Blood And Roses: Fallen Part 6

"Well, your father's home now, so I'd better get dinner started. Have you heard anything more from Alexis? Has she said when she'll be coming home?"

"Can you see Dad?" I ask, my heart beating hard in my chest.

"What do you mean?"

"Can you actually see him? Is he standing right in front of you?"

"No...not right in front of me, he's just walking through the door. Now he's in front of me. Al, talk to your daughter. I can't get any sense out of her."

The line goes quiet, and I hang up. Michael was right; they are both safe. But for how long? How long before they're not?

I slip out of the blood bank, but not without being spotted by one of the nurses. It's Grace. She sees me, out of scrubs with my key card gripped in between my teeth and my purse bulging with stolen bodily fluids. She asks me how I am, concerned for me after the smash; she then eyes my bag, gives me a warm smile and heads off on her rounds. I have no idea if I've been busted or not, and if I have, whether Grace will rat me out. Theft from the hospital is a very serious offense. You can't take one a.n.a.lgesic for a simple headache without being held accountable. There's paperwork doc.u.menting every single pill, bandage, bedpan and milligram of blood in this place; at some point, and some point very soon, someone is going to notice the missing blood and a lot of questions will be asked. There's a real possibility that Grace will recall seeing me leaving the blood bank and will inform the relevant people. There's nothing I can do about it now, though. It's a problem I'm going to have to deal with at a later date.

Michael pulls up outside the hospital and the pa.s.senger side door is already opening before he stops the car. "Get in," he tells me. He flinches when he sees the state I'm in.

"There are cuts all over your face," he advises me.

"Really? Oh, I hadn't noticed." I yank the seatbelt across me-wearing one earlier is probably the only reason I'm alive right now-and shove it viciously into the clip, sending a stab of pain through my sore arm. "Being in a car accident will do that to you, I suppose. Where is he? How the h.e.l.l did he end up stabbed? And tell me one more time that my parents aren't going to get dragged into this any further."

Michael's a pro driver; he slings the car through the bend, drifting it like someone who's had to do it before. Many times. "Your parents are one hundred percent safe, Sloane. I swear it personally. And I'm taking you to Zeth right now. He got himself stabbed by Charlie's woman. Killed herself apparently, but thought it would be wise to try and take Zee with her."

"What? Why? Why the h.e.l.l would she do that?"

Michael just shrugs, scowling out at the road. I don't press. I grip hold of the edge of the seat. I do try and get more information out of him about Zeth's injury-how deep is the wound? What angle? Where exactly in his abdomen? What kind of knife?-but all he will say is that I don't need to worry. It's all being taken care of.

I find out what he means twenty minutes later when he pulls into the dockyard and parks the car in front of an industrial-looking building-single story, with high windows and a single entrance to the side. It looks like a storage facility.

"Go let yourself in. I can't leave the car here," Michael tells me.

"Let myself in? What-"

"You have a key, Ms. Romera, remember? Zeth had me hand deliver it myself. Have you lost it?"

I'm transported back to the hospital, to the day Mikey the intern came to advise me there was someone waiting for me. Michael had given me the note and the key from Zeth...to Zeth's home. "This...this is where he lives?"

"Were you expecting a McMansion?"

Maybe I was expecting something a little more salubrious-looking given the property where Zeth held his party. But this, this actually makes a lot more sense. "No. Just surprised there aren't any armed guards is all."

Michael grunts, lips pulling tight. "I'm about as close as you're gonna get."

I get out of the car and locate my keys inside my bag. The small key still sits there, thus far unused; I select it and open the padlock, which is currently keeping an industrial chain locked through two ma.s.sive steel handles. I have to throw all of my body weight behind me to get the eight-foot-high door to slide back, and my injured arm sings out in pain. I pull it back and head inside, surprised by what I find. Not a hollow sh.e.l.l of a building, filled with rats and empty packing crates as I'd expected. It's a fully renovated home. One I don't have time to explore right now. I follow the sound of voices and end up in a large, open-plan s.p.a.ce which is lit by three high-powered lamps, each directed at the p.r.o.ne form of Zeth where he lies on a tall, wooden bench. Lacey stands to one side, chewing on her thumbnail, arm folded tightly across herself. The moment she sees me, she runs, slamming into me, throwing her arms around my middle.

"Sloane, I don't...I don't like him. I don't trust him. Please. Please."

The him she's referring to is a large, bird-like man with his dirty blond hair tied up in a top-knot, hovering over Zeth. His jacket is rumpled but appears to be a fairly clean white. He looks up at me, peering over the top of his hospital-grade protective gla.s.ses, and gives me a curt nod.

"You'll be her, then," he says.

"Yes. I'm her."

"I've given him Ceftibuten. It's all I had. I abraded and closed the wound, just finished st.i.tching him up. You can take a look at him if you like but you're a little late, lady. Everything's been done."

"Everything's been..." I can hardly comprehend what he's saying. This guy laid hands on Zeth? This guy treated him and st.i.tched him up? My heartbeat is pounding in every inch of my body as I shrug out of Lacey's hold and hurry toward the table. Zeth is unconscious, his lips tinged a pale blue. His shirt is missing-it's wadded up in a b.l.o.o.d.y mess on the floor beside the table-and there's a three-inch-long wound just under his ribcage. It's long, but it's clean and straight. That means the knife this woman used was probably very sharp. A good thing in some cases. Not so good in others. Depends what she hit on the inside.

"What about internal bleeding? How much blood did he lose?"

The guy purses his lips. "Couldn't tell you. He was out cold when I got here, so it must have been a lot. And I couldn't see any bleeding inside. Like I said, I just cleaned him up and closed him."

"You idiot!" I shove him out of the way, placing my hands on Zeth's stomach. No rigidity. No signs of anything serious. No discoloration. No way of knowing what the internal damage is like now that this...this person has sewn him up. The st.i.tches are regular and neat-the handiwork of someone who's used to such tasks. I spin on the other man. "Who the h.e.l.l are you, anyway?"

He raises his hands, smiling. "I'm you," he says. "I'm a doctor that got caught up in this s.h.i.t. I got caught up in something I had no business sticking my nose into. Are we done here? I have other patients to see."

"Other patients? Where's your practice? What hospital are you based out of?"

He only laughs. "My hospital is in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a building somewhere you frankly don't wanna know about, lady. And I have other people with other injuries that need st.i.tching up, too, so if you'll excuse me..."

He goes to leave, but I grab hold of his arm. "Do you even have a license?"

"No, sweetheart. I do not have a license. I lost that when I lost everything else."

"Sloane! Sloane, he's waking up! Hey! Hey, Zeth!" Lacey rushes toward the table, tears streaming down her face as she reaches her brother. His eyes are indeed cracked open, though bloodshot and unfocused.

"Lace," he croaks. He lifts one arm, probably in an attempt to try and touch her, but then it falls limp to his side.

The sound of the huge metal door being pulled open echoes through the building, and I realize the black-market doctor is gone. In his place, Michael rushes through the door, eyes searching for Zeth. I meet him halfway and slap him so hard his head rocks to the side.

"What the h.e.l.l were you thinking, letting some unregistered back-alley freak touch him? He could have killed him, Michael!"

Michael slowly turns to face me, touching his tongue to his lower lip. His eyes are devoid of any anger, though I can feel it pulsing steadily just beneath his calm exterior. "I was thinking that he was going to die if I waited for you. Would that have been a preferable solution?"

My anger sticks in my throat. "No. No, of course not. I'm sorry. I..." I was scared. I was terrified. I still am. I keep all of that inside, though. "I shouldn't have hit you. I'm sorry."

He doesn't say a thing, just maneuvers around me in order to find his boss. I follow after him, swallowing down the hesitation I feel. I don't want to see Zeth like this-it hurts way more than anything I've ever experienced before. And I definitely don't want Zeth to see me so scared. I just...I just can't. I drag in a deep breath, drawing all of my strength together before I face him.

It looks like Lace is doing her level best not to cry. "Don't you dare die," she says. Her hands are clamped on the very edge of the table, not touching him. She wants to, I can see it in her eyes, but she doesn't.

Zeth smiles. "I'm not dying. I'm fine." He tries to prove this by shifting his body weight, attempting to sit up. He makes it, too, the stubborn b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Michael rushes to his side, offering out an arm to lean on but Zeth shoots him a look I'm sure has withered the b.a.l.l.s of many men. Michael backs up, one eyebrow raised.

"You wanna eat concrete, that's fine with me."

I stand and watch all of this, the fingers of my right hand pressed against my lips, hugging myself with my other arm. I feel stupid. I feel so, so stupid. I mentally planned out everything I would need to do to help once I got here, and now that I'm here and my help isn't apparently needed I feel...I don't even know how I feel. Mostly four different kinds of scared. Scared that that doctor might have done more harm than good; that I'm going to get busted for taking that blood from work; that I've shown up in Zeth's place without him personally bringing me here. But most importantly, I'm scared because there was a second there when I contemplated Zeth dying. And the sheer terror that thought inspired won't be leaving me anytime soon.

When did this happen? When did I begin to need him so much? I've always made a point of never needing anyone. I feel sick to my stomach. Zeth looks up through the fussing he's receiving from Lacey and Michael, and his eyes meet mine. His expression tightens, forming a deeply furrowed brow. "What happened?"

Oh, yeah. I've completely forgotten that I look like I've been street fighting. "Fender bender," I whisper.

"One of Charlie's guys nearly forced her off the freeway," Michael helpfully supplies.

"They what?" Not content with the minor miracle of merely sitting, Zeth tries to go the whole hog and slips from the table, trying to stand. It's a glorious failure. His legs don't even pretend they're fit to hold him up; they bow immediately, and he drops like a sack of stones. I rush forward-like I would have a hope in h.e.l.l of catching him without getting flattened-but Michael's already on the case. Zeth's unconscious again, his skin a pallid, deathly white.

"How about that transfusion, Ms. Romera?" he suggests.

"Yes. Of course." I go and grab the blood from my bag, feeling the weight of the fluid heavy in my palm. Before blood transfusions, people would die from wounds like Zeth's. h.e.l.l, people still died from them today, with the blood transfusions. As I put a line into Zeth's arm and watch the dark, almost black blood slowly make its way into his body, I can only hope I brought enough. And I can only hope Zeth wakes up again.

Four Days Later Something tells me I've lost time. You tend to know these things when they happen to you-you can feel it in your bones. There's that feeling of wakefulness when you rise from sleeping-a pleasant, mostly lethargic experience. Then there's the sudden wakefulness of your consciousness resetting and switching back on, like you've been powered down while your body carries out maintenance work, and then having the reset b.u.t.ton hit when things are tolerable enough for you to wake up again.

Waking right now feels like the reset b.u.t.ton being hit. And it f.u.c.king hurts like a motherf.u.c.ker. I'm working up to opening my eyes when I hear voices. The buzzing of a cell phone.

"Who is it?" Lacey's voice, soft and hushed, speaking to someone else. Another buzz of a cell phone. A deep sigh.

"It's Pippa. She wants to talk to me. We fought before your last session." Sloane now. Sloane's voice. I feel positively f.u.c.king tingly when I hear her speak. It's like a huge weight being lifted from my chest. She was hurt. I remember that. Someone hurt her.

"Are you going to call her?" Lacey asks.

There's a pause for a moment, and then Sloane says, "I just don't have the energy right now. She's not one to let something drop."

"You should just be honest with her. That's what she told me."

Another pause, longer this time.

"And are you going to take her advice? Are you-you don't think you should tell him yet?" Sloane's tripping over her words like she's skirting a very sensitive subject.

"I-I don't think-No, not yet. It'll be better-if I wait a little longer." Lacey seems to be having problems getting her words out, too. I'm hit with the sudden memory of Sam saying that Charlie sent them to take her in order to protect her.

"I can totally understand that you're nervous about this, Lace," Sloane says softly. "But you don't think he has a right to know? I mean, you can't keep it from him forever, right?"

My hands begin to clench into fists. I get this absurd image into my head-Lacey with a huge, round belly, and some schmuck who's knocked her up standing right next to her. If someone's gotten her into trouble, I'm gonna go on the f.u.c.king warpath. As far as I know, Lace has been steering clear of every single guy on the face of the planet bar me, though. Maybe she met someone at Sloane's dad's church camp. Some hippy dippy a.s.shole who plays guitar and likes toasting marshmallows. The very idea...yeah it's f.u.c.king laughable. Thinking about laughing makes me realize just how d.a.m.n dry my throat is. I start to cough.

"He's awake. He's...oh my G.o.d, he's awake! What should I do?" Lacey panicking.

Something cool and firm touches my forehead, and then my eyelids are being prised open and a bright light is being shone directly into them. I fight to get them closed again. "Mother. f.u.c.ker," I groan.

"And there he is. So eloquent," Sloane says. There's a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice.

"You're trying to kill me, aren't you?" I growl.

"Not kill you. Merely encourage you to drag your lazy a.s.s back into the land of the living." I open my eyes of my own volition, and she's there sitting on the edge of the bed, a small flashlight resting on her lap. "Headache?" she asks.

I could tell her that it feels like someone's been stomping on my skull for the past G.o.d knows how long, but instead I just give a sharp nod. Even that sends a wave of nausea rolling through me.

"You're dehydrated. I have you on a drip, but it's probably not enough. Here." She holds out a gla.s.s of water and my stomach f.u.c.king balks at the thought of drinking it. She's right, though; I have to drink. I reach for it and my hand snags-there's a cannula in the back of my f.u.c.king hand. No f.u.c.king thank you. I yank it out, and Sloane makes a half-hearted protest. I toss it onto the bed, saline leaking out onto the covers, and I take the gla.s.s of water from her.

It takes considerable effort to try and keep my hand from shaking as I drink. f.u.c.k, it takes considerable effort not to drop the d.a.m.n gla.s.s altogether. I may not have wanted it a moment ago, but as soon as the water touches my lips I can't stop myself. The liquid tastes better than any beer or spirit I've ever drunk.

"Steady. Slow down. You drink too quickly, you'll make yourself sick," Sloane says.

I stop gulping down the water and place it on the small side table beside my bed. I have about thirty different questions slamming around inside my head and I'm determined to ask all of them, but as soon as I take a proper look at Sloane all of that changes. The sun's shining down through the skylight above my bed, lighting up the haze of individual hairs that stick up around her head, escaped from the pencil that's doing a half-a.s.sed job of holding her hair back. I just sit there and stare at her for a moment. I've nearly died a couple of times now, but I've never experienced this kind of f.u.c.ked-up emotion before now. I've only been interested in getting up and moving so I can find the a.s.shole that tried to end me so I could get revenge. This situation isn't like that. Right now, I'm simply filled with relief. Relief that I get to see the woman sitting on the edge of my bed again. What the h.e.l.l is wrong with me?

Lace is leaning against the wall, the cuffs of the sweater she's wearing-mine-dangling way past her hands. She's swamped in the thing. And she looks pale, too; way paler than she should be. This whole thing, me getting stabbed, it's the stupidest f.u.c.king thing, and it looks like these women have been suffering for it. That makes me feel pretty f.u.c.king s.h.i.tty.

"Your parents," I say, glancing at Sloane.

She shakes her head, smiling softly. "They're fine. I couldn't handle leaving them at home, not with Charlie knowing where to get to them, so I paid for them to go on vacation. They're soaking up the sun for two weeks in the Caribbean as we speak."

Hmmm. Smart. That means I have two weeks to deal with Charlie before they're in any sort of danger again. "How long? How long have I been out?" I ask.

"Four days." Sloane bends and picks up a small plate with some dry biscuits on it. She offers it out to me, but I shake my head.

"I was in a coma for four days?"

She laughs at this, offering the plate to Lacey, who takes one of the biscuits and dutifully bites into the brittle thing. Maybe they're trying to lead by example but there's no way I'm putting that dusty looking s.h.i.t in my mouth.

"Not in a coma," Sloane says. "You were running a high fever. Makes you incoherent. Sleep for long stretches at a time." She smirks. "But you were in and out for a while there."

I don't even wanna know why she's finding that so entertaining. I was probably clucking like a chicken or some s.h.i.t. Hopefully Michael's been busy or he'll have recorded the whole f.u.c.king thing on his cell phone. a.s.shole.

As if on cue, the door to my room opens and the man himself walks in. His suit jacket's missing and his shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows. "Finally," is all he says.

"Yeah. Finally."

"Sloane said you'd wake up properly today," Lacey whispers, inching closer. She hovers for a second before obviously giving in and deciding the h.e.l.l with it. She perches carefully on the edge of the bed on the opposite side to Sloane. "She hasn't left your side," she says, nodding to Sloane. "It's all been very Florence Nightingale."

Sloane shoots her an uncomfortable look, her cheeks turning red. "Yeah, well, you don't leave sick patients when they need monitoring."

A strange look pa.s.ses over Lacey's face. She regards us both, her gaze turning from me to Sloane, back and forth for a minute, and then she sighs. She sounds oddly content. "You two are really weird, y'know. You"-she pokes me in the leg-"care about her. And you"-she pokes Sloane-"care about him. Why the h.e.l.l are you tiptoeing around it like high school freshman at your first dance?"

I could f.u.c.king throttle her. Michael clears his throat, scratches his jaw, says, "Right. Okay, then," and walks straight out of the room again. We have a tacit agreement that we don't talk about emotions and girly s.h.i.t-it makes him as uncomfortable as it makes me. Which is pretty f.u.c.king uncomfortable. At least when it's coming from Lacey's mouth, anyway.

"You feel like giving us the room, Lace?" I ask. Usually that would be enough to set her off, but she seems content enough with the fact that I'm alive. She does as I ask and leaves, my sweatshirt so long on her that it's almost down to her knees.

"She's been sleeping in here," Sloane says quietly.

Oh, G.o.d. Being in the same room as me while I sleep? That's f.u.c.king dangerous. I could have hurt her. If I was delirious as well as half-asleep, I could have killed her. "Did I-" I don't even know how to ask. Maybe Lacey's wearing that giant sweater of mine because I laid my hands on her and she's covered in f.u.c.king bruises.

"No, no. Don't worry." Sloane shakes her head. "You were too weak to even lift your head let alone throw anybody across the room."

I fix my eyes on her, and I see that she looks tired. Completely worn out. "You been sleeping in here too?" I ask, though I know the answer. She hasn't been sleeping anywhere. She barely looks like she's slept at all. She shrugs.

"Like I said, a doctor doesn't leave a patient that requires monitoring."

I grunt at that. "So it wasn't because you were terrified I was going to die and you were panicking like crazy?"

Her eyes widen a little. She should know by now that I don't like guessing at people's emotions. Particularly when I can see them plainly enough. I've never understood why people f.u.c.king hide what they're thinking or feeling. It's pointless. It doesn't get them anywhere, and it doesn't ever help me, either.

"Yes," she says, lifting her chin. This whole being honest thing is so new to her that she still thinks it's the hard way to do things instead of the easiest. "Okay, yes, I was worried. More than worried. I didn't want you to die."

"Good."