It was a panicked blur. The first person Gabriel saw outside Arius’s room was a woman in a white lab coat. Her blank, expressionless face. The cloud of incoherence that swamped that moment. His own voice on his hurried attempt at explaining what he thought might have happened, the Wildnil bottle raised in his hand for her to see, the list he rattled off of medications Arius was supposed to be getting.

              “He has an autoimmune and bone condition—He can’t have other medications, he has reactions—not even Advil, Tylenol, ordinary—multivitamins—”

              “I’m sure he wasn’t given the wrong medication.”

              “C-Carfentanil is an animal sedative—”

              “I’m aware what carfentanil is.”

              Her attempt to grab his arm like she intended to restrain him. Darting away from her, hurrying to the next employee he saw. The similar exchange, then: “Well, let me take you up front, and we’ll get this checked on, alright?”

              The doe-eyed secretary he was put in front of. Her attempt at sounding out the first word on the label of the vial he handed her. “Wild…nil?” She blinked. “Is that…?”

              “It’s an opioid!” Gabriel turned, eyes moving to where the other staff member had been. He looked at the very last moment. Gabriel saw something sharp and shiny moving rapidly toward his neck and had just enough time to duck out of the closing gap between a tranquilizer needle and the nurse’s hand outstretched to grasp and steady the side of his head.

              The twenty-two-year-old knocked the nurse to the ground with a panicked swipe of his arm. He stumbled back, three seconds of frozen shock fleeting by as he stared at the woman on the floor. Her startled but determined eyes, the ready syringe still poised in her hand. He could have been tranquilized, she had just tried to tranquilize him. Like she thought he was crazy, like he was out of his mind, out of control. This isn’t happening, he heard in his mind again.

              “Sh-Should I call security?” The secretary rose unsteadily from her chair.

              Gabriel tore his eyes off the nurse on the ground and fled the lobby. No one was listening. No one believed him. Breath catching with panic, he ran back to Arius’s room. The door slammed behind him at the ushering of his shaky hands. Trembling with adrenaline, he gripped Arius’s shoulders and shook the boy once more. “Arius! Arius, please! Oh god, oh god…” That pretty-boy face so familiar to Gabriel had taken on an unaccustomed paleness. Lips that were usually rose petal pink were bluish and cold.

              Gabriel froze, hand on Arius’s shoulder. His eyes settled on the boy’s exposed neckline. The delicately sculpted lines of his chest. Motionless. Trembling, Gabriel’s hand lifted from Arius’s shoulder and slowly moved in front of the boy’s silent face. “Cherish Arius, Gabriel. Let’s not take any of these years for granted.” He could hear it in his head, that warning. That warning he had never taken seriously, hardly even afforded the time to consider.

              Arius wasn’t breathing.

              Gabriel’s body shook with a gasp. His hand moved to Arius’s neck, checking for a pulse. Nothing. No breath, no heartbeat. Panic was burning in Gabriel’s eyes as he watched himself fold one hand over the other. I don’t want to do this, don’t make me do this, echoed in his racing mind. His hands found a position at the center of Arius’s chest. Then, praying he was not about to hear ribs crack, Gabriel executed thirty chest compressions.

              Panic was dripping down Gabriel’s face in liquid form as he moved around the bed and checked for a pulse. When he still found nothing, Gabriel hesitantly grasped Arius’s chin, his other hand moving to gently stabilize the boy’s head. He knew the procedure. As if it were muscle memory, he found himself moving into position. It rang raw under his trembling hands, the fact that a real person lay below him, not a Styrofoam dummy. And of all people, Arius.

              Gabriel gently pried that soft jaw open. He sucked in a quick breath, then placed his lips over Arius’s, pinched the boy’s nose closed, and began rescue breathing. One breath. Gabriel’s fingers shifted momentarily to Arius’s neck, checking again for a pulse. Then, retracting to his former position, he gave a second rescue breath. Thirty more chest compressions. Shaking with exertion, Gabriel raised his head and screamed for help. Two more breaths. Another set of thirty chest compressions. He checked for a pulse, this time detecting a weak heartbeat against the side of Arius’s neck.

              Panting for breath himself, Gabriel switched sides of the bed and moved over to Arius’s fluid drip. Something close to hatred in his short, forceful movements, he clamped the IV, opened the lock, and tossed the tubing away, letting the fluid within drip onto the floor. Then two more rescue breaths. Six seconds, another pulse check, one more breath.

              The door swung open behind Gabriel. Fearing someone was seconds from attempting to shove another tranquilizer needle into his neck, Gabriel darted aside. His eyes met with those of Arius’s nurse.

              “What the hell is going on here?” She hardly seemed to need her question answered. Cold eyes took in the situation within moments: Gabriel poised to continue rescue breathing, the IV dripping on the floor, the unconscious patient. The nurse stepped straight up to Gabriel, planted her hands on his shoulder and stomach, and pushed him firmly away from the bed. “Back away!”

              He obeyed, retreating uncertainly to the cabinet by the wall. Gabriel watched as the nurse switched on the patient monitor, revealing Arius’s weak heartbeat. That rippling red line was only visible on the screen for a few seconds before the nurse turned decidedly to the trailing IV line and began reconnecting it.

              The next few moments blurred in Gabriel’s head. The whole room seemed to tip a little.

              Arius was lying there suffocating on the hospital bed. His nurse was preparing to continue dosing him with what had caused him to go into cardiac arrest. Arius’s lack of respiration was clearly visible on the patient monitor. His weak pulse made it counterintuitive to continue sedating him. She had lied to his face about her intentions to tranquilize him. The questions she hadn’t asked, her cold emotionless bedside manner—as little sense as it made, it sent a vivid message. This woman in nurse’s uniform had no intention of keeping Arius alive.

              Gabriel’s hand found the drawer behind him. His wrist jerked it forward, fingers grasping the overdose reversal kit he had seen earlier in his search for a blanket. Gabriel saw the word, “Narcan” on a ready syringe. Thumb and forefinger flipped the cap off the needle, and the twenty-two-year-old darted forward. The nurse at Arius’s bedside had no time to react before Gabriel drove the needle into Arius’s shoulder and emptied the contents of the syringe, praying Narcan was not among the many medications Arius had serious reactions to.

              “What the hell—do you think you’re doing!?” the nurse gasped. Her fingers froze on the IV she was moments from unclamping.

              “Narcan,” Gabriel pronounced through pale lips. His eyes locked with those of the nurse. She stared back at him, gaping.

              “Who—Who told you to do that!?”

              No concern in her eyes. The weak vital signs displayed on the patient monitor seemed nothing beyond expectation. Disbelief stole over Gabriel for a crippling succession of seconds. His body went weak, staring into the face of another human being, logic telling him she meant no harm to the life lying between them.

              The Narcan syringe dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor. Gabriel moved around the hospital bed and manhandled the nurse away from the equipment. She was scuttling toward the door as Gabriel detached the IV tubing a second time. Hand on the doorknob, the nurse slapped a red button on the wall. Then she was gone, shutting the door behind herself.

              Gabriel failed to hear the soft metal sound of a lock clicking as the door swung shut.