Chapter 6
Chapter Six
O wen
“The next one’s a biter,” the nurse says to me, handing me over the iPad with all the kid’s medical notes. I scan the information.
“He’s ten,” I say.
The nurse lifts her arm, showing me her bandaged wrist. “Had to go for a tetanus shot yesterday. Good luck!”
I finish reading the boy’s information, determining which approach to use. Kids respond to different things. Some need a doctor who’s going to make them laugh and put them at ease. Others need a quiet, gentle doctor. The older ones often want a doctor who’ll treat them like an adult and not a baby. Some just want a hug.
I don’t know what this kid needs yet, so I adopt a neutral expression and pull back the curtain.
I flinch as I’m faced with a kid with a crop of dark hair and startling green eyes. Eyes that are glaring at me so intensely, I’m surprised he’s not burning a hole right through my middle. His arms are crossed tightly around his chest and his mouth is turned down.
His mom’s sitting by his side, almost his spitting image, except she looks nervous.
“He says he doesn’t want the operation,” the mom blurts out, peering anxiously at her son, then back to me.
I nod and take a step into the cubicle.
I’m not daunted. This kid isn’t the first I’ve talked into a necessary operation, putting their worries to bed and their minds at ease. He most certainly won’t be the last. Even the threat of a set of teeth in my skin isn’t enough to deter me. Ha, let him try!
I almost smile to myself, which is the first time I’ve come close to smiling for a week.
In fact, this may be the longest I’ve gone without thinking about her – Harper.
And yet, here I am thinking about her once again.
Not that that is new. I’ve never stopped thinking about Harper Hall. First with regret and sadness. More recently with hope and excitement. And now with a whole heap of heartache.
She ended things one week ago because she said she couldn’t ruin our lives. She was convinced that if anyone found out about us, it would end our pack’s careers.
Would I care?
As I take a seat next to the bed and gently talk to the boy’s mom about what will happen if he refuses the operation, knowing too well, despite what he may be pretending, the boy is listening to every word, I ponder what my life would be like without this job, without medicine, without the kids.
Would I care?
If we had Harper Hall in our lives, it would be very hard to care. No matter how much I love this job, I love her more.
I should have made her believe that. I should have made her see it.
Not that I haven’t tried, I’ve been boomeranging back and forth to the gym so often I’m surprised I haven’t strained a muscle. No Harper.
I’ve even tried dropping round Daxton’s dad’s house on one or two occasions. But Harper’s been very effective at staying out of my way.
“So, just to make sure you understand, Mrs. Friar, if we don’t remove that appendix, it’s going to become more infected, more painful and possibly fatal.”
The mom turns a ghostly white and I feel sorry about putting her through this. It’s for the sake of her son, though.
“What do you mean by fatal?” a disgruntled voice says from beside me.
I fake a little jolt as if I didn’t realize he was there. The kid glares at me skeptically. I think he’s smart.
“Fatal as in, it would kill you,” I say bluntly.
“You’re full of bullshit.”
“Sometimes,” I confess, “but you don’t have to take my word for it, I can show you the data – the stats.” I start tapping away on my iPad.
“Ryan’s very good at math,” his mom says. “He won the school math quiz last term.”
“So you understand statistics, then?” I say. The boy scoffs, baring his teeth and I remember what the nurse said about biting. Gingerly, I hand him the iPad and he clutches it in his hands and scrolls through the data. “Do you need me to explain some of those graphs?” I ask.
He shakes his head and lowers the iPad. “What’s my chance of dying in surgery?” he asks.
“Well, as you’re young with no underlying health conditions, very low. About 0.08%.”
“And my chance of dying if we leave the appendix in?”
“Appendicitis has a death rate of greater than 50% if left untreated.”
The boy nods. “I’ll have the operation.”
His mom lets out a huge sigh of relief. “I’ll let the nurses know,” I say.
Satisfaction radiates through my body. I probably just saved that kid’s life. While we could have sedated him and then put him under, or waited for him to be too sick to argue, both those methods would have taken precious time as well as been pretty darn unethical in my opinion. My way was better.
I return the iPad to the end of the bed, promise I’ll be back after the operation to check in on the boy and then head off for my lunch break. In the hospital canteen, I find Wyatt already picking at a sandwich. None of us has had much of an appetite these last few days.
“No Daxton?” I say, peering at my watch. I’m fifteen minutes late myself.
“No Daxton,” Wyatt repeats.
I sigh, scrubbing at my beard. Since Harper broke things off, Daxton has thrown himself into work even more so than normal. I’ve barely seen the dude. It’s not a good sign. In fact, it’s a really bad one. Daxton, like the rest of us, is heartbroken.
However, while his refuge may be work and mine may be plotting ways to talk to Harper, Wyatt’s is to find a way to limit the damage.
In fact, he twists a cell towards me now. It’s not his own, it’s Daxton's. Our flatmate has been so busy, he hasn’t even registered it’s missing. Which has allowed Wyatt to monitor his calls.
“Is it a message from Harper?” I ask hopefully.
“No,” Wyatt says, peering at me through his glasses. “Her mom.”
I sink down on the chair opposite Wyatt’s. “Jeez, again?”
“Yes, she’s sent him the details of several more girls that he might be interested in dating. It seems the omega moms haven’t given up with her or us yet.”
“Despite the supposed rumors circulating about us,” I mutter bitterly.
“I think that’s why Melanie’s keen to get us out on more dates. She wants those rumors put to bed.”
“So, what have you told her?”
He twists the cell back towards him and slides it into his pocket. “Same thing I’ve been telling her all week, that we’re still not feeling well enough to go on any dates. But I can’t keep stalling forever.”
“You’re going to have to,” I say gruffly. “I’m not going on any fucking date.”
He nods and I know he feels the same way even if he won’t express it.
“I went round to her house again last night,” I admit.
“To be honest, Owen, I thought that’s where you went. Did you talk to her?”
“No,” I say, picking up the salt container and giving it a shake. “She wasn’t there.”
“She’ll be in New York soon,” Wyatt says. “It will be easier.”
“No,” I say, tipping the salt from side to side. “I think it will be harder, knowing she’s all that way away from us. I like that she’s close by, even if she’s not with us.”
“It’s not ideal, wherever she is,” Wyatt says, and I know in his own way he’s telling me how damn painful it is.
“I’m going to try and talk to her again,” I say, placing the salt down and pushing back my chair.
She won’t listen to me. Probably the only person she would listen to is Daxton and he seems to have given up completely – raised the white flag and surrendered to our collective doom.
I don’t understand it. He’s always been tenacious and stubborn. Never backing down, never giving up. It’s how he got to where he is at such a young age.
I need him to come with me. I need him to help me persuade Harper she’s got this all wrong. She’s still in Rockview. She’s not gone yet. There’s still time.
When my shift finishes, I head down to the ER waiting room with a discarded newspaper, perch on one of the fucking uncomfortable chairs built for someone half my size and wait for my packmate. I catch glimpses of him, rushing from one emergency to another, barking orders, white coat flapping around his body.
An hour and a half after his shift has officially ended, I decide enough is enough.
“Time to go home, buddy,” I say, slamming my hand down on his shoulder as he’s filling out paperwork by the main desk.
“Can’t,” he says, “too much to do.”
“There are enough staff on duty, Dax, and you need to rest.”
He shakes his head. “They need me here.”
I tighten my grip on his shoulder. “I need you, Daxton.”
His pen halts and he looks up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come with me and talk to Harper.” His gaze drops to his paperwork, and he starts scribbling again. “Dax, did you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Then come on.”
“No, Owen. There’s no point.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “I’d have to disagree, Dax. There’s a lot of point, a fucking great big point.”
“You’re not going to change her mind.”
“I’m pretty damn persuasive when I want to be. So can you.”
“She doesn’t want us. She doesn’t want to stay in Rockview. Harper’s always been ambitious, always craved more. That’s why she’s going to NYC.”
“I don’t think that’s it, Dax.”
He tosses the paperwork onto a pile and, hooking his pen inside his white coat pocket, marches away from me.
“Dax,” I call. “Daxton!”
I don’t care if most of the people in the waiting room are now staring our way. I don’t care if they listen in on our conversation. There are more important things to worry about.
Like losing Harper.
Again.
“Owen,” he mutters, “I’ll see you at home.”
“Don’t fuck this up, Daxton. Don’t throw this away. We can’t. We have to at least try to win her back.”
He halts. Then turns around slowly, and, for the briefest of seconds, I think he’s changed his mind. Then I see the resignation and pain in his eyes. “I just want to forget about it,” he murmurs, the heartbreak clear in his tone. “I want to forget it ever happened.”
I shake my head in disgust. He’s not going to forget what happened. He’s a fool for thinking any differently.
But I’m done trying to persuade him. I’m wasting time. I need to speak with her again.
It’s what I do. Just like this morning. I’m not only diagnosing the condition, but the patient too.
I know I can get to the bottom of Harper’s sudden change of heart. And I know I can persuade her she’s wrong about this. She needs to be ours.
How am I going to talk to Harper?
I can’t turn up at her house again. It will look weird to her mom and Daxton’s dad. After all, I was only there last night and I’m meant to be recuperating from our recent illness. The gym’s a no-go. She hasn’t been there all week.
I decide I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. How I used to do it back when I was seeing girls in high school.
I park my truck three blocks away and, dressed in an old black hoodie and dark jeans, slink along the streets until I reach the perimeter of Ethan’s garden. I peer up the wall. There are shards of broken glass welded onto the top.
It was never this complicated as a kid. Sneak into the backyard, shimmy up the drain pipe, be invited through the bedroom window.
I pull the sleeves of my hoodie up over my hands and my hood over my head, then, checking there’s no one watching, climb up that wall.
Fuck, they make this look easy on those videos of free-climbers.
It’s not. My fingers struggle to grip the brick work and I slide down three times to the ground until I finally manage to get enough of a foothold to leap up and grab a bit of the top of the wall – luckily missing the glass or I’d have sliced my hand open.
I yank myself up, and immediately I’m blinded by a floodlight that clicks on with my movement.
I swear, shielding my face against the brightness and freezing. If anyone sees me now – crouched on top of the wall in my black outfit – they’re going to call the cops.
I wait for someone to yell at me and when they don’t, I pick my way through the glass.
I’m kind of pissed how relatively easy this is. It means Harper’s not as safe as she should be.
Once I’m through the glass, still all lit up for anyone to see, I take a deep inhale and drop down the other side. It’s a long drop and I hit the ground hard, rolling several feet before I come to rest flat on my back, staring up at the stars, all the wind knocked out of my lungs.
I groan, close my eyes and attempt to catch my breath.
I’m considering my life choices when something wet smacks my cheek and then drags itself right up my face.
I yelp in surprise and stare right up into the eyes of Death, one of Ethan’s guard dogs. His brother, Terror, nowhere to be seen.
Luckily, neither of these dogs live up to their name – or their job description – otherwise he’d probably be eating my face.
Instead, Death whines and licks my face again, his tail wagging like crazy.
“Yeah, hi there, buddy,” I whisper, “it’s me.” I reach up and stroke his head and he licks me some more – well and truly coating me in stinky dog slobber. “Some guard dog you turned out to be.”
I sit up, give him a tummy rub and then he trots off to investigate an interesting smell.
I wipe the slobber from my eyes and examine the house, determining which window is Harper’s.
Unfortunately, there’s no drain pipe and no conveniently positioned tree. After my struggle over the wall, I realize there’s no way I’m scaling the house.
I tiptoe over to that side of the house anyway, crossing my fingers and holding my breath, hoping she’ll be here. The light in the room I think is hers is on and there’s movement behind the curtain.
Swinging my gaze around again, I tip my head back, wrap my hands around my mouth and whisper-shout, “Harper!”
Nothing. Death lifts his head from where he’s digging up the flower bed, ears twitching.
I try again, three more times before I realize this isn’t working. I contemplate climbing again, decide I like my spine and skull in one piece, and go hunting for stones instead. I find a handful in the loose earth Death’s been shifting, and taking position under her window, toss the first one towards the glass. I miss and the stone comes tumbling down, nearly pummeling me on the head.
“Shit,” I mumble, diving to the side.
The second stone hits the glass square in the middle with a nice loud clunk. If she’s in there, she’ll hear and she’ll have to come look, right?
I wait.
I wait some more.
Then I toss three stones up there in quick succession.
Finally, someone draws back the window, cups their hands against the glass and peers out into the darkness.
Harper!
No, not Harper, Ethan!
Shit, I dive straight into the nearest bush, cursing when I realize it’s a rose bush and the thing attacks me with its one billion sharp thorns.
Unfortunately, I have no choice but to take it, remaining in my impromptu hiding place to ensure I’m not discovered by Daxton’s dad. I’m not sure how the hell I’d explain snooping around his garden and climbing into his rose bush.
I’ve just about decided the coast is clear, when I hear the garden door open.
Shit, I’m guessing Ethan’s come to investigate.
Except, I’m wrong again.
“Dee Dee, are you out here? It’s dinner time.”
Harper!
I drag myself out of that bush as quickly as I can, groaning as the thorns slash at my skin and rip my hoodie.
Harper opens her mouth to scream blue murder, then halts, stunned when I collapse at her feet.
“Owen?” she gasps. “What the hell are you doing here?”