Chapter 8
VIGO
I eyed the nurses’ station as the last remaining nurse — a younger guy with pale hair — stepped out from behind the long counter and headed down the hallway.
I glanced at my phone.
Right on schedule.
I wandered as casually as I could over to Hawk and Jagger, leaning against the wall and murmuring in tones low enough that Bram, Poe, and Remy probably couldn’t hear them. Maeve had gone to get coffee, a good thing since I was pretty sure no one was getting anything past Maeve.
Across the waiting room, a thirty-something guy in a polo sat slumped over in a chair, a morose expression on his face.
“Let’s go,” I said to Hawk and Jagger.
Jagger looked up, his brow furrowed. “Go?”
I started walking, knowing they’d catch up. It was second nature for us to move in a pack. Even more than that, none of us ever wanted to miss out on any fun, and fun was always right around the corner, even in this fucked-up situation.
“Where the fuck are we going?” Hawk asked.
I headed down the hall leading to Cassie’s room. “To see our mouse. Obviously.”
I’d been itching to get into Cassie’s room ever since the doctor had said she was out of surgery. Bram had been in three times — alone — and had said she was in some pain but okay.
She still couldn’t see.
Bram had told us to go home, that he would keep us posted, but no fucking way were we leaving our mouse without seeing for ourselves that she was okay, without letting her know that we were still here.
That we would always be here.
Well, I couldn’t say that part. She’d only been staying with us for a month. I didn’t even know if she wanted to stick around any longer.
But in the dark at the bottom of the ravine? When I’d thought maybe Cassie wouldn’t stay alive long enough to make it back to us?
I’d known then and there that I wouldn’t be ready to give her up after ninety days.
I’d known because I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe, because instead of wanting to tear a path through the forest or climb all the trees — anything to avoid being still next to the shattered remains of Cassie’s car — I hadn’t wanted to be anywhere but right there with her.
Now I was determined to see her for myself. Determined to let her know that Bram wasn’t the only one who wanted her to be okay.
“They’re not going to let us in,” Jagger said, probably because the nurses had made it clear that Cassie was only allowed visitors who were family.
And we weren’t that.
“Since when does anyone ‘let’ us do anything?”
I smiled at a dark-haired man in scrubs as he approached, then shoulder-checked him hard enough that he stumbled.
“Fuck, man.” I grabbed his arm to steady him with one hand and used my other to snatch his badge. “Sorry about that.”
The guy scowled and jerked away. “It’s fine.”
He continued in the other direction while I did the same, pocketing his badge and looking for the door I’d spotted in the middle of the night, when I’d been too worried about Cassie to sleep.
I spotted the door up ahead, a generic-looking slab with a plastic plate reading Supply Closet.
I’d picked the lock during one of my nighttime forays, and I stepped inside and waited for the few seconds it took Hawk and Jagger to join me.
I wasn’t surprised they didn’t ask questions. Smashing-and-grabbing jewelry stores and robbing banks was our day job. Skulking around a hospital where everyone was either too busy or too worried to notice us wasn’t exactly stressful.
I threw scrubs at them both and pulled off my shirt, then started on my jeans.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jagger asked.
I kicked off my jeans. Now I was standing in the supply closet in nothing but purple boxer briefs. “Putting on the scrubs.”
Hawk rolled his eyes and pulled his scrub pants over his jeans. “You put them over your clothes, dumbass.”
I looked down at my nearly naked body. “Really?”
“No way this works,” Jagger said, pulling one of the flimsy tops over his T-shirt while I started getting dressed.
“So? What are they going to do if they catch us?” I asked. “Ban us from the vending machines?”
“They could ban us from Cassie’s floor,” Jagger said. “Or the hospital."
He was obviously as fucked as I was, worried about getting banned from the hospital because that meant we wouldn’t be able to see Cassie.
We were becoming a bunch of fucking saps and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.
Scrubs finally on — over my clothes — I fished the badge I’d lifted off the doctor out of my pocket and clipped it to my scrubs.
“What about us?” Hawk asked.
“Improvise.”
I opened the door and stepped into the hall. A passing nurse glanced from us to the supply closet door, then looked away. Was it a hot hookup spot for doctors working long shifts?
“I think she thought I was blowing you in there or something,” I said as we continued down the hall toward Cassie’s room.
Hawk scoffed. “If anybody’s blowing anybody it’s you blowing me.”
“I’m secure in my manhood,” Jagger said. “You can put me wherever you want in the equation.”
The hospital corridors were busier now than they had been a few hours before. Food carts rattled past, a stream of doctors and nurses traversing the hallway as early morning visitors stepped off the elevators.
That was good for us, which was why I’d timed it this way: more activity meant less attention on anyone unfamiliar wandering the halls.
I grabbed a clipboard off the nurse’ station as we passed and continued down the hall.
We were halfway toward Cassie’s room when an older woman, her brown hair peppered with silver, emerged from one of the other rooms.
She scowled at us, her expression sour. “Excuse me, who are you?”
“We’re with Trauma,” I said as we passed.
“Which department?”
Hawk and Jagger didn’t even slow down.
“The traumatic one.”
I opened Cassie’s door with authority and stepped inside, leaving it open long enough for Hawk and Jagger to slip inside.
The room was dark except for a soft glow coming in from the room’s only window, the rising sun painting the walls and floor orange.
And there, at the far end of the room, was our girl, her head elevated halfway in the hospital bed, her face turned toward us.
She looked so small, and a strange feeling filled my chest, one that made me want to lock her in a tower where no one could hurt her, made me want to build a fucking moat around her.
“Hello?” She stared blankly in our direction. “Is that the nurse? Or… the doctor?”
I forced myself to move, forced myself to speak in the moment before I sat on the edge of her bed, forced myself to keep it light even though I felt like the heart I’d thought I didn’t have was shattering like the windshield of Cassie’s car at the bottom of the ravine.
I reached for her hand.
“That’s Doctor Vigo to you, mouse.”