The closest hospital was a small one in downtown Summerville, just off the interstate exit. Victor pulled up right to the emergency room doors. Gabriel mumbled incoherently. Dr. Green had given him a shot of some kind, and now he kept passing out.
Luke hopped out when the car stopped, rushing inside the sliding glass doors of the emergency room entrance. Dr. Green got out and came around to my door, easing it open. He caught me when Gabriel’s weight shifted and threatened to push me out of the car.
Luke returned with a stretcher. I wondered how he knew where to get one from.
I eased myself out from under Gabriel. Victor and Dr. Green together pulled him from the back of the car. his head rocked back, his eyes half open. Whatever Dr. Green had given him, it was working too well.
Luke clutched my hand as Victor and Dr. Green strapped Gabriel to the stretcher and sent him wheeling into the hospital. We followed behind them. I let Luke guide me through into the lobby, but he stopped short when Dr. Green and Victor disappeared beyond a doorway marked off for doctors only. I was surprised Victor went with him, but if he was with Dr. Green, any nurse or security paying attention must have thought he was permitted.
“He’ll be fine, Sang,” Luke said softly. He squeezed my hand. “It’s not that bad. I’d go back there with them if it was worse.”
I wanted to respond to him. I wanted to make similar promises. Of course he’d be okay. Of course they’d take care of him. Of course it could have been worse.
But my nerves had caught up with me. I shivered where I stood. Gabriel wasn’t fine. He’d been stabbed by someone we didn’t see coming. I’d left him alone. I’d run the other way. Maybe I didn’t have a choice, but everything inside of me at that moment blamed me and only me for Gabriel’s blood on my hands and clothes, for the pain I saw in his eyes, for making him cry and curse at me as I pulled out the knife.
“Sang,” Luke soothed. He pulled me in. His body was the stillness to my shaking. His arms clutched at my back. “He’ll be okay. I swear.”
I tried to swallow back my tears, but Luke’s arms and words made the sorrow worse. I couldn’t hold it together anymore. It was like having nothing to but wait left too much room to examine everything, and I was at a loss. I was surrendering to the only thing I had left. Pity. Sorrow. Worry. If I hadn’t punched Greg at all, if I just listened to them, this wouldn’t have happened.
North had told me everyone had a breaking point. I believed I had just found mine. Only what was breaking was my heart rather than my anger. Why didn’t I call Gabriel? None of this would have happened.
Luke sucked in a breath by my ear at my shuddering. He hooked an arm around my thighs, picking me up off the floor. I held on, burying my head into his shoulder as he walked.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice called. “You can’t take her back there.”
Luke ignored this. I wanted to look up and see what was happening, but I couldn’t get my body to move. My hands cupped the back of Luke’s neck and at the base of his head, gripping. My tears smeared on the material of his white collared shirt. Gabriel was hurt. He could have died if Victor hadn’t shown up. I wouldn't have been able to find him. He wouldn’t have chased Greg off.
And Greg was still out there. Would he hurt Kota?
Luke walked a good distance. He paused and turned, pushing with his back to open a door. He angled us inside.
“What’s wrong?” Victor’s voice echoed from around the room, and I couldn’t pick out his direct location. I couldn’t move my head from the sanctuary of Luke’s shoulder.
“She won’t stop crying,” Luke said. “Someone make her stop.”
“The crazy girl has nerves of steel until you tell her the show’s over,” Victor said. Movement fluttered around me.
“What do I do?” Luke asked.
“Put her down here,” Dr. Green said.
“Next to Gabriel? Is that okay?”
“He won’t mind.” Dr. Green said.
I was placed, sitting up, on a table. When Luke pulled back, Victor, Luke and Dr. Green were all hovering over me.
This set me off in a new string of sobs. “Don’t worry about me,” I croaked out. “Fix Gabriel.”
“Sweetie,” Dr. Green said, “I just stapled his leg. There’s nothing else to do except bandage him up and let him sleep off the sedative. Do you want to help me clean up here?”
That sounded good. Keeping busy was what my mind needed. I nodded, shoving a finger toward my lower lip. I wanted to turn around and look at Gabriel, but I was afraid if I did, I’d start crying again.
Dr. Green patted my thigh. “Yeah. See. I’d cry, too, if I had to stop working. Get up off the table and wash your hands first.” He pointed behind him to a counter with a sink. “Wash really well because we don’t want to give Gabriel an infection.”
I sucked back a sob. I hopped off the table, wobbling at first, but stumbled my way to the sink and started cleaning my hands. Focusing on the water and the task slowed my crying further. It was just what I needed; I hated them and loved them for knowing me better than I did.
“Is the car still out front?” Victor asked Luke.
“Yeah.”
“You and I should go find out what’s happening with rounding up Eric and Greg. Let’s go.”
“Mr. Blackbourne and North are looking for you,” I told Victor. “They went to your house.”
His eyes widened. “Is that where they are?” He fished keys from his pocket. “We need to hurry.”
Luke glanced once more at me, the longing in his eyes evident, but he turned away, forcing himself to leave. I wanted to call after him, but didn’t want to upset any of them any further.
“Sang,” Dr. Green said. “Come play nurse.”
I finished washing my hands, turning. The sight of Gabriel unconscious on the silver table threatened to send me back into a spiral of sobs. I’d seen him sleep before. He’d been beside me in my own bed. Here was different. I blamed the blood. His cheeks looked pale. I blamed myself again.
For the next half hour, I worked beside Dr. Green. He cut away Gabriel’s pants until Gabriel was in his boxers. I helped clean up the blood from his thigh. He bandaged his leg and the cut on his arm. I found a blanket and wrapped him loosely in it.
Dr. Green located a hospital bed to transfer him to an upstairs room. I helped him slide Gabriel over. When a nurse popped in, wanting to take over my job, Dr. Green shooed her away. The nurse threatened him with calling the manager, but Dr. Green said something to her in a whisper and the nurse left us alone after that.
Dr. Green was the only one who spoke, and the only things he said were short order instructions. No jokes. No teasing. He worked slowly and I sensed this wasn’t about taking care of Gabriel as much as to give me time working with my hands.
Part of me wanted to join Kota to see with my eyes when they caught Greg. I wanted to know what they would do to him. I’d never felt that way about anyone before and I didn’t like it. I swiped the thoughts away by focusing on Gabriel.
We were finishing up when a soft humming started up. I spun away from the cabinet, gazing for the source.
Gabriel’s lips were moving. He mumbled a song. It sounded familiar but his words were slurred.
“He sings when he’s in a really deep sleep.” Dr. Green said. His lips curled into a smile as he approached Gabriel’s side to look down on him. “Usually Elvis.”
“I’ve never heard him do that,” I said, my throat dry.
“I’ve heard it a couple of times. Usually only when he’s in a hospital bed. He’s done it while in surgery before.”
It made me wonder how many times Gabriel had been in the hospital. Was it as often as my stepmother had been? I wasn’t sure I should ask that question, because then I would ask why and probably didn’t want to know that right now. “Should we tell his family?”
“His family knows,” Dr. Green said. “We know.”
“What about ... I mean ...” Then I remembered Gabri
el saying his mother was dead. I just assumed someone else cared about him, too. I assumed not everyone was like me, and somewhere out there, they had a family member, at least one, that cared about him. Like how Kota’s family cared about him. Gabriel went home at night. Where was that?
Dr. Green grimaced. “He’s got a stepmother, but if we tell her, she’ll go into a drinking frenzy and it’ll do more harm than good. She’s used to him being gone overnight often enough. She won’t worry about not seeing him. But when he wakes up enough, we’ll have him give her a call. We might have him stay with you or Nathan for a couple of days if he’s limping.” He gripped the edge of the hospital bed. “Let’s get him up to a room.”
Dr. Green checked with one of the nurses to ask if a private room was available. The floor nurse insisted on taking care of it, but Dr. Green’s soothing smile and cheerful disposition lured her into simply giving him the information.
We ended up on the fourth floor. This hospital had narrower hallways than the Academy one and the smell of disinfectant on linoleum floors was a much more familiar one. The Academy hospital wing didn’t feel like a real hospital to me. This was more like what I remembered from growing up and visiting my mother, before she asked us to stop visiting.
Dr. Green swung the bed into room 423. This room was smaller than ones at the Academy hospital downtown. The window was higher up, and overlooked part of the parking lot and the highway behind it.
“Not that I mind, but why did we not take him to the Academy hospital?”
“This one was closer,” Dr. Green said. His eyes diverted to Gabriel.
“Is that the only reason?” I liked the Academy hospital. I felt safe there.
“No.” His smile lifted and he looked back at me. I was surprised he could admit the hospital belonged to the Academy. He didn’t flinch about me knowing. Maybe he assumed Mr. Blackbourne or someone else mentioned it. “It’s not a big deal. If he was really hurt, after getting him out of immediate danger, I would have had him transferred. But this little thing won’t hurt him. I don’t want to waste the resources to bring him downtown. I'd let him go home with you now, but we’ll let him rest here tonight. The nurses don’t like it when the patients are still unconscious when they leave.”
I hovered over Gabriel. I didn’t know what to do for him. His face looked peaceful now, at least. His hair was messed up and sticking up in the back. Part of me wanted to find a comb somewhere and fix it for him. He wouldn’t like it out of place.
Dr. Green stood by me, watching Gabriel. After a few moments, he collected himself out of his own deep thoughts. “Okay, Sang. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Downstairs. We’re going to try the apple pie in this hospital.”
“We can’t leave him.”
“Of course we can. He’s fine. He’s asleep.”
“But we can’t ...” I wanted to say I couldn’t leave him but I didn’t want to admit to that.
“Come get something to eat really quickly. I want to see you eat something before I leave.” Dr. Green reached for my hand, pulling me away from the bedside. “He’s not going anywhere.”
I tried to glance back at Gabriel, but I was tugged along too quickly.
The cafeteria was smaller than the one at the Academy hospital, and they didn’t have apple pie. Dr. Green settled for chocolate chip cookies instead. I nibbled at a sandwich while he ate.
“Stop thinking so much, “ Dr. Green said. “I want to see you eat.”
I took a big bite out of my sandwich. When I swallowed it back, I really didn’t feel like eating more, so I went for talking, hoping to distract him. “Have you heard from the others?”
“Not a peep. Probably means they’re busy.” He picked a chocolate chip out of his cookie and popped it into his mouth. “But don’t worry about that. If there was a problem, they’d call. Phone calls are what you should worry about. Not silence.”
“How is it you still have your phone on?” I asked.
“Someone’s told you I’m a doctor, right? I need my phone. I can’t turn it off.”
“Victor had one, too,” I said, recalling. Now that the feeling of immediate danger had mostly worn off, swarms of questions buzzed in my head, only I was on my last battery and even that was dying. I wanted to connect the dots, but questions piled up on each other. “And he was supposed to be at home. If he had been when North called, he couldn’t have made it to this side of town so soon.”
Dr. Green’s eyes lit up. “You’re too clever for your own good.”
“Did you know?”
“I didn’t know until you told me he was in the school. Then I understood.”
My head swam, trying to catch up. “What do you mean?”
Dr. Green glanced around the cafeteria, as if trying to pinpoint if anyone was listening in. He leaned over the table a little, lowering his voice. “Didn’t you tell me on our last little date that you’d asked Victor let you be bait? You wanted to try to lure this masked guy out?”
I blinked at him. “I guess I did.”
“I believe he was doing that. He was doing what you asked.”
My eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“Victor went home to talk to the guards and see if they caught footage on the security cameras of anyone following them. My guess is he figured out the new phones had been hacked already somehow. So he left those phones at home. He didn’t take his car, either, which has a traceable GPS unit inside.”
I ran with his idea. “He told the maid to tell people he was home, but he wouldn’t answer the phone. It’s why she wouldn’t pass the phone over even when Kota called.”
“So I bet you he made sure whoever was following him still thought he was at home. He slipped out, somehow.”
“He scaled the wall?”
Dr. Green grinned. “And he made sure to keep out of sight. He stayed out of contact so no one could listen in and figure it out. He followed you. He made the masked guy more interested in following you around. Since your stalker wasn’t limited to school grounds, he had to broaden his approach. He followed you to figure out who had your tail.”
“And he didn’t tell you guys?”
“He might not have been able to get a message across to us without giving away his position. I bet the phone he had on him was bought brand new and never even got turned on to keep his position low key. You can load those apps without a SIM card that would give your position away. I don’t know the details. I’m still just guessing, but I know how he likes to work.”
I sighed, settling back into the chair and gazing at the window. Part of me wondered if I was being photographed right now. “Mr. Blackbourne knew. Or maybe he suspected. He wanted me to act like nothing was wrong. He must have talked to him at some point. North didn’t know. And Mr. Blackbourne didn’t want me to go with him after North. It might have been okay then until I messed up.”
“Hey, hey,” Dr. Green said, drawing himself up. “No one knew those bozos were upstairs. You probably saved Gabriel’s life by following him.”
I bit my lip, unsure. It’d been my fault he was up there alone in the first place.
Dr. Green’s mouth tightened. “Sang, you can’t blame yourself.” He reached out, capturing my hand in his, and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t give me that face. Do I need to take you to go see babies again?”
I shook my head stiffly. I messed up more than I realized. I couldn’t even be normal when Victor needed me to be.
Dr. Green sighed. “Someone needs a nap.” He stood, leaving our dishes this time. He circled the table, guiding me out of the chair. “Come on.”
. I hadn’t realized until I stood how badly I was fading. I was nearly numb. Dr. Green practically carried me to the elevator and down the hall. When we were in Gabriel’s room again, he closed the door behind us.
“Get in the bed,” he told me.
I looked at Gabriel, dead asleep, his beautiful lips moving to a song I couldn’t hear. “I can’t.”
/>
“He’d want you to,” Dr. Green said softly. “He needs you. You need him right now. It’s what we do. This is our family.”
I sighed, too weak to argue. I let Dr. Green nudge me to the bed. This bed was smaller than the Academy hospital's. Dr. Green tugged Gabriel to one side to give me enough room.
“Shouldn’t I be ...” I said, sure I was supposed to do something. Didn’t I need to go back to school? Didn’t I have to find Victor? Didn’t I have to tell North something?
“You’re supposed to stay here and babysit Gabriel,” he said. He reached out his hand, brushing my eyelashes gently until my lids closed. “That’s your job right now. Stay with him. Don’t leave until he wakes up and we come to get you.”
“Then I can’t sleep ...”
“Shh,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’re not sleeping. You’re looking after your patient.”
I sighed, and willed my eyes to open, but the muscles had given up.
I never heard Dr. Green leaving.
VOLTO
It was dark when I felt the need to turn over. I’d slept so deeply that my hand had fallen asleep underneath me.
When my arm hit a body, I dismissed it. Kota. Nathan. Someone.
When my other arm hit a hard metal object, ringing out, my eyes flew open.
I'd forgotten where I was. The hospital room was dimly lit from the light shining out the bathroom’s open door. The window let in light from signs and parking overhead lights at the shopping center across the street. Rain tapped the window in a gentle sheet.
Gabriel flopped over. His eyes were little slits. “Sang,” he said in a gruff voice, like he needed to clear it from sleep.
“Gabriel,” I said, my voice almost nonexistent.