The alarms were getting louder.
"Tachycardia!" a doctor shouted. "She's in distress!"
Edlyn stood at the threshold. She hadn't left. She couldn't. She needed to see the depth of his devotion.
Arno turned his head. He saw her standing there. His eyes were wild.
"Get out!" he roared.
Edlyn didn't move.
A crash team arrived with a cart. The hallway was chaos. Arno stood up and charged toward the door to close it.
Edlyn instinctively reached out. She put her hand on the doorframe, trying to keep the connection open, trying to force him to acknowledge her existence.
"Don't block the way!" Arno yelled.
He shoved her. It wasn't a gentle push. It was a violent, desperate shove.
Edlyn lost her balance. She stumbled backward. Her heels slipped on the polished floor.
She fell. Her right hand-her dominant hand, the hand that held the scalpel, the hand that restored history-flailed out to break her fall.
It smashed into the glass display case lining the corridor wall.
CRASH.
The sound was sickening. The glass shattered into jagged shards.
Edlyn felt a dull impact, then a sharp, searing heat. She pulled her hand back.
Blood. So much blood. It pulsed from her palm, dark and fast. A large shard of glass was embedded deep in the muscle of her thumb.
The sound of the breaking glass silenced the room for a heartbeat.
Arno looked at her. He looked at the blood dripping onto the white tiles. He looked at the glass in her hand.
Edlyn looked up at him. She waited. She waited for the regret. She waited for him to come to her.
"Arno..." Serena moaned from the bed.
Arno's eyes snapped back to the woman in the bed. He didn't hesitate. He didn't blink.
He turned his back on Edlyn.
He slammed the door.
The click of the latch was the loudest sound Edlyn had ever heard.
She sat on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. The pain in her hand was blinding, but the pain in her chest was absolute.
"Oh my god! Your hand!"
A nurse ran over, kneeling beside her. "We need to get you to the ER."
Edlyn looked at the closed door. He knew. He saw. And he chose.
She pushed the nurse away. She struggled to her feet, clutching her bleeding wrist with her left hand. Blood soaked her sleeve. It dripped onto her shoes.
She shook her head at the nurse.
She turned and walked toward the elevators. She left a trail of red drops on the pristine floor.
The restorer was gone. Something else was taking her place.
