Chapter 2: The Last Breath Between Two Hearts
Chapter 2: The Last Breath Between Two Hearts
At first, Kiana thought it was only the cold.
The freezing air always made her asthma worse.
She reached into the center console without taking her eyes off the icy road. Her fingers wrapped around the familiar blue inhaler. Relief flickered through her chest.
One puff.
Click.
Nothing.
She frowned.
Another press.
Click.
Still nothing.
"No..."
She shook it desperately, as if a few invisible drops of medicine might magically appear.
Click.
Empty.
Her breathing became shallow almost instantly.
The panic arrived faster than the attack.
"No, no, no..."
She knew better than anyone what panic did to damaged lungs. She had watched dozens of patients spiral because fear stole oxygen before illness ever could.
Slow breaths, she reminded herself.
In...
Out...
But her airway was already tightening.
The windshield blurred.
Not from rain.
From tears.
She spotted the glowing emergency sign for Mercy General Hospital only two blocks ahead.
"Please..."
The Honda slid through one intersection before finally rolling into the emergency entrance.
She barely remembered parking.
By the time she opened the driver's door, her legs were trembling.
Each breath sounded like air squeezing through a drinking straw.
A security guard shouted something.
She couldn't answer.
She stumbled toward the sliding doors before collapsing onto one knee.
Someone grabbed her arm.
"Asthma!"
That was all she managed to force out.
Then darkness crowded the edges of her vision.
Inside Mercy General, chaos had become its own language.
Backup lights flickered.
Portable monitors beeped from every hallway.
Nurses moved so quickly they no longer walked—they floated from crisis to crisis.
Respiratory therapist Luis Moreno glanced toward the entrance just as another trauma patient rolled past.
"We've got an asthma attack!" someone yelled.
Luis looked at the supply cart.
Empty.
He looked toward respiratory storage.
Locked.
Someone else already had the key.
"I need a nebulizer!"
"They're all occupied!"
"I need oxygen!"
"We're out of wall ports in C Hall!"
Every answer ended with another impossible problem.
Kiana collapsed onto the hallway floor only fifteen feet from Nadine's gurney.
Someone slid a blanket beneath her head.
Another nurse searched frantically through emergency supplies.
"Where's respiratory?"
"Third floor ICU."
"They're stuck with ventilators."
"Can anyone find another tank?"
"There aren't any."
The words floated through Kiana's ears like they belonged to another world.
She could hear them.
She simply couldn't breathe enough to answer.
Each inhale whistled.
Each exhale barely existed.
Her fingers curled against the cold tile.
Instinctively, they reached for the tiny silver necklace hanging beneath her scrub shirt.
The crescent moon.
She had worn it every day since childhood.
Her adoptive mother, Denise Price, had once told her it had been tied around her wrist when she arrived in foster care.
"No note," Denise had said.
"No name except the one written on your paperwork."
"You must have been loved."
Kiana had never believed that.
People who were loved weren't abandoned.
Three feet away, Nadine heard the wheezing.
She knew that sound.
Years of COPD had taught her to recognize lungs begging for air.
She turned her head.
The young woman couldn't have been more than twenty-five.
She was lying on the floor because there were no stretchers left.
A nurse was squeezing an empty oxygen bag.
"It isn't enough."
"We need another tank!"
"There isn't one!"
Nadine watched the girl's lips slowly lose their color.
Blue.
She remembered another pair of lips.
A tiny baby struggling through her first winter cold.
She had held little Kiana upright all night, terrified every cough meant something worse.
"You breathe with Mommy," she had whispered then.
"In..."
"Out..."
The memory hit so suddenly that tears blurred her mask.
The girl on the floor gasped again.
Nobody came.
Everyone was already saving someone else.
Nadine looked at her own oxygen tank.
The pressure gauge still showed enough.
Not much.
Maybe fifteen minutes.
Maybe twenty.
For her.
Longer for someone healthier.
She understood the math immediately.
She had spent years calculating breaths.
How many stairs she could climb.
How long she could vacuum.
Whether she could carry groceries without resting.
Every day became arithmetic when your lungs failed.
This calculation was simple.
If she kept the oxygen...
she might survive until respiratory therapy reached her.
If she gave it away...
she probably wouldn't.
She closed her eyes.
The answer came without struggle.
"Excuse me."
Her voice barely escaped beneath the mask.
A passing orderly didn't hear.
She tried again.
This time louder.
"Please..."
A young volunteer looked over.
"Ma'am?"
"My tank."
"What?"
"The girl."
The volunteer stared in confusion.
"You need this oxygen."
Nadine slowly removed her mask.
The air burned instantly.
She fought the urge to cough.
"She needs it first."
"No."
The volunteer shook his head.
"I can't."
"You'll die."
Nadine managed the smallest smile.
"My lungs..."
"...already know how."
Without waiting for permission, she pulled the portable tank closer.
Her fingers barely worked.
Arthritis and oxygen deprivation made every movement clumsy.
The tubing tangled beneath the gurney.
She leaned farther.
Pain exploded through her ribs.
Still she reached.
The oxygen mask slipped from her own face completely.
Instantly the world narrowed.
Every breath became work.
The volunteer finally understood.
"Oh God..."
He rushed forward.
"What are you doing?"
"Help..."
She nodded toward Kiana.
"...her."
The young man disconnected Nadine's tubing with shaking hands.
A nurse looked up.
"What are you—"
Then she saw.
"No!"
But it was already happening.
Fresh oxygen began flowing toward Kiana.
The mask settled over her face.
Within seconds her frantic breathing slowed just enough for medicine to reach her lungs.
Color crept back into her cheeks.
The terrible wheezing softened.
Not gone.
But improving.
Across the hallway, Nadine inhaled empty air.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Nothing.
Her vision dimmed.
The fluorescent lights above her became soft white stars.
Then she heard it.
A melody.
Someone was humming.
Weakly.
Almost unconsciously.
Kiana.
The young woman, still half-conscious beneath the oxygen mask, had begun humming without realizing it.
Three simple notes.
Then four more.
A lullaby.
An old Southern melody.
No words.
Only rising and falling notes.
Nadine froze.
Her heart stopped before her lungs did.
No...
It couldn't be.
Nobody sang that song anymore.
Her grandmother had invented little variations every night while rocking babies on the porch in rural Mississippi.
When Nadine was pregnant, Grandma Louise had smiled.
"One day you'll sing this to your own baby."
She had.
For exactly seven weeks.
Never in public.
Never after Kiana disappeared.
Never for anyone else.
Yet here, in a freezing hospital hallway twenty-three years later...
a stranger was humming every note perfectly.
Nadine stared through fading vision.
The girl's trembling hand slipped from beneath the blanket.
The sleeve of her hospital gown shifted.
Something silver caught the emergency lights.
A tiny crescent moon.
The necklace.
The same delicate moon charm Nadine had tied around her baby's wrist with pale blue ribbon before the adoption officers carried her away.
The ribbon was gone.
The bracelet had become a necklace.
But the tiny scratch near the tip of the crescent...
the one made when it fell onto the kitchen floor twenty-three years ago...
was still there.
Nadine's entire body trembled.
Her lips moved without sound.
"Kiana..."
The name escaped like the smallest breath she had left.
The young woman's eyes fluttered open.
For one impossible second...
their eyes met.
Neither of them understood why tears suddenly filled them both.
May you like
Outside, another transformer exploded.
The hospital went completely dark.
