Resuscitate (verb): revive (someone) from unconsciousness or apparent death.

Now

Montana

It is this lurching feeling in my chest that gets me moving again from my position on the kitchen floor. At first I feel like the air is about to leave my lungs and it is an odd feeling at the pit of my stomach. I better not be having a damned panic attack. I haven't had one in over six years, but I knew this was something different. Can you die from crying excessively? I wouldn't be surprised if I do. 

Something was terribly wrong, maybe it was my brain finally catching up to the mess that is my life, that was what was terribly wrong. I push myself up to my feet after what feels like hours since I chased him away, again. 

There is a tingle in my spine and goose flesh rises on my skin. Something is wrong! my head screams at me. I stare at my shaking hands, what was this? There was no one around to tell me what this was. 

I look around my empty house that suddenly feels like a strange new place. There is a pang, and I grip the kitchen counter, my stomach dropping with a lurch all the way to my feet like I have just dived off of a cliff. 

Something is wrong.

I stagger to the front door, leaning against the cold wood and resting my head against it. What if Calum is still outside this door? What if it is my body telling me that he is close and that this is a grave mistake that I will take to my actual grave if I don't fix as soon as possible? Why was I always making mistakes? Why were all of these stupid arguments so small compared to what I felt for him right after everything has gone wrong?

I swing open the door—but there is no one there. He is gone. There is another tug at my heart and I feel like I'm going to throw up the contents of my body all over my pink welcome mat. I turn to walk back inside but the lift dings, signalling that it has stopped on my floor. 

There were only three occupied apartments on this floor, it had to be for me. Calum came back, he must have. 

"Calum?" I call as the figure steps out, too short to be my Calum. The black denim dungaree gives it away before my eyes even drag up to her face, "Sierra?"  

"There you are! I was worried sick!" She rushes into my arms and I almost topple backwards but the door keeps us from falling backwards. "You look pale, Monti? Are you alright?" Sierra cups my face in her hands, her worried eyes examining me from head to toe. Everything is wrong. 

I want to tell her that I feel like I am dying, but I don't get to reply as a sound I have despised all my life, drifts in through one of the open windows of my apartment. An ambulance. Sirens weren't an unusual sound in New York, someday's it was all you heard and I had learned to tune it out. But now, the siren wails in my ears and there is another pang in my chest. Something is wrong.

"Calum..." 

"Montana, what is it? Calum is not here, Montana!" Sierra is a blur as I run past her, running past the elevators and flinging the emergency exit door open. I run down the three flight of stairs faster than I ever have in my life, Sierra's booted footsteps ringing like gunshots behind me. "Monti! Wait!" 

I don't wait. That was the feeling, Calum. Something was wrong. The pang in my chest like my soul was being pulled at. I burst into the daylight of the street outside but I don't see him anywhere. "Please god, no." I pray for the first time in years as my feet pound against the hot asphalt. Rocks and garbage scratch at my bare feet but I keep running, following the sound of the ambulance as it turns the corner and speeds away. 

---

Calum

There isn't any air but it doesn't seem to matter anymore. Her face when she smiles at me is the only thing that does, the image of her smile is the only thing I fight for as I drift. This is not too bad, not as long as she is here. Forever in my memory, never again to be scarred or faded. I should have let go. I should have. 

"You will be okay, darling boy." I can hear my mothers whispers, the touch of her cold skin against mine. 

You will be okay. 

Silence. 

---

Montana

There are people gathered everywhere, their whispers like knives thrown at me as I push past them. "Excuse me!" I can't help that the words come out as a scream, I can't help that I can feel that something was terribly, terribly wrong. 

"Poor boy flung himself off." I hear them whisper in hushed tones. 

Before I can make it to the front, the paramedics in the ambulance clear a path through the crowd, pushing a gurney towards me. Sierra described this feeling to me once, she said it was like a ripping of your very being in half, like you were dying from the inside and it was completely out of your control. She said that the only way out was to give in, to let the pain shred your heart and break you bones and maybe whoever was in control up there, would show you some mercy. 

I see his hand first, it is an awfully pale color and all the times those hands have warmed my own is another jab, another tear, another poke at my sanity. This is not happening, not to me, not to him—not to us. 

"Calum?" His name leaving my lips is almost inaudible, but this has to be a joke right? He was going to pop out of somewhere and tell me it was a joke to make me feel bad for leaving him. He will smile at me and radiate warmth like my Calum always does. 

This could not be him, he held me all night, his voice rang through my entire house which was only ever quiet before him. 

My eyes drift up to his body and then his face which is also ghostly pale. His lips, his warm lips that changed my world, were white. The crowd jostles me and that is when I feel my feet again, my voice rises up my throat again and I push myself to his side. "Calum! Calum?, baby wake up." I touch his cheek but the paramedic takes my hand away, "Ma'am please take a step back." 

"He's my boyfriend!" I scream at the stranger who was telling me to take my hands off my Calum. 

"What happened? No please, Calum." The tears fall onto his chest and before I can touch him again they lift the gurney into the ambulance. "Let her in," the paramedic tells the police before they can stop me and I can claw my way through them. I scramble up into the rig and take Calum's cold hand in mine. There is so much noise and I want to scream at them to keep quiet so I can hear his heart beat. Someone is asking me something but all I can feel is the coldness of his hand, why was there no blood flowing? 

"Ma'am, please, we need you to cooperate if we are going to keep him alive. Can I please have his name?"

Alive. He is still alive. 

"Calum." I finally manage, looking away from his face. A machine comes to life next to my head and I realize that it is his heartbeat. "It's weak, but he is in there." I let out a breath, why was he so pale?

"Hood? This is Calum Hood?" the lady paramedic asks me and I nod my head, "Oh god," she wraps him in another blanket. "Hang in there buddy. My daughter would murder me if you die on us." The woman gives a nervous laugh and I must have made a sound because they both look up at me. 

"He's going to be fine." The male paramedic reassures me, glaring at his partner. "He was in the water for too long and he was drowning. There was a lot of water in his lungs but we managed to resuscitate him. 

"Resuscitate?" 

The paramedics don't answer me and the ambulance drifts into a tense silence except for the beat of Calum's heart monitor and a radio that keeps crackling every few seconds. I stare at his face, I felt his heart stop, I felt it inside me. I felt that something was wrong but I was too late. "I love you so much. I'm so sorry." I lift his cold hands to my lips, blowing warmth into them. "Please, be okay. You don't get to do this to me, not until we're eighty and have more dogs in the house than kids. Please baby." 

I told him that I didn't love him, not only did I tell someone the biggest lie I have ever told in my life, but I also did this to him. I feel the ambulance pull to a stop and the doors open immediately and in a flurry of activity, I am taken away from Calum's side as doctors swarm him like bees, checking his vitals and wheeling his gurney through the emergency doors of the hospital. "Twenty-two year old male, drowning incident, possible suicide attempt. Was hypothermic and under cardiac arrest when we got to the scene but we managed to get his heart beating again."

"It wasn't a suicide attempt," someones says, and when everyone turns to look at me I realize that it was my own voice. "He wouldn't kill himself." I tell them. Calum wouldn't do that to the people who love him. 

"Officer escort her to the waiting room, and start a central line immediately!" One of the doctors orders and a policemen appears at my side. "Ma'am, if you don't mind, we have a couple of questions for you regarding the incident." 

Another doctor, probably around my age with a wave of dark curls touches my shoulder, "How are you related to him?" 

I blink at her, forcing my mind to cooperate. "I'm his girlfriend."

"Does he have any health issues? and conditions we need to know about?" 

I rack my brain, "No...Nothing I know of." 

"Does he smoke?" My heart falters again at this question. 

"Yes." 

She smiles warmly at me, no sign of pity in her eyes. She has probably done this a million times. "I'm going to send someone to take a look at your feet," I look down at myself for the first time since I ran out of the house and realize that I'm still in his t-shirt and nothing else. My feet were bleeding. 

Right before she jogs away she looks at me over her shoulder, "We will take care of him, he will be okay." 

The last thing I hear before they disappear behind two swinging doors with Calum is, "He is not responding to any stimulus, book an OR! We're losing him people!"