Chapter 23
Blake
The sterility of a hospital was one of the only things in this world that truly got my skin crawling.
There was something about the smell of antibacterial wash clinging to the air, coupled with the soft and distant beeping of machines going off from down the hallway, that turned my typically calm and collected self into a twitched mess of anxiety.
Being crammed in this chair for the last few hours was pure torture.
It had nothing to do with how pinched my back was feeling from how tightly I had my legs drawn up to my chest, nor the way I’d been hunched over for the better part of three hours while watching nurses and doctors come and go from the double doors leading into the emergency unit.
None of them stopped to update me on Marlow’s condition, which meant one of two things: either he was still in surgery, or something else had gone horribly wrong and they were gearing up to come break the news.
Both of which made my stomach twist.
I was fortunate to arrive alongside Marlow when he was transported to Ellington Medical, the search and rescue team not taking any chances with leaving Talos and I out in the wilderness seventy feet below the plateau of the mountain’s peak where we’d eventually found his beaten and broken body.
Seeing that image, belaying down to him while he lay motionless and stuck between a bunch of shrubs that had stopped his fall, was something I was never going to forget. It was going to haunt my worst nightmares for the rest of my life, no matter what the outcome of all of this turned out to be.
Around an hour into sitting in this waiting room, three people arrived at the nurse’s desk asking for Marlow.
A woman who looked just like him, and two men, both around the same age as him.
Taunt distraught was written in all of their faces, an emotion I felt gripping me tight from deep within me the moment I’d gotten my feet back on solid ground in the ambulance bay.
Talos had left shortly after arriving at Ellington Heights, per my request, even after he fought to stay with me to keep me company. As much as I would’ve loved the companionship, I needed someone that wasn’t my poor granddad back at Austin Adventures running everything in my absence.
I could only assume the people sitting on the opposite side of the waiting room from me were Marlow’s family, also eagerly awaiting for a status update on his condition.
I’d kept to myself the entire time we were all here, not wanting to interject in whatever quiet solidarity was resonating between all of them while they spoke in hushed whispers and gentle shoulder rubs of support to tell them I was the one mostly responsible for this horrible accident happening in the first place.
What was there to say, anyway?
My confession wouldn’t make any of this better.
When the doors to the ER parted, a man in surgery scrubs, a cap over his hair, and clear plastic glasses perched on his nose walked over to Marlow’s family.
My eyes were locked onto him as he squatted down in front of Marlow’s mother, her hands shooting out to grip the surgeon by the shoulders while she spoke to him in a hushed whisper.
The back of the doctor’s head nodded and then she burst into tears, thanking him loudly before throwing her arms around him.
Without meaning to, I melted back into my seat.
That was a good sign.
They all exchanged familiar pleasantries with one another, one of the men getting up to bring the surgeon into a one-armed hug while slapping him on the back a few times.
After parting, they were gestured to walk through the double doors, a room number I couldn’t quite catch being given to them just as they all quickly shuffled beyond the nurse’s desk.
Slowly straightening up, I let my legs drop to the ground while pins and needles raced up from my toes. I supposed that was my cue to—
I froze the moment the surgeon pivoted and headed my way.
He was probably a little shorter than Marlow but not by much, and with slightly wider shoulders. His scrubs fit snug over his muscular build, creasing slightly under his arms when he brought them toward his face. His arms were covered in tattoos, leaving no signs of visibly un-inked skin.
He snapped off his gloves one by one, a silent show of authority that didn’t go unnoticed by me.
“Blake, right?” His ice blue eyes were narrowed dangerously behind his protective glasses, the cloth mask covering the lower half of his face giving me nothing to work with outside of the very dull tone he was using.
I swallowed. “How is he?”
“He’ll survive.”
That was... good.
Great, even. Survival was what we wanted.
Thrived?
That was even better. A bold goal one might say.
The man, his surgeon, clenched the used gloves in one hand and then tucked his arms over his chest. His shoulders rolled once, cracking loud enough for me to catch. “He just woke up a little bit ago.”
I nodded. “That’s good.”
If Marlow was already awake, that was a good sign for his recovery. It meant his surgery wasn’t hard enough on his body to require some sort of medically induced coma or an extended dose of meds to knock him out for the time being.
I wasn’t going to jump ahead and assume he would be out of here within the next day or two, that would be incredibly naive even if I wanted to remain hopeful, but there was a promise of a good prognosis at the end of this.
One where Marlow walked away from this terrible incident banged up but a plenty alive.
“Strangest thing, though.” There was no humor in this man’s tone, nor did the coldness in his eyes seem to dull despite the beginning of what should’ve been a very lighthearted sentence. “The first thing he did when he opened his eyes was ask about you.”
My eyes flitted to the badge clipped to the hem of his shirt.
Dr. S. Montgomery.
I glanced back. “He did?”
“Told me to go look for the hot guy in the lobby with a great tan, freckles and honey-colored eyes that you could ‘melt in’.” He held up one hand to use air quotes.
Inwardly I winced.
Oh, Marlow... what the fuck.
“Which is so weird considering the last time I saw him, he was pretty beaten up about some guy with that same description.” Dr. Montgomery tucked his arm back over his chest, popping out a hip while he shifted his weight to one side.
“What a weird coincidence, considering the EMTs who brought him in said you were the camp’s director. .. Isn’t it?”
Both of my hands flexed around the chair’s arm involuntarily.
Clearly, this was some sort of shakedown meant to scare me away. Or at least scold me into feeling worse than I already did. I had a feeling this man was one of Marlow’s friends he’d spoken about back on the mountain, the eye for an eye one if I had to take a wild guess.
Did I blame him for being pissed?
Absolutely not. I was lucky this guy wasn’t asking me to head out to the parking lot with him to settle the score the way he probably wanted to instead of being forced to remain professional.
Whatever Dr. Montgomery was hoping to accomplish by hammering down on my negligence, it was nothing compared to the unwavering storm inside of me, already beating me over and over again with my turbulent regret.
“I’m—” Pulling in a deep breath was doing nothing for my nerves. “You can tell him I left.”
He stared me down, his form unmoving like a statue’s. Those intense blue eyes glared through the lenses covering them, sharp and piercing with how extreme the silent judgment was.
It seemed as though in that moment, the entire waiting room grew deathly silent.
No distance machines chimed with patient codes, no clacking of the nurses on their computer filling out reports, not even the sound of my own labored breathing being forced into my lungs could mitigate whatever soul sucking energy this man was smothering me in.
“Is that your final choice?” he said. The bait was dangling, edging me to take it and disappoint what little opinion he still had left of me.
The truth was that all I really wanted to do was march down to Marlow’s room and throw the door open to see for myself that he was alive and breathing, that he was well enough to be sitting up and talking like not a damn day had passed from our last conversation over the radio as he’d urged me to come join him on his hike.
I wanted the last words he’d said to me before he’d passed out again to become reality and not something I was forced to ignore because I was trying not to cross a line we’d already sprinted over ten times by now.
‘Stay with me.’
I shook my head, giving in to my own soft feelings. I couldn’t leave. I wasn’t strong enough to even if it was for his own good. “No... I want to see him.”
Dr. Montgomery rolled his shoulders back once again, breaking out of the all-consuming bubble he’d trapped us in. “All right. I’ll let him know. Though, I suggest you visit him after his mother. Getting between her and her baby can be... quite troublesome at times.”
And just like that, the world returned to normal.
“Uh... okay.”
He gave me one last look before dropping his arms and pivoting to head back for the double doors. “Once they leave, come to room 207.”
He wasted not a single second longer before pushing the doors back and disappearing on the other side of them.
Involuntarily, my body sagged into my chair once more, completely wiped out from whatever the fuck that was.
Jesus, that man was intimidating.
How the hell did Marlow make friends with the strangest and most unlikely people?
Around two a.m. Marlow’s family finally filtered out from the ER, looking as exhausted as I felt. I watched them drag their feet through the waiting room, the taller of the two men with his arm around Marlow’s mother while she rested her head on his shoulder.
It felt wrong to go in after them, even if I’d been adamant about storming down there only an hour ago.
Was it more appropriate to let Marlow get some much-needed rest after his family visiting?