Chapter 34 Connall #2
Thankfully, the waiting room is blissfully empty except for yet another admissions nurse engrossed in something on his phone. Connall leans against the counter. “Excuse me?”
The young man looks up, does a double-take—his eyes going from his phone to Connall. “Mr. O’Daire. Can I help you?”
“My mates were brought in an hour ago. Quinn Lomax and Soren Vexley?”
“Yes, let me see.” He types on his computer. “Transported to the ICU Burn Unit about thirty minutes ago.”
Connall’s vision narrows, black around the edges as his heart pounds harder in his chest.
“Where?” Connall asks, but his feet are already moving away. He’ll just get off on every floor and shout for Isaac and Elias.
The nurse doesn’t even follow. Smart man. “Fifth floor. Hey! The elevators are the other way!”
Doing an about-face, Connall stabs the button a hundred times, but it does nothing to ease the urgency riding him.
Now that he’s here, he needs to see Quinn and Soren for himself.
When the doors slide open on the fifth floor, there’s a doctor in scrubs and a mask waiting beyond it.
It is a little disappointing that it is not Finn, Gideon’s mate.
Connall realizes he has begun to think of Gideon and his mates as family. Huh.
“Mr. O’Daire, I’m Dr. Gallagher. Your mates are in our family suite.
” He gestures down the hall to a closed door with a small desk outside.
A nurse is sitting typing on a tablet, but her eyes flick in their direction.
“We put Mr. Lomax in the same room as Mr. Vexley…” The older man shrugs before continuing.
“He wouldn’t let Mr. Lomax or the others out of his sight. ”
He’s stopped midway between the elevator and the nurse who has given up any pretense of working to watch them with a familiar wariness.
“Good.” Connall pauses, giving the doctor more grace than he feels when he is so close.
“Mr. O’Daire. Before you go in, I wanted to give you the full picture. Mr. Vexley has severe smoke inhalation. We’re treating him aggressively—watching his airway and lungs very closely.”
Connall’s stomach roils, and he feels the blood in his face drain away. “And Quinn?”
“He is alive. We have him sedated and intubated. We made that decision because of the smoke exposure and the risk of airway swelling. He also has severe burns to both hands and arms. Some of those burns are full-thickness. Burns like these—especially on the hands—usually require specialized burn care and often operative management such as debridement and grafting. Coupled with the airway…well, he is critical. I’m telling you before you see him because he does not look like himself. ”
“But he’s an alpha…he should be healing at a faster rate, right?”
“Well, yes, and we can attribute the fact that he is still with us to his alpha resilience. We expect that as his oxygenation stabilizes and the effects of smoke exposure lessen, his alpha healing will start gaining ground. But with burns like these, there may be some permanent nerve damage. We won’t know for certain for several days.
Plastics will consult as soon as the specialist arrives. ”
Connall stops outside the family suite, only then realizing he has led the doctor closer to his mates.
For one terrible moment, he is frozen there, suspended between wanting to tear the hospital down to its foundation in fear and frustration and throwing up on his reliable loafers.
In the end, he does neither. He only clenches his jaw against the wave of nausea rising sharp and sick in his throat. “What about pain management?”
“We’re managing that aggressively alongside the sedation, and we will be monitoring it closely. I’ve been over all of this with your mates too, of course.”
As if the words summoned them, feet hit the floor, and the door opens a crack to reveal Isaac’s pale face. “Alpha!”
“I’ll leave you to your family, Mr. O’Daire.” The doctor leaves Connall standing there just as Isaac launches himself into his arms.
His soft body already feels like home, impossibly so after only a few short days. The patch the hospital had provided keeps him from scenting the key lime beneath the fall of faded pink hair, and Connall reaches up and rips it off.
Isaac’s nose is in his neck too, snuffling past the stench of smoke and anxiety for Connall’s frosty, winter scent. “Where is Kai?”
“Beau is working on it, baby. Have you been watching over everyone?”
“Damn straight. Soren won’t be running into burning buildings for a while.” Isaac drags Connall into the family suite by the hand.
“Or ever—” Soren agrees, then coughs despite his oxygen mask from the narrow cot set beside the large family bed where Quinn lies still. “What did Johnson have to say about Kai? What did Takashiro want?”
“Soren, you gotta stay down.” Elias holds the bigger man down on the cot with a restraining hand on his shoulder.
Connall wants to answer his mate’s questions, but he cannot get the words past the lump in his throat or the sheer agony piercing his chest when his eyes land on Quinn.
The first thing he sees is the tube in Quinn’s mouth, the ventilator pushing oxygen into his damaged lungs.
Smoke has left a gray cast along Quinn’s mouth and hairline, even after someone has carefully washed his face.
Both arms are propped high on pillows, wrapped so thickly they look wrong against his lean form.
His closed eyes are swollen, and the scent of cherries is almost completely overrun by the smell of burnt skin and ointment.
“Down, baby.” Connall tries to make the words gentle as he lets his omega’s feet settle on the floor. He hopes his face does not betray how hard it is to hold his wolf back.
“Con?” Soren asks from behind his mask, and there is a brief skirmish as Elias tries, for the second time, to keep it on.
Connall does not wait for his mate to untangle himself from Elias and the oxygen mask. He only meets him at the end of the cot with his arms wide.
Soren settles against him at once, nose in his neck, unable to hide the wheeze in every breath.
“You should at least wear the mask. I can hear you struggling.” Connall runs his hands down Soren’s back and over his ass, squeezing gently just to remind himself that he can. That his bonded mate is still here. “Little mouse, can you help him—”
Once the mask is back over Soren’s face, Elias presses into Connall’s side, pulling Isaac along with him. The feel of his mates surrounding him helps slow the thundering of his heart, their scents tangled with the smell of smoke that Connall thinks he may never get out of his nose.
“We’re okay,” Elias murmurs. “We’re okay.”
With his gaze on Quinn and the steady rhythm of the ventilator in his ears, Connall has to wonder if that is really true. Not with Quinn lying so still, and not with the Kaian-shaped gap beneath his arm.