Chapter 23 Galen
Galen
The cold eats me alive. In the water, I don’t shiver.
I kick. I fight. Then I realise my limbs aren’t listening anymore and it doesn’t seem important.
Maybe because I should be worrying about my ribs shattering with the need to breathe.
Or the sky above, which should be getting lighter, fading to a blurred fog until there’s nothing but endless black.
But I don’t worry about anything.
I drift.
For minutes. Hours, maybe. However it’s counted, it’s long enough for time to lose all meaning. Long enough for Sab to return to the forefront of my meandering thoughts, as if he’s the only thing that can pull me from the death goblins lurking in the frigid water.
Perhaps he is.
Or maybe he’s too late. Because I was too late, and it’s a thought that has my head jerking up, vision re-focussing before it splinters again, the black dragging me deeper.
Sonny.
Something inside me twists, but it isn’t enough to rouse me.
This is the last stop.
The end, right? Where it’s supposed to be all light and shit? I try to think clearly.
Nothing happens. Then a vicious wrench yanks me off course, the impact so violent I lose the last breath of air in my lungs.
I crack my head on rocks, stars bursting behind my eyes. My shoulder slams against more sharp debris and blinding pain floods me, lungs screaming for absolution.
Fecking-A.
I’ve already died, thanks. I don’t need this shite, and anger has me fighting it. The darkness, the current, the cold. The hands clamping onto me, ripping me free of the bitter drink by sheer and brutal force.
It hurts.
Christ, it fecking hurts, and the panic that’s been absent until now detonates, tearing through my body sharper than any pain, obliterating my senses.
I don’t know which way is up. If I’m underwater, sinking to the bottom, or if the hooks digging into me are dragging me to the surface.
I don’t know if I’m alive or dead, and for the first time in…goddamn, I don’t know, I find myself giving a shit.
Live. Or you’ll never get to tell him to his face that you really do fecking love him.
As motivation goes, it isn’t half bad. I fight with everything I have. Against everything I thought I was if I can ever grasp the metaphor.
Right now, all I know is a life that’s dark dark dark, until it’s not, and air slams into me like fire. Bright light. Someone shouting my name. Another pair of hands forcing me onto something solid as I choke and spit river water, the world tilting so hard faces bleed into the snow.
And then…nothing. Everything cuts off. Silence like the end of civilisation. Like a winter wonderland without the joy.
Like death…
Except, I’ve never been so cold and wet in my life. Or more vexed, with anyone and everyone, from the coppers and paramedics who won’t let me stand up, to Sonny who keeps threatening to call Logan if I don’t calm my tits and lay the feck down.
“I’m fine,” I repeat for the hundredth time, to anyone who’ll listen.
Trouble is, no one is listening to me, and as a HEMS doctor appears like a devil in red, waving a syringe, I take my cue to shut the hell up.
Almost, anyway. “Don’t fecking stick me with that. Or I’ll get my nanna to curse you for a thousand Christmases.”
The doctor ignores me, talking to someone over my head.
He sticks me anyway and I have no idea what happens next.
How much time passes. How often the scenery changes until I wake up in a room that’s horribly familiar, and I have no idea if this is the flashback nightmares are made of, or if the last two years of my life have been nothing but a dream.
And the panic…it’s still there. How the feck—how the fuck have I ended up here again? In this same room? On the same bed? With the same tubes in my arms and pain in my lungs—
“Easy.” A gloved hand hits my chest, forcing me down from the wild lurch I’ve propelled myself into. “Galen. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I’m not okay. My head is spinning and it hurts as if I whacked it on a river rock. My limbs ache too, like I have the flu.
Or hypothermia is kicking your arse.
I slow-blink, trying to catch up. Wriggle my fingers and toes. Test my lungs.
Everything works.
Everything is warm, which doesn’t do much for the intense confusion rattling my sore brain.
I’m in the hospital. Again. That much I do know. And the hand on my chest?
Christ, I know that hand, and it’s not actually fecking Jesus. “Shit the bed, Bhodi Jones-Dubois. Aren’t you bored of my pretty face yet?”
It takes a second for Nurse Bhodi’s face to solidify, and while Sab Dubois is the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on, it’s impossible to deny that Bhodi’s the prettiest. Blond hair, blue eyes, a smile like sunshine on snow.
Damn, he really does look like an angel.
I tell him so.
He laughs. “Glad to hear it. You had me worried for a little while.”
“That I don’t think you’re pretty?”
“More that you’d got too cold and wet to notice.” Bhodi leans over me, checking numbers, peering into my eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
“How’s your pain?”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you’ve said that a lot, but you were in the water a while, and those are some nasty bruises.”
“What bruises?”
“Shoulder. Back of your head. X-Rays are clear, though. So’s the CT. We’re just waiting on some bloods while we warm you up.”
“I’m warm.”
“You’re doing really well,” Bhodi concurs. “Play your cards right and I might be able to spring you in a bit.”
Short-lived energy sparks in my veins. “I can go home?”
“To a ward.” Bhodi kills my dreams, for a moment, anyway. “But we have no beds and even less nursing staff, so chances are they won’t keep you long there either.”
Music to my ears. The good kind, not the Christmas crap that plays in my head every second I’m in this fecking place.
I lie down and do everything Bhodi tells me. I rest. Even sleep some. And I don’t complain when he gives me medicine that makes me feel like I’m on a fecking Ferris wheel.
Need my phone.
An errant thought that has me sitting up. But it’s not Bhodi who pushes me down this time. I’m not on HDU anymore. I’m on a ward that feels like a holding centre and Sonny’s with me.
He has a phone.
It’s not mine, but the lunatic holds it to my ear and I get myself a diabolical bollocking from my best friend.
“Fucking hell,” Logan growls. “Can’t we have one damn Christmas without you dying on us?”
“I’m not dead. If I was I’d already be haunting you and hiding all your kecks.”
Logan growls some more. I listen without reminding him he’s pretty fucking prone to festive mishaps himself. I close my eyes, enjoying the familiarity of his grumpy voice until he says something that wakes me the hell up.
“Is Sab with you?”
“Huh? What?”
“Sab,” Logan repeats. “That’s his name, isn’t it?”
I can’t remember if Logan should know. If I told him and Nash both my romantic tales of woe. But it feels good to hear Sab’s name outside of my own head, and I feel a loopy grin split my face. “That’s his name. He’s not here—I don’t know where he is. He probably doesn’t know I’m here.”
“You should change that,” Logan tells me, deep voice so fecking serious. “If he’s going to be your person, make it real.”
“I don’t know if he wants that.”
“Then find out, preferably before you nearly cark it again.”
Logan says more things. Nice things. Grumpy things. I zone out, and I’m not sure how the conversation ends. Just that Sonny lowers the phone and slips me a guilty look.
“This is my fault.”
“What is?”
“All of it.” Sonny waves a shaky hand. “I freaked out in the water.”
“Didn’t crash that coach, though, did you? Or have me put my feet in stupid places.”
“But—”
“No. This is the job. And we all do it knowing it might kill us one day.”
Sonny’s unconvinced, and he steps out of the cubicle I’m stuck in to have himself a moment.
I use the solitude to check my dick is still where it should be.
That I haven’t frozen my balls off. Then I start planning my escape, finding my best smile for the docs and nurses still checking my organs are shipshape.
Heart.
Lungs.
Head still screwed on my shoulders.
“You’re going to be pretty sore and tired for a few days,” a doctor warns, handing me a prescription for fuck knows what. “I’d recommend you spend your Christmas on the sofa with a nice cup of tea.”
My comprehension is shot. I don’t know where we are in the festive swing of things, and I don’t much care. I lever my legs off the bed, grateful Sonny’s magicked me up some clothes and shoes, and then I book it before the friendly doctor changes her mind.
I’m dizzy, and my legs feel like they’re wedged in quicksand. But I know this hospital too fecking well, and it doesn’t take me long to navigate through the twists and turns to find the nearest exit.
Somehow, I manage to dodge most of my crew, but Sonny catches up with me by the lifts, pressing something hard and cold into my hand. “I got you a taxi. It’ll be here in ten minutes.”
Grand. And I should tell him so, but this thing he’s pressed into my hand…it’s my fecking phone and I find myself turning it over in my palm as though I’ve never seen it before.
It’s still on, battery fifty percent, an old photo of my ma staring back at me, reminding me I need to call her before she gets wind of this nonsense and gets herself in a state.
Then I swipe the screen to a madcap family group chat and realise Logan’s done it for me. That he’s spoken to everyone who needs to be spoken to and all my people want from me is to know I’m on my way home for a kip.
That, I can give them. I bash out a message that hopefully makes some kind of sense. Then I tap out of the chat, leaning heavily against a nearby wall while Sonny shadows my every step as though he expects me to collapse at any second.
It makes me wonder what he’s seen for however long I’ve been here. If I’ve put him through the same wringer I did Logan two Christmases ago. And I want to tell him I’m fine, but as every bruise screams, my bones as rickety as a bag of spanners, I don’t have the energy to lie.
Need my bed.
My mattress on the floor.
Feck, that bench outside will do.
I push off the wall, still blearily thumbing at my phone, concentration capacity somewhere in line with my Christmas cheer, and—
Wait—
I freeze, stopping so abruptly Sonny has to grab my arm. Blinking like I just woke up from a coma at the tiny notification below the shitshow of group chat messages.
A text.
From Sab.
A real message, not some DM on a bullshit swingers app, and Holy Mary, this must be what it feels like to have a stroke.
I rub my chest, my exhaustion-ravaged pulse hammering hard enough for me to see stars, and I’m of half a mind to believe I’m tripping my tits off.
Succumbed to hallucinations from whatever drugs still course through my system.
But the harder I look, the starker his name becomes, sitting there on the screen, waiting for me since…
Feck. This morning. Unless it was yesterday…goddamn it, I’m so banjaxed right now.
Need air.
I force my wobbly legs into motion and stagger outside into the witching hour, barely aware of Sonny still trailing after me, quiet to whatever madness is keeping me upright, all the while hovering my shaky thumb over the unread message, elation and fear fighting for dominance.
Hope I haven’t earned dances in my veins, but at the same time, what if this is Sab telling me to get lost once and for all?
It isn’t.
I’m so sure of it I should crack this message wide open. And yet, this pickled from a terrible shift, I really am scared. If this is Sab’s goodbye, I can’t face it. Not tonight. I can’t face anything except the cold air seeping into my bones and a wait for a taxi I know is going to fecking kill me.
“What’s wrong?” Sonny. He peers over my shoulder and I lack the will to shrug him off. “You don’t want to open it?”
“I’m not sure it’s good news.”
“Can’t be worse than what you’ve survived in the last twelve hours.”
“Now, you say that—”
“Give it here.” Sonny has my phone out of my hand before I can draw another breath. He taps at the screen and frowns as he reads, which does nothing for my nerves.
Then he grins, slow and sure, and thrusts the phone right back at me. “Well look at that. Your Christmas wish arrived right on time.”
Takes me way too long to focus enough to see what he means.
Even longer to comprehend—to believe—what I’m seeing.
Then it’s my turn to split my face in half with a slow grin, certainty filling every cell of my battered body.
I’m ready, Sab. For you, I always was.
I just didn’t know it.