The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 460

Sloane obediently lay down on the sofa.

Garrison crouched beside her. He popped the stethoscope earpieces into place and warmed the chest piece in his palm for a few seconds. Then, slipping his hand past the collar of her robe, he pressed it against the left side of her chest.

The cold metal made her draw in a sharp breath, but she didn't pull away.

"Deep breath."

His gaze fell on the coffee table nearby as he focused entirely on the sounds transmitted through the earpieces. Sloane took a deep breath. Her chest expanded, tugging at her injured lungs. She frowned, but stayed quiet.

"Again. Slower."

She inhaled once more. He listened for a long time, moving from the apex of her heart to the base, and then checking both lungs. Before every repositioning, he would warm the metal with his fingers to spare her the sudden shock of cold against her skin.

"Heart rate is normal, rhythm is regular, no obvious murmurs. There are minor crackles at the base of your left lung. The pulmonary edema isn't severe, but you need anti-inflammatories and a diuretic."

He pulled the stethoscope from his ears, draped it around his neck, and clipped the pulse oximeter onto her index finger. The screen lit up—oxygen saturation ninety-four percent, heart rate ninety-one.

He stared at the numbers for a few seconds before picking up the portable ECG monitor. He attached the electrode patches just below her collarbone and along her ribs. A steady waveform danced across the screen. After studying it carefully to ensure there were no ST-segment abnormalities or arrhythmias, he gently peeled the patches off.

"Open the robe a little more. Let me check the patch."

His tone was strictly professional, stripped of any lingering emotion.

Sloane pulled the collar down a fraction, exposing the skin below her collarbone. The vital monitoring patch was still there, but it had shifted slightly—likely displaced by the sheer force of the water during her struggle.

The skin surrounding it was mottled with pale purple bruising, a stark testament to her agonizing thrashing in the freezing lake.

Garrison's brows pulled into a tight knot.

Sloane fell silent.

With the examination finished, Garrison retrieved an IV bag and a sterile infusion set from the kit.

He tied a tourniquet around her arm and swabbed the back of her hand with an iodine-soaked cotton swab. The moment the needle pierced her skin, Sloane's fingers twitched. He froze instantly, his voice dropping low. "Does it hurt?"

"No," Sloane replied.

He slid the needle in further, securing the hub and the tubing with medical tape.

The entire sequence was fluid and flawless, possessing the practiced ease of a man who had done it a thousand times. The pale yellow fluid began to drip steadily from the chamber, traveling down the clear tubing and into her vein.

Lying on the sofa, Sloane watched the IV bag, then shifted her gaze to the perfectly organized rows of vials, syringes, IV kits, and the ECG monitor inside the silver medical case on the coffee table. Finally, she couldn't help but ask, "Why do you have so much medication and equipment in your apartment?"