Chapter 13 #3
The curtain moved, and I expected a nurse to ask me to open my eyes so they could shine a tiny flashlight into them yet again—causing stabbing pain—when I heard his voice.
“Is he awake?”
“Yeah,” Vi answered. “But the light hurts his head.” She sounded nervous and uncertain.
Of course she did. She must have guessed who Raj was, but she’d never met him before, and at six-foot-four with a lot of muscle, he was a very large man. He was a bigger tiger, but I didn’t think pointing that out would make him any less intimidating.
“Rayn,” he said, then, his voice a low hiss. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking they were going to throw bricks through a mirrored window,” I answered, keeping my voice low because even raising my own voice hurt my head, although I did open my eyes.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Vi said, her voice almost pleading as she looked up at him. “We were on a break, eating brownies. In a side room. And the brick just came crashing through the window.”
Those golden-brown eyes narrowed at her, then shifted back to me. “If they were throwing shit—”
“They weren’t,” came Detective Maza’s voice as he pushed aside the curtain. “That brick was the first damn thing they threw. It went from zero to fucking fifty in an instant.” He nodded at me. “I’m assuming you didn’t see anything before it hit you?”
I knew he had to ask. That this was what they called my ‘statement.’ I swallowed.
“I noticed it seemed… bigger.” I grimaced.
“I think. It’s… a little muddled.” I tried to think, and while it was easier than it had been right after the brick had hit me, it was still more of a challenge than I wanted it to be.
“I think… there was someone with a bullhorn, but I deliberately didn’t want to know what was being said.
So I turned away from the window. And then… ” I trailed off.
“So you didn’t even see it coming,” Maza said, his voice a little glum.
“Would you rather he took it in the face?” Raj growled, and Maza looked over at him with an odd expression. Alarm, maybe. Or confusion.
“Of course not,” came his response, his tone strangely flat. “Although if Rayn could describe the first brick-thrower, that might have been useful, since once one was thrown, then all hell broke loose.”
Raj looked as though he wanted to say something else, but, instead, he clenched his jaw, a muscle pulsing slightly in the hollow beside his ear.
Maza studied him. “We ran in as soon as we saw the brick fly,” he said, his voice a little less flat. “And then called EMS.”
Raj remained silent, arms crossed over his chest. He was angry, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was directed at me, how much at Vi and Ward, and how much at Maza.
I assumed quite a bit of it was aimed at the MFM protestors, but if we hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have been hit, and so we bore responsibility, as well.
“All of you, out.” This was the nurse, a short Black woman in bright pink scrubs wearing glittery clog-style shoes.
Her name tag said Cherie, and I wondered if it was pronounced like the fruit or the French word.
“This man has a head injury and doesn’t need the rest of y’all in here taking up his air. ”
Vi grabbed my hand, a slight expression of panic on her face. “He’s my brother,” she objected. “I won’t say anything to him.”
“Nope. Everybody out. There’s a waiting room for a reason.” She started shooing them.
Raj looked like he wanted to argue with her, too, but she narrowed dark eyes at him. “That includes you, sugar.”
His eyes found mine. “We’ll talk later,” he said, and it came out as both a promise and a threat. Not that he would ever hurt me—I wasn’t afraid of that. But he wasn’t happy, either, and I had the feeling he was going to make sure I knew exactly why.
I let my eyes close and my head fall back again.
I just wanted to go home.
Alone.
There was no way the hospital was going to allow that, of course.
I had a concussion, although one they weren’t especially concerned about, but it was made clear to me, to Violette, and to Raj—since they couldn’t agree which of them was going to stay with me, which apparently meant they both were, although I wasn’t sure how I felt about that—that there was always some amount of risk that I had more of an injury than even the CT scan had been able to detect, so someone had to stay with me for at least twenty-four hours.
It was also clear that I wasn’t supposed to go to work the next day.
Vi had called Ward to tell him that part, and he’d apparently told her that of course I wasn’t expected to come into work, and he would excuse her, as well, if she needed to take care of me.
I had every intention of going.
Ward had been booked for a private séance, not a public party, and it was at a house in Church Hill.
Vi wasn’t even supposed to work at all, and I definitely didn’t want to be stuck in my apartment thinking about my headache.
At least if I went with Ward, I’d be able to think about something other than the throbbing in my head and the fact that Raj was mad at me about it.
How, exactly, I was going to convince either Vi or Raj of that fact, I didn’t know.