The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 532

"Sloane—where does it hurt? I'm taking you to the hospital right now!"

Josh leaned in, his voice bleeding with manufactured panic. He wrapped an arm securely around her waist, preparing to lift her from the pavement.

Right at that moment, a figure sprinted across the asphalt, rushing straight toward them.

A dark overcoat, a left arm immobilized in a cast, and breathing made jagged from the desperate run.

Garrison didn't spare Josh a single glance. From the second he crossed the street, his eyes were locked entirely on Sloane.

Her face was ashen, her pupils blown wide and unfocused. She couldn't even stand on her own. He had noticed something was terribly wrong the moment he saw her from across the street. This wasn't a standard headache. He knew these symptoms far too well.

Purely on instinct, he reached out with his uninjured right hand, aiming for her shoulder. He wanted to tilt her head back, check her pupillary response. His medical brain was already firing on all cylinders—*Is there intracranial pressure? Is it a relapse of the old lesions? I need to get her to a scanner for a contrast CT immediately.*

But the instant his fingertips brushed her coat.

"Don't touch me!"

Sloane violently slapped his hand away.

The scream tore from the depths of her throat—sharp, broken, and dripping with the kind of primal hysteria born only from absolute despair.

Her eyes finally snapped into focus, locking onto Garrison's face. But swirling within those obsidian eyes was an emotion he had never seen directed at him before.

Hatred.

Garrison stumbled a half-step backward from the force of her rejection, his right hand left hovering uselessly in the air.

He froze entirely.

His lips parted. He wanted to say, *"I just want to help."* He wanted to say, *"Your symptoms are critical, you need an exam right now."* But staring into the blazing, venomous hatred in her eyes, the words died in his throat.

Standing beside them, Josh took in the entire scene.