The car ride is brutal. She's heaving through her constricted breaths, squeezing his right hand with each wave of chest pain. She's too weak to cry now, as her lungs are laboring to thier maximum capacity just for air.

"What did the thermometer read?"

She closes her eyes and exhales sharply. "hundred four. . . point eight."

She wouldn't open them again for a while.

---------------------------

When they finally arrive at the hospital, he jumps out of the car and through the glass doors, leaving his door open and the car in ignition.

Within minutes, paramedics are scooping her out of the passenger seat, laying her on a stretcher, and scurrying to connect her to multiple IVs. Before Jim even realizes it, she's being rolled through lengths of pasty-white hallways, ouf of sight. He is alone.

---------------------------

Several hours later, he finds himself in a small, curtained cubicle. He holds her hand in his, shedding lonely tears with each passing second.

Although Pam's been asleep the entire time, she hasn't necessarily been breathing. Now, around midnight, she's still sleeping, but with the addition of sensor patches around her chest, IV bags dripping into her arms, and oxygen tubes filling her nostrils. Her dishevelled hair is frayed across the stacked pillows, framing her anemic, sallow face.

To the rest of the world, she looks like a sickly, debilitated mess. But not to Jim.

In his eyes, however, she is a delicate beauty.
He yearns to bundle up with her. To help control her breathing and heartrate by matching them up perfectly with his own. To tell her that everything will be alright, and mean it. To make her feel this hidden, abstract beauty that only he can sense. . .

And just as he begins to fall into a fresh fit of tears, he feels her squeeze his hand back.

"Jim."