Chapter 14: Chapter 14
Days later, the ICU hummed with a different, softer violence. The hiss of oxygen, the rhythmic sigh of the ventilator now gone, the relentless glow of the monitors painting Cynna’s face in watery blue.
She was still here, but the silence where the machine had been was a new kind of screaming. Pedro’s hand, clenched around the bed rail, felt the cold metal bite into his palm as he watched the slow, agonizing rise and fall of her own breath.
A nurse adjusted a tube with quiet efficiency. “Her stats are stabilizing,” she said, her voice a low murmur against the electronic beeps. “You should get some real air, Mr. Pascal. The waiting room has coffee that doesn’t taste like motor oil.”
Pedro just shook his head, his thumb stroking the back of Cynna’s pale hand. He hadn’t left except to shower at the hotel across the street, the scent of its generic soap still clinging to his skin, layered over the pervasive hospital antiseptic.
Then the door swung open and two friends from his last film set bustled in, their faces arranged in careful concern. They brought the outside world with them—the smell of rain on wool coats, a too-loud voice, the jarring normalcy of their worry.
“Man, you look like hell,” one said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. The gesture felt like it would shatter him. “We’ll sit with her. Go. Breathe.”
The dismissal was kind, insistent, and it created an obligation he was too tired to fight. He pressed his lips to Cynna’s cool forehead, a silent promise, and walked out into the fluorescent maze.
The ICU family waiting room was a purgatory of worn upholstery and muted televisions. He sank into a chair that smelled of old anxiety and stale coffee, the kind of deep exhaustion that felt cellular settling into his bones.
He didn’t see Chloe at first. She was just a shape in the corner, hunched and small, her attorney’s blazer looking crumpled and out of place. When she stood and walked over, her movements were stiff, robotic.
“Pedro.” Her voice was scraped raw. She didn’t sit.
“Chloe. How are you holding up?” The question was automatic, hollow. He was staring at a faded poster about hand hygiene.
“They moved her to a psychiatric facility after the arraignment.” Chloe’s words fell like stones. “She’s been diagnosed. For a while, apparently. Bipolar one, with psychotic features. She stopped taking her medication months ago.”
Pedro’s focus snapped to her. The hum of the vending machine in the corner seemed to grow louder. “What?”
“The mania, the grandiosity… the planning.” Chloe’s eyes were dry, wide with a horrific clarity. “She thought Cynna was a threat to our family. To the future of our child. In her mind, she was protecting us.”
A cold, understanding dread began to seep into his stomach, mixing with the acid of the coffee. “The prescription bottle Cynna borrowed for her migraine.”
“It was mine,” Chloe confirmed, a terrible flatness in her tone. “My lamotrigine. Maya swapped the pills. She crushed up something else, we don’t even know what, and put it in the capsule. She confessed it all to me before the police took her statement.”
The image of Maya giggling against the nurses’ station flashed behind his eyes, now reframed, monstrous. “She tried to kill her.”
“They charged her with attempted murder.” Chloe finally looked at him, and the grief there was bottomless. “I’m so sorry, Pedro. I didn’t know. I swear to god, I didn’t see it.”
He believed her. The horror was in believing her. The best friend he’d loved, the woman he was going to help build a family, had been meticulously poisoning the love of his life. The two centers of his world had been at war, and he’d been smiling, oblivious, in the middle.
He stood up, the room tilting slightly. The need to get back to Cynna’s side was a physical pull, a magnetic force. He had to see her breath, to confirm it was still her own.
He left Chloe standing there amidst the empty chairs, walking back to the ICU with the sound of his own heart thudding in his ears, a frantic, trapped counter-rhythm to the steady hospital pulse.
He pushed through the heavy ICU doors, the sterile air hitting him like a wall. His two friends were still there, perched awkwardly on the visitor's stool and leaning against the wall, their conversation dying when they saw his face.
"You look worse," the taller one said, trying for a joke that landed in the silence with a thud.
"Need anything?" the other asked, straightening up. "We can make a pharmacy run, get you some decent food."
Pedro just shook his head, his eyes locked on Cynna’s still form. "No. Thanks, guys. I just need to be here."
They understood, or pretended to. There were more claps on the shoulder, murmured promises to check in tomorrow, and then they were gone, their footsteps fading down the hall. The room settled back into its grim rhythm, just the beep of the monitor, the rustle of a chart at the nurse's station outside.
He pulled the stool close, the vinyl seat squeaking under his weight. He took her hand again, careful of the IV line taped to her wrist. Her fingers were cool, limp.
"Hey," he whispered, the word cracking. "It's me."
He wasn't sure what else to say. The truth was a poison he couldn't speak here. So he just sat, watching the faint flutter of a pulse in her throat, counting each breath as a small victory. Time became elastic, stretching and snapping in the unchanging light.
A soft, guttural sound broke the rhythm.
It wasn't a breath. It was a choked, painful attempt at one. His head jerked up. Cynna’s brow furrowed, a deep line of confusion or pain cutting between her eyebrows. Her eyelids fluttered, sticky and slow.
"Cynna?" He leaned in, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Baby, can you hear me?"
Her head turned slightly on the pillow, a low moan escaping her chapped lips. Her hand twitched in his. The green eyes, when they finally opened, were glassy with drugs and sheer disorientation. They scanned the ceiling, the IV pole, the blinding lights, seeing nothing he could see.
Then they found him. They focused, blearily, swimming into some semblance of recognition.
Her mouth worked, dry and slow. A rasp, barely audible, scraped its way out. It was a single syllable, shaped by panic and primal need.
"Ped...ro?"
It was the sound of someone calling from a great distance, from under dark water. It shattered him. He brought her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles, his own vision blurring.
"I'm here," he managed, his voice thick. "I'm right here. You're okay."
But she wasn't okay. The fear in her eyes was acute, intelligent, cutting through the pharmacological haze. She tried to speak again, her throat clicking. "What... happened?"
The question hung in the antiseptic air. He looked at her—the woman he loved, the writer who saw every plot twist, who would piece this together faster than anyone. He saw the moment her memory began to flicker, the horrifying puzzle pieces of her last conscious moments in their bathroom—the migraine, the borrowed pills, the sudden, violent tectonic shift inside her skull—starting to align behind her eyes.
He had no safe answer. The truth was a landmine. So he just held on, tighter, as her gaze held his, searching for a story he wasn't ready to tell.