunited with the bonded Alpha… or if they don’t take a second bonding bite from someone else.”

It’s as if a chasm opens, and I’m free falling into it.

Ten years?

I picture Cole on Friday, signing the paperwork, grinning, his cheeks flushed, and cuddling us all as we walked into the Manhattan Council office to make our match permanent.

He’d been so full of life, so… normal. How could he be so sick?

How could he only have ten years left? Grief twists through me, trying to drown me.

I can’t keep back the haggard sound that rises up my throat.

“From the records I was given from his current specialist, he’s been able to stay out of the danger zone.” Dr. Faulks’s voice is suddenly softer, more cautious. “Not entirely stable, but not in imminent danger, either.”

“So where does that leave us?” Megan asks, taking over for me with no hesitation. She grabs my forearm in wordless support.

“As of now, we’ve gotten him mostly stabilized.

He’s in a medically-induced coma for the time being while we work to keep him this way.

His condition is delicate, to say it mildly.

He’ll need to stay comatose for several days at the very least while his body recalibrates.

” His gaze swings between the three of us.

“It’s unclear how much permanent damage the crisis may have caused.

Some things we can track using bloodwork, but a good deal more we won’t know until he’s cognizant again.

It is… unlikely that he will come through this with no permanent effects. ”

“Effects?” Charlotte’s voice is hollow.

It’s Megan that gives the list. “All kinds of things, mostly neurological. Loss of sensation in the hands or feet are common. Inability to walk, to talk. Memory loss and vision changes, sometimes blindness.” That chasm grows larger, deeper.

I can’t fucking breathe. “The other things, the kidney and liver damage, they can track those with labs, though. So we should know in the next couple days if he’s sustained any of those. ”

There’s a long pause, and the woman—Brandy—says, “Which of you are bonded to him? One of his scars is older, clearly the original that led to his OBS. But the other is newly scabbed, made in the last day or two.”

“We both are,” I manage to say.

Dr. Faulks’s surprise is palpable.

I clear my throat and elaborate, trying to keep my voice level. “I… We accidentally bonded three years ago. He hadn’t designated. It was an unintentional bite during a one night stand. I didn’t realize until days later what had happened, and by then I wasn’t sure how to find him.”

“And we bonded yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t planned, but neither of us were upset that it happened,” Charlotte says.

“You’re the original Alpha?” Dr. Faulks’s eyes grow shrewd. “How long have you been reconnected with him?”

“On and off since the Council’s most recent gala a month ago. But every day since a week ago Friday when he moved in with us.”

He nods. “Luke, adjust the restrictions, please. Both are to have free and open access to him. Contact RT and see if they’re available to change the ventilator so that they can lay beside him if they so choose.”

Ventilator . My mouth goes dry.

“Of course,” the man says. He gives us a quick smile that doesn’t touch his eyes and then leaves the nook, closing the sliding door behind him.

“I’m assuming you’d like to see him,” Dr. Faulk says.

Charlotte climbs unsteadily to her feet, wiping her cheeks. “Absolutely.”

Megan offers me a hand as she stands, too.

We follow behind him in something too similar to a funeral dirge.

He opens one of the glass sliding doors that line the hallway, ushering us inside.

The room is large, larger than even the biggest bedroom in our townhome.

There’s a bank of cabinets to the left. Under the large window that overlooks the heart of Manhattan is a large sofa identical to the one just to the right of the door.

It takes all my strength to finally focus on the bed that consumes a good portion of the room.

Even with all my preparation, it still hits me like a blow to the head.

My knees wobble, and I force them straight while grabbing Megan’s elbow to steady me.

A wordless sob echoes through the room, the only sound of Charlotte’s heartbreak spreading through the communal bond.

“You’re welcome to touch him.” The doctor’s words are softer now, more compassionate. “If you have any questions, let his nurses know. I’ll be back in the morning, and there’s a hospitalist that oversees the ICUs overnight.”

Megan nods and whispers a “thank you.”

I can’t pull my eyes away from Cole, though.

He’s nearly unrecognizable, so many machines stand vigil around the head of the bed and connect to him.

A large gash on his temple is stitched and cleaned, and he’s been dressed in one of those horrid hospital gowns.

All the color is leeched from his cheeks.

He looks nothing like the smiling man I’d kissed this morning.

Grief wells up in me, so profound it’s impossible to think around.

I drop onto the edge of the bed and drape myself over his legs, pressing my forehead into his thigh.

He doesn’t respond—of course not, they’d said he’s in a coma—but the lack of his touch, of his emotions in my own body, of his apple scent surrounding me like the world’s best blanket, breaks me in a way the waiting all day hasn’t.

The tears are inelegant, a rushing torrent of emotion.

Megan’s hand is gentle on my shoulder, and Charlotte’s quick to press a kiss to the nape of my neck.

“I’m so sorry,” Megan whispers.

And the words suddenly have me thinking of him, of that night, of my own stupidity that’s brought us to this moment—that’s made my Omega so horrifically sick.