Chapter 4

Zachery finally panicked.

He rushed to the cabinet where the medicine was usually kept, and it took him a long time of digging before he found a single bottle of asthma medication.

"Maureen! Quick, use this—"

"Zachery... my stomach hurts... I think... I'm not going to make it."

Lucretia suddenly clutched her belly and let out a weak moan.

Zachery turned to look at her, his eyes moving between the two of us for a few seconds.

Finally, he gritted his teeth and tossed that bottle down beside me.

"Maurie, just hold on. I'll have someone take you to the hospital right away."

He scooped Lucretia up and rushed out the door, without looking back once.

Half-sprawled on the floor, I twisted the cap off with all the strength I had left and pressed the inhaler to my throat.

Empty.

Trembling, I pressed it again. Still nothing came out.

The bottle slipped from my hand and rolled off into a corner.

Cold sweat soaked through my shirt, my lips turning blue-purple bit by bit, my mouth open wide, straining, unable to pull in a single breath of air.

As my vision blurred, the ring on my hand kept flashing with light.

I laughed bitterly to myself.

I probably wasn't going to make it to the seventh day.

...

Zachery gripped his phone, pacing back and forth down the hospital hallway.

On the way there with Lucretia, he had already sent a professional medical team rushing to the house.

"I left the medicine, and I sent doctors. Maureen will be fine."

He kept murmuring it to himself, but the image of Maureen gasping for air kept surging up in his mind.

Half an hour later, the medical team finally called.

"Mr. Stephens, we've searched your whole house, but Miss Summers isn't here."

The color drained from Zachery's face in an instant.

"What do you mean, she isn't there?"

His voice shot up sharply.

"She was having an asthma attack. Where could she possibly go?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stephens, but when we arrived all we found on the floor was an empty asthma inhaler."

Zachery's mind went blank with a ringing hum, and he staggered back two steps before he could stop himself.

How could it be empty? The asthma medicine at home was never even opened.

"Widen the search. And check today's emergency admissions across the city."

He opened his message thread with Maureen and only then saw that she'd sent so many messages the day before, and he hadn't answered a single one.

"The number you have dialed cannot be reached at this time."

The hand holding the phone kept shaking.

But no matter how many times he called, the result was always the same.

Zachery slumped into a chair in the hospital, waiting from daylight until dark before that team finally called.

"Mr. Stephens, around noon today the hospital in the city center admitted a female patient having an asthma attack. She had a high fever when she was brought in."

Zachery went rigid all over.

The day before, he'd been so busy taking care of Lucretia that he'd left Maureen to haul all that luggage alone, out in the pouring rain.

"So how is she now?"

Zachery asked anxiously.

The other end went quiet for a moment.

"...We couldn't save her. She's... she's gone now."