Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 139

**Blake**

The ambulance doors open before the vehicle fully settles. Cold air rushes in, along with the hospital lights that are too white and too bright. Voices sound as more doctors and nurses surge toward us. There’s a rush of movement. Charlotte’s temperature is called out, and there’s an order for warm fluids, respiratory support, and something about trauma bay two. I climb out because they move her, and wherever she goes, I go. Charlie is right behind me, one hand still gripping her leg, until a nurse gently but firmly moves him back.

“Sir, I need space.”

“She’s my sister,” he snaps.

“I know,” she says, already moving with the stretcher. “And we’re going to help her.”

The wheels rattle over the floor as they push through the sliding doors and into the corridor. I stay close enough to see Charlotte’s face between the rush of bodies.

“Core temp thirty,” someone calls.

“Trauma bay two.”

“Get warming blankets ready.”

“Respiratory on standby.”

“Warm saline is coming.”

The words blur around me. I don’t care what room. I don’t care what machines they need or who is waiting for her behind those doors. I care about her hand that is hanging too still beside the rail. I care about the blue at her lips, and the water still dripping from her hair onto the hospital floor. I reach for her, but a doctor steps into my path. “Blake, you need to stop here.”

I try to move around him. “No.”

His hand presses against my chest. “We need room to work.”

“I won’t get in the way.”

“You already are.”

Charlie shoves up beside me. “We’re not leaving her.”

The doctor looks between us, calm in the face of something neither of us can control.

“She is severely hypothermic, she aspirated water, and her heart rhythm is unstable. We need to warm her, support her breathing, monitor her heart, and check her lungs. Every second matters right now.”

“Then let us in,” I say, my voice breaking.

His face softens. “You can’t help her in that room.”

The doors open behind him, Charlotte disappears through them, and I lunge. Two nurses catch me, and Charlie grabs my arm like he’s trying to hold me back and go with me at the same time. “Blake,” Dr Hale says, firm now. “Let us save her.”

The doors swing closed, and Charlotte is gone. Again.

For a second, I stand there, staring at the blank doors, waiting for them to open back up. I wait for someone to realise they made a mistake by keeping me out. Then someone pulls a curtain across the small window, and my chest hollows out. “No,” Charlie whispers.

The nurse beside him reaches for his shoulder, but he jerks away. His eyes are locked on the door. His whole body looks ready to run through it.

“Please,” she says gently. “There’s a waiting room this way.”

“I don’t want a waiting room,” Charlie says.

“I know.” Her voice is kind, but it doesn’t make anything better.

We walk because we have to. Even if we don’t like it, we know we can’t help her now. The hallway stretches too long. Too bright. Too normal. I look down and realise there is blood under my nails. Charlotte’s blood. Rogue blood. I don’t know anymore. Then, somehow, we are in a room with beige chairs, a water cooler, old magazines, and a television mounted in the corner with the sound turned off. It’s so quiet.

Charlie stands in the middle of the room with his arms hanging at his sides, hoodie stained with snow and blood. I look at him. He looks at me. Then his face breaks. I step forward at the same time he does, and his arms come around me hard. Mine lock around him. He shakes against me, breath catching, hands fisting in the back of my hoodie. I hold him tighter. “She’s going to pull through, brother,” I say, voice rough against his shoulder. “I know she will.”

Charlie drags in a broken breath. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

My throat closes. “I know,” I whisper. “Trust me, I know.”

He sobs into me, harsh and muffled. “I told her to tell me after,” he says into my shoulder, and his grip on me tightens as he trembles. “On the ice. She told me she loved me, and I told her to tell me once it was over.”

I close my eyes as I let my tears fall onto his shoulder. “She knows.”

His breath shudders. “What if she doesn’t?”

“She knows, Charlie.”

“She has to wake up.”

“She will.”

I say it because I need it to be true. Because if I let even one crack of doubt in, I will go through those doors and make everything worse. Because Charlie is looking at me like I might know how to hold the world still. So I keep my hands around him and talk us through it. “She’s stubborn. You really think cold water is going to be the thing that stops her?”

Charlie makes a broken sound and wipes his face with the heel of his hand.

“She’s going to be so upset when she wakes up and finds out Dad saved her… and now he’s gone,” he whispers and his face burrows harder into my shoulder.

“He loved you both, even if he wasn’t able to show it every day,” I whisper as I rub his back.

“I know.” He whispers. “But she doesn’t.”

“We’ll hold her through it. You and me, okay? We’ll make sure she knows.”

Charlie folds forward with his hands on his knees, breathing too fast. I step back in and put a hand on the back of his neck, the same way Dad does to me when I’m falling apart. For a while, we don’t say anything. We stand in the waiting room with blood drying on us, and our hearts in another room.

Then Charlie straightens and looks toward the hallway. “Do you think they’ll tell us anything soon?” 

I follow his gaze to the corridor, which is empty. “I don’t know.”

He nods, swallowing hard, and I sit because my legs are starting to shake. Charlie sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles go white. I stare at the doors down the hall. Every time footsteps pass, my whole body lifts. Every time they keep walking, something in me drops lower. Minutes stretch. 

“She’s going to pull through,” I say again quietly.

Charlie nods without looking away from the hall.

“She has to.”

I reach for the bond inside my chest. It’s there. Faint and cold, but it’s there. I grip onto it with everything I have and sit beside her brother in the awful quiet, waiting for someone to tell us whether the girl we both love is going to live.