Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 59

Chapter 55: The Waitts Agonizing

Sedona’s POV

They came for me at two PM, right on the dot and not a minute late.

Two nurses I hadn’t met before, wearing protective gowns and gloves that made the whole thing feel more ominous and scary than Frank’s careful explanations had.

They transferred me from my regular bed to a specialized gurney, checked all my lines, and made sure that they were connected to the right machines and doing what it was supposed to do, they also verified my identity against their clipboards thoroughly.

Cameron walked beside the gurney as far as they’d let him, which turned out to be the doors to the treatment wing. He squeezed my hand one more time before they wheeled me through.

“See you on the other side,” he said.

“See you on the other side.”

The treatment room was smaller than I’d expected, and more sterile. Everything was white or chrome, surfaces that could be easily disinfected, it was bland and devoid of colours or personal touches to make it look a bit different than what it actually was.

There were monitors everywhere-more than seemed necessary for one patient.

Frank was already there, scrubbed and gowned, reviewing something on a tablet.

He looked up when I came in and gave me a small smile that was probably meant to be reassuring.

“Ready?” he asked.

I wasn’t. I was absolutely not ready. Every cell in my body was screaming that this was a bad idea, that I should call it off, that dying slowly but peacefully was preferable to whatever was about to happen.

But I thought about everyone who was waiting for me, and making plans for me that I wanted to keep to.

And against my wish, I also thought about Nick, somewhere in Chicago, growing up without me.

“On a scale of one to ten?”

I wanted to say eight or nine, wanted to downplay it somehow. But Frank needed accurate information to treat me properly.

“Ten. It’s a ten.”

He made some adjustments to my IV, added something that took the edge off but didn’t eliminate the burning entirely but made it less intense and I let out a breath, still trying to maintain composure.

“This is normal,” he said again. “Your body is fighting the medication but that’s expected and it is going according to what we researched. Try to stay still, try to breathe evenly. You’re doing great.”

I didn’t feel like I was doing great. I felt like I was dying by degrees, like my body was being dismantled and Frank was standing there telling me it was all according to plan.

Time stopped having meaning. The burning spread everywhere, not leaving a place untouched, it made my fingers and toes feel like they were being dipped in acid.

My vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again. I could hear machines beeping in patterns I didn’t understand, could hear Frank giving quiet instructions to the nurses, could hear my own harsh breathing but it sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.