While I lay there attached to machines that were keeping me alive, while Dr. Cross looked at them with absolute horror, while nurses whispered among themselves about the worst family behavior they’d ever witnessed, my blood relatives walked out of the hospital to grab dinner.

I was alone. Truly, completely alone. Dying in a hospital bed while my family argued over appetizers at some trendy restaurant downtown.

The nurses kept checking on me, their expressions growing more concerned with each visit. Dr. Cross pulled up a chair beside my bed and held my hand, which was more comfort than my own family had provided in eighteen hours.

“Is there anyone else we can call?” she asked gently. “Anyone who might want to be here with you?”

I thought about it through the haze of medication and oxygen deprivation. There was someone. Someone who’d been traveling for business. Someone I hadn’t even thought to contact because he was supposed to be in meetings on the other side of the country. Someone who didn’t even know I was in the hospital because my family had insisted on handling everything themselves.

My husband, Damon Blackthorne. But he was three thousand miles away in Seattle, closing a deal that would add another billion to his already massive fortune. What could he possibly do from there?

That’s when I heard it.

A sound that didn’t belong in a hospital. A sound that made the windows rattle and the nurses look up from their stations with confused expressions. The thunderous, rhythmic beating of helicopter blades growing closer and louder until it seemed like the aircraft was about to land right on top of the building.