13. What Else Have I Got Wrong?
What Else Have I Got Wrong?
Jacob
Monitors pulse in slow, measured rhythms, each steady beep marking another heartbeat.
Oxygen hisses softly through tubing. Somewhere further down the ward, a nurse murmurs to a patient before the curtains whisper closed again.
The whole place runs with an efficiency that's almost unsettling, as though death is simply another item on a checklist waiting to be managed.
The smell hits me before anything else. That stale, recycled air hospitals pump through every corridor, thick enough to coat the back of your throat, reeking of antiseptic.
I fucking hate hospitals.
Too many memories. Too many people waiting for someone else to tell them whether the person they love is going to make it through the night. Too many families clinging to hope while machines do the breathing for them.
Hope's a dangerous thing—I've seen enough of it to know that.
My boots carry me across the polished floor until I stop beside bed three.
The swelling has gone down enough that I can finally see the face beneath it.
Not completely—one eye is still swollen, his jaw sits slightly crooked where it healed after I broke it, and bruises stretch across the left side of his face in shades of purple and yellow—but he's recognizable now.
The breathing tube's gone, replaced with a nasal cannula resting beneath his nose.
His chest rises and falls on its own, slow and steady, the monitor beside him confirming what my eyes already have.
I know exactly where every injury came from because I put them there. The split lip. The fractured jaw. The trauma that forced the doctors to place him into an induced coma before the swelling inside his skull killed him.
The second he put his hands on Summer and tried dragging her out of my house, he'd already decided how that night was going to end.
There wasn't another version of it. I'd still have put him on the floor.
I'd still have broken every fucking bone I needed to make sure he never laid another finger on her.
I'd do it again. That part doesn't haunt me. But if I'd known then what I know now—if I'd known he'd lied about who he was, that every answer I've been chasing might be buried somewhere inside that fractured skull—I would've shown a little more restraint.
Not mercy. Never mercy. Control. Just enough to leave him conscious. Just enough to make him talk.
Instead, I let my temper have the last few blows, and now I'm standing beside his hospital bed waiting for a man I despise to wake the fuck up because he might be the only person left who can tell me where Summer is.
I look down at him, irritation settling somewhere beneath my ribs like a live wire that never switches off. Back then he was just another piece of shit trying to take Summer. Now he's something else entirely. A question. A fucking answer waiting to happen.
A ghost.
Everything about him was a lie, right down to the name we'd buried him under while he sat in this hospital bed.
Somewhere between Summer disappearing and Moore resurfacing, every thread I'd been pulling started leading back to the same place, and somehow this bastard was tangled up in the middle of it.
He knows something. He has to.
Whether he was working for Moore, watching Moore, running from Moore, or playing his own game altogether, I don't know yet. But coincidence stopped existing the moment Summer was taken, and I'm done pretending otherwise.
Every hour he stays unconscious is another hour the truth stays buried with him.
I stare at the slow rise and fall of his chest, waiting for some sign that his eyes might finally open.
"You've slept long enough," I mutter quietly, my voice almost lost beneath the rhythm of the monitors. "Wake the fuck up."
Because when you do… I'm going to tear every secret out of you.
Tamara steps up beside me without a word, her attention fixed on the man in the bed.
She presses two fingers deep into the muscle at the top of his shoulder, hard enough to force a pain response if there's enough of him in there to feel it.
I don't ask what she's doing. I already know. It’s one of the things learned in the field to check for any signs of life.
My eyes never leave his face. They haven't since I walked through the fucking door.
Nothing happens. The monitor keeps its steady rhythm. Oxygen hisses quietly through the cannula beneath his nose. His chest rises and falls with the same slow consistency that's been driving me insane for days.
Then I see it.
It's small. So fucking small most people would've missed it completely. A twitch at the corner of his eye. His brow pinches together for the briefest second before relaxing again, followed by the faintest movement in his fingers where they rest against the sheet.
There. Finally, he's fighting his way back.
"How long until he wakes?" I ask, already knowing the answer won't be the one I want.
Tamara checks his pupils before looking across at me. "It varies. Some patients regain consciousness and become lucid fairly quickly. Others don't. He'll be disorientated, confused. He may not even understand where he is for a while."
"A while."
She nods once.
"Minutes. Hours. There's no way of knowing."
Hours.
Of course it could be fucking hours.
Everything about this has become a waiting game. Meanwhile Summer's out there with Moore, and every second I waste standing in this room is another second she's trapped wherever the sick bastard's decided to keep her.
I drag a hand over my mouth, trying to smother the frustration before it boils over, but it sits too deep for that.
"No."
Tamara frowns. "No?"
"You said there was something you could give him."
Understanding flickers across her face almost immediately.
"Jacob..."
"Give it to him."
She lets out a slow breath, the kind doctors use when they're trying not to tell you you're being unreasonable.
"The only medication I can give him will reverse the Midazolam.
It'll take away one layer of sedation, but it won't undo the brain injury.
He could still take hours to wake properly, and when he does...
" She hesitates, weighing her next words. "It won't be pleasant."
"I didn't ask if it'd be pleasant."
Her jaw tightens."You don't understand. If I reverse it, he isn't going to wake up calm. He's likely to come up frightened, combative and completely disorientated."
A humorless grin tugs at the corner of my mouth.
"Sounds like we're finally getting somewhere."
She rolls her eyes, but there's no amusement behind it. Just resignation. She knows me well enough by now to understand I'm not walking out of this room, and she knows there's not a fucking chance I'm waiting around while the one man who might have answers sleeps through another day.
"Jacob..." She reaches out, resting a hand against my forearm. "Don't do anything stupid."
I look down at her hand before meeting her eyes again.
"I'm way past stupid."
Neither of us says anything.
She searches my face, probably looking for the sheriff. The man who follows procedures. The one who writes reports and stands in court and wears a badge because the law matters.
He's still there. He's just losing the fight to the man who wants Summer back.
Eventually, she lets out a quiet sigh and drops her hand.
"I'll get the medication."
The door clicks shut behind her—the room feels different the second she's gone.
Not quieter. The machines are still humming. The monitor is still counting every time his heart beats. Somewhere outside, a cart rattles down the corridor. But the room isn't hers anymore.
It's mine.
I pull the chair closer to the bed and sit, leaning forward until my forearms rest on my knees, never taking my eyes off his face.
"You've caused me a lot of fucking problems," I murmur.
"You'd better wake up..."
I lean in a little closer.
"...but if you lie to me when you do, I promise the coma's going to be the nicest part of your week."