Chapter 242: Saying His Name
"MAXIMILIAN!"
Catherine’s scream tore through the construction site with such raw anguish that everyone froze for a fraction of a second.
Maximilian’s knees gave way completely.
Catherine caught him.
Or rather, she tried to.
He was too heavy, his body already losing the strength that had held it upright only moments ago. They collapsed together onto the dirt, Catherine desperately trying to keep him in her arms as though sheer force of will could keep him with her.
"Maximilian! Talk to me! Look at me!"
She cupped his face between trembling hands.
Blood.
There was blood.
It was everywhere.
Blood trickled from his ears. More seeped from his nose. When he coughed, crimson stained his lips.
Catherine knew what that meant.
God, she knew.
She had spent years studying the human body. She had seen trauma patients. She had read countless papers and case studies. She recognized the signs immediately.
Brain swelling.
Internal injuries.
Severe trauma.
Her vision blurred.
Tears poured down her face so heavily that she could barely see him. She tried to wipe them away, but more came, obscuring her sight again and again.
Think.
She needed to think.
She was Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Preston.
Researcher.
Scientist.
Problem solver.
She had spent her entire life solving impossible problems.
But in that moment, all her intelligence, all her education, all the strength she had painstakingly built throughout two lifetimes seemed to dissolve before her eyes, mixing uselessly with the blood staining Maximilian’s skin.
She could not think.
She could only hold him.
"Cathy!" William shouted. "The chopper’s coming! We’ll take him to the trauma center!"
Richard knelt beside them, reaching to help support Maximilian’s weight, but Catherine shoved his hand away so violently that even he recoiled.
No.
No one else.
This was her place.
This was her Maximilian... And she could feel it. It was not fear. It was something infinitely worse.
It was certainty. She knew these signs. She knew exactly what they meant.
She could feel him slipping away.
She was holding him, and still he was leaving her.
The pain was so overwhelming that it ceased to feel like pain at all. It was as though her entire body had retreated into numbness to protect itself from a grief too enormous to survive. The shock was so profound that her mind simply could not contain it.
Maximilian’s eyelids had grown heavy. So terribly heavy. Yet... there was still a faint smile on his lips.
Catherine knew that smile.
She remembered it with horrifying clarity.
It was almost the same smile he had worn in their previous life while holding her as she died in his arms.
As people ran around them—Preston family members shouting orders, workers calling emergency services, men already searching for whoever had orchestrated this attack—Catherine remained where she was, guarding Maximilian as though it were the only purpose she had left in this world.
She understood now.
She understood why, in their past life, he had never left her side, even when he was wounded. She understood why he had chosen to stay with her instead of seeking treatment for himself.
Because this pain was unbearable.
Because when the person you loved more than yourself was dying, nothing else mattered.
Because if she could have traded places with him in that instant, she would have done it without hesitation.
How could this happen?
How?
They had only just found each other. They had confessed their love. They had a wedding planned. They had not even begun their life together.
How could fate be cruel enough to take him now?
Then Maximilian moved... Or tried to. His hand trembled weakly as he attempted to raise it.
Catherine immediately bent over him.
"Maximilian... Baby... please stay with me. Please..."
She had never begged anyone for anything. But she was begging now.
If the devil himself had appeared before her at that moment and demanded her soul in exchange for Maximilian’s life, she would have signed anything. She would have surrendered everything she was without even reading the terms.
Maximilian’s lips parted.
"You..." His voice was barely audible. "...said... my name..."
Catherine broke.
He had asked her so many times. Asked her to call him Maximilian. Asked her to simply say his name.
And she had always held back.
Always.
"Cath..."
He had never shortened her name before.
That was all he managed.
Then his eyes closed.
"MAXIMILIAN!"
The helicopter arrived overhead, its blades whipping dust and debris into the air. Wind tore through Catherine’s hair and sent her dress billowing around her, but she did not move.
She could only stare.
She had spent so long refusing to call him by his name, even when he had pleaded with her.
And now she could only scream it.
Again and again.
While he could no longer hear her.
"No..." she whispered, cradling his face against her. "No, this can’t be how it ends."
Her voice shook violently.
"I’ll call you by your name from now on, all right? I’ll call you anything you want."
Fresh tears spilled down her face.
"Just come back to me, Maximilian."
She lowered her head onto his chest.
Where else could she go?
What else could she do?
This was her Maximilian.
Her home.
Her future.
And she knew.
She had seen the blood. She had seen his eyes. She knew what those signs meant.
Somewhere amidst the chaos surrounding them, Catherine realized that even her tears had stopped.
There was simply too much pain left for tears.
William tried to pull Catherine away from Maximilian.
He couldn’t.
"Cathy," he said hoarsely, crouching beside her. "They need to take him."
She did not react.
It was as though she had not heard him.
Her arms remained wrapped around Maximilian, clutching him with desperate strength, as though letting go would make this real. As though, if she held on tightly enough, she could keep him here.
Richard knelt beside her next.
"Aunt Cathy," he said firmly. "Listen to me."
Nothing.
Her eyes remained fixed on Maximilian’s face.
Richard’s heart broke.
Of everyone present, Catherine should have understood the necessity of this better than anyone. She knew what kind of trauma Maximilian had sustained. She knew that he needed to be stabilized, that his spine had to be protected, that every unnecessary movement could cost him his life.
But Catherine was no longer thinking as a doctor, a scientist, or even as herself.
She was simply a woman watching the man she loved slip away.
And she had already lost him once.
Richard exchanged a helpless look with William before carefully placing his hands over Catherine’s.
"Aunt Cathy," he said again, his voice rough with emotion. "You have to let them help him."
At last, she looked at him.
There was no anger in her eyes.
No understanding either.
Only emptiness.
An emptiness so profound that it frightened him.
Slowly, gently, Richard pried her fingers away from Maximilian. This time, Catherine’s strength simply vanished.
Everything after that became a blur.
Later, Catherine would try to remember what had happened, but the memories came only in disconnected fragments.
One moment, she had been holding Maximilian.
The next, she was not.
One moment, her hands had been covered in his blood.
The next, Sophia was holding those same hands, wiping them clean with trembling fingers.
She remembered staring down at her palms in confusion.
The blood was gone.
When had it disappeared?
Where had it gone?
She did not know.
Time lost all meaning.
Reality itself seemed to unravel.
When Catherine next became aware of her surroundings, she was sitting outside an operating room.
Family surrounded her.
She blinked.
The scenery changed.
Someone was pressing a bottle of water into her hands.
She blinked again.
Maximilian’s mother was there.
His sister, too.
Another blink.
The clothes she was wearing were different.
An IV cannula protruded from the back of her hand.
She stared at it for several seconds, unable to understand why it was there.
How long had she been sitting here?
Hours?
Days?
She did not know.
Nothing felt real.
Nothing except the red light above the operating room doors.
That light was real. That light contained her entire world.
At some point, the doors opened. The surgeon stepped out. Everyone around her rose immediately.
Catherine tried to stand. She couldn’t. Her legs refused to obey her.
The voices around her sounded muffled, distant, as though she were submerged underwater. She could not hear what anyone was saying. She could barely see.
But she looked at the surgeon.
Closely.
Very closely.
And she knew.
She knew that expression.
It was the expression doctors wore when they were about to say that the surgery had been technically successful, but the prognosis remained poor.
It was the expression worn by doctors preparing families for grief.
Everyone turned to look at her. Someone called her name.
She tried again to stand. She needed to ask, to hear it herself, to know whether Maximilian was alive.
But her body would not move.
The surgeon’s expression blurred.
The hospital corridor darkened around the edges.
And then... Catherine’s world went black.