His dad was sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair on the other side of the bed. Abram was out of uniform with his arms folded across his front and his chin resting on his chest. Judging by the light snoring intermittently emerging from his direction, the man was asleep.

Micah took all of this in, but he didn’t understand it.

What the fuck?

“What-?”

He’d only meant to repeat his confusion aloud, but as soon as that first scratchy word formed, it was as if his throat constricted painfully around it, and nothing else would come out – and just like that, everything came back to him.

Artie’s Pub.

The basement.

Ren’s hands squeezing unrelentingly around his neck until he had turned purple, and he could hardly see, and there was only silence-

The gunshot that cut through it, and then…

Damon.

Micah didn’t know which one of the thoughts running through his head was causing his heart to race, but the machines surrounding him suddenly went berserk. The steady beeping that had roused him from sleep became a manic beepbeepbeep that sounded not unlike a screech, broadcasting his panic to anyone within earshot.

In a frenzied daze, Micah ripped the electrodes from his chest and the nasal cannula from his nose. His thoughts a disoriented, jumbled mess, he even yanked the IV out of his arm.

Of course, all of this only caused a bigger clamor as more alarms blared.

It was no surprise that the commotion woke his father.

The man sprang up from his chair, immediately attempting to hold Micah down onto the bed. “Stop it, son, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

Being restrained did not help the rising hysteria, and Micah’s breath got caught somewhere in his swollen esophagus.

Thankfully, a few seconds later, a pair of nurses rushed in the door, having been alerted by the multitude of alarms.

The male nurse – a thirty-something with brown skin and even browner eyes – gently pried his dad off of him, while the female nurse – who was blonde and blue-eyed, and probably old enough to be Micah’s grandma – coached him into getting his breathing back under control.

When the threat of a panic attack had dissipated, she offered him something that would take the edge off the anxiety he was feeling without interfering with the pain-managing meds he was on. After she assured him it wouldn’t put him back to sleep, Micah agreed.

Her partner reattached the IV, and she injected something clear into the line – she’d told him the name, but his brain was too overstimulated to remember it. Shot straight into his blood stream, the drug took effect quickly. By the time the doctor – a pretty Indian woman in a pant suit and her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun – was fetched fifteen minutes later, Micah was able to listen to what she had to say with a clear mind.