22
Lila
Administration released Evan and me before I committed a felony by exactly one condescending sentence.
The meeting kept replaying in polished phrases meant to make our panic sound like misconduct: concern for protocol, broken chain of command, failure to return to our posts during lockdown, emotional fitness under review.
Every carefully neutral expression across that table had made me want to say something increasingly unemployable.
Beside me, Evan threw both hands up. “I would like it noted for the record that if a pregnant emergency physician is abducted off hospital property and my response is apparently still not emotionally professional enough for management, then perhaps management can kiss my entire ass.” A nurse passing with a clipboard gave him a startled look, and Evan flashed her a bright smile.
“Not you, sweetie. You seem lovely.” She immediately picked up her pace.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and kept moving.
My temples pounded, my shoulders felt bolted into place, Evan caught up with me, outrage still tight in every line of him.
“I’m sorry, but no. We were supposed to hear that Blue was taken from the parking lot, smile politely, and stay downstairs charting?
Is that what they wanted? Should I have color-coded my panic for them? ”
The elevator still hadn’t arrived, and my nerves were too raw for him to keep going without cracking something loose. “Stop before you make me laugh.”
He didn’t smile. The meeting had left him just as angry as it had me. “I’m not trying to make you laugh. I’m trying to make myself less likely to key a hospital administrator’s car.”
I pressed the call button again, mostly because my hands needed somewhere to put the frustration. “That is not helping.”
“It’s helping me.” The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth was the only sign he was teasing.
The elevator doors closed, and some of the brittle tension holding me upright finally gave way. I stared at our reflections in the doors. “I hate that they’re not completely wrong.”
Evan’s face twisted. “I refuse to participate in that sentence.”
“We didn’t return to our posts. We stayed in Deacon’s room.”
“Yes, because we were worried about Blue and wanted to be where we’d hear something first, like human beings with souls.”
“I know.” That was the part I couldn’t argue with.
Administration could make loyalty sound like an embarrassing lapse in judgment, but once the lockdown hit, neither of us had considered returning downstairs.
Blue mattered more than protocol in that moment, and I knew if news came, Deacon would hear it before we did.
I didn’t regret staying with him, which somehow made the reprimand worse.
Evan leaned against the elevator wall and crossed his arms. “For the record, I do not care about stupid hospital policy.”
“I know you don’t.”
“No, I mean really don’t. Deeply. Spiritually. They can put that in my file.”
The corner of my mouth betrayed me, and his expression brightened. “Thank God. I saw that. There she is. Tiny signs of life.”
Outside, the late afternoon air did little to clear my head. The hospital parking lot stretched beneath a gray sky, ordinary enough that the witness’s description came back with brutal clarity. Pregnant woman. Parking lot. Cloth over her mouth. My steps faltered before I could stop them.
Evan caught it immediately, his outrage softening. “Hey. She’s okay, and she’s home. We are going to go see her, tell her this hospital is run by cowards in sensible shoes, and then hold that baby until I feel healed.”
That got me moving.
His car smelled faintly of coffee and peppermint gum, familiar enough to loosen another knot as Wicker Falls passed outside the windows. Brick storefronts, church signs, lawns trimmed too neatly for the season. The town always managed to look respectable while finding quieter ways to be cruel.
“You thinking about quitting?” Evan asked.
I rubbed at my temple. “I’m thinking about homicide.”
“That’s fair, let’s plan together.” A few seconds passed before his voice lost its humor. “You know they were looking for reasons to make this our failure instead of theirs.”
I turned toward him, but his eyes stayed on the road.
“A doctor gets abducted off hospital property, security locks down late, and somehow the problem they’re most comfortable addressing is us not being in the right place at the right time?
Please. That’s not accountability. That’s cowardice in a blazer. ”
He wasn’t wrong.
When Blue’s building came into view, some of the pressure in my chest eased. Apparently knowing she was safe and seeing it for myself were two different things.
Little Jax was asleep against Blue’s chest when we arrived, wrapped in a dark gray swaddle while she curled into the corner of the couch beneath a blanket.
Her hair had surrendered hours ago, her exhaustion visible in every soft edge of her face, but she was home.
Alive. The apartment smelled like coffee and baby soap, and Priest moved through her kitchen with the ease of a man who had barely left since bringing her back.
Ink was there too, quiet near the doorway with a duffel for Priest at his feet and a folder from Last Rites tucked beneath one arm. Blue took one look at us and straightened slightly. “What happened?”
I dropped my bag and sank into the nearest chair. “We got written up.”
“Written up?” Priest echoed from the kitchen.
Evan gave Blue a humorless smile. “That is the polite version. The less polite version is that apparently abandoning your post during a hospital lockdown is frowned upon.”
Blue stared at him. “You got in trouble because you went to Deacon? Because you were trying to tell him I’d been taken?”
“Among other things,” I muttered.
Priest abandoned the coffee he was making and came into the living room. “Start from the top.”
Evan glanced at me, correctly judged that I was still angry enough to skip straight to telling administration where to shove its review, and took over.
“When that panicked woman came into the ER saying she’d seen a pregnant doctor taken outside, I was at the charge desk.
There was exactly one pregnant doctor I cared about, so I grabbed Lila and went upstairs. ”
“To Deacon,” Blue said.
I nodded. “He already knew when we got there. Bender said Ink had called. Deacon was sending him to find us when we showed up.”
Priest’s jaw tightened, but he let Evan continue. “The hospital went code purple about two minutes later. Security locked everything down, the prospects planted themselves outside Deacon’s room like they owned the building, and security did not adore the aesthetic.”
“They nearly called the police,” I added. “Administration was even less thrilled that two ER staff members had left their assigned posts during lockdown.”
Blue shifted Jax more securely against her chest. “Did they fire you?”
Evan gave her a look. “Blue, darling, when administration asks whether you are still emotionally capable of practicing after a traumatic incident, that is rarely the prelude to a promotion.”
“They put both of us on administrative leave while they review everything,” I said. “Which means probably, yes.”
Guilt crossed Blue’s face instantly. “This is because of me.”
“No.” The word came sharper than I intended. “This is because the hospital cares more about liability than loyalty.”
“It can be both,” Evan said before his voice softened. “And still none of it is your fault.”
Priest had gone very still. It took me a moment to recognize the expression, the same focus he wore when he was already solving a problem nobody had asked him to solve. His gaze moved between Blue, Evan, and me before certainty settled over his face.
“Come back to Bay of Saints.”
I blinked. Evan stared at him, while Blue closed her eyes briefly. “Priest.”
“What?” His shoulders squared. “You should all be where we can keep eyes on you. You, the baby, Lila, Evan.” His gaze flicked to Ink on Evan’s name.
Ink’s expression barely changed, while Evan suddenly found the baby far more interesting than anyone else in the room.
Priest turned back to Blue. “After what happened, I’m not arguing this. ”
“That is not the same thing as having a job,” Blue said. “Or a life.”
“You’d have a life.”
“In another city with no work or housing lined up and no plan beyond keeping everyone close enough for you to hover.”
His mouth tightened. “I don’t hover.”
The noise Evan made beside me suggested self-preservation had officially left the room.
Blue adjusted the baby against her chest, fatigue sharpening her voice. “We already had this conversation. You can’t decide I should move and expect the rest to sort itself out because you want us where you can see us.”
“This isn’t because I want it.” Priest’s eyes flashed. “Joker got to you here. Lena is dead. Lila and Evan may lose their jobs. I’m trying to make sure none of you are left exposed.”
“Bay of Saints doesn’t magically fix employment. Or housing.”
“No.” His gaze stayed on hers. “But it fixes distance.”
The room quieted because underneath all his overbearing delivery sat an uncomfortable truth. He wasn’t wrong about the danger. He was simply infuriatingly wrong about how normal people arrived at solutions.
I crossed my arms. “There are no jobs there.”
Priest looked at me, then Evan, then Blue.
And I knew the instant the idea arrived.
His expression shifted into that terrifying certainty men like him seemed to acquire right before doing something outrageous and calling it practical. “Bay of Saints needs better medical access on the Fallen Harbor side.”
Blue narrowed her eyes. “Priest.”
“The hospital’s underfunded. Overcrowded too.”
“That does not mean...”
“It means the area needs a freestanding ER.”
Silence fell hard enough that Little Jax’s sleepy snuffle sounded enormous.
Evan blinked first. “A what?”
“A freestanding emergency department,” Priest said, as if suggesting a new grocery store. “On our side of town. Fallen Harbor needs access to emergency care without everyone driving across county lines when something goes wrong.”
Blue stared at him with the exhausted disbelief of a woman whose baby’s father had apparently decided zoning laws were a personal challenge. “You cannot build an ER because you are annoyed at geography.”
“Why not?”
“Because medicine does not work that way.”
Priest folded his arms. “Seems like that’s exactly how medicine ought to work.”
A low sound came from Ink that might have been a laugh. Priest ignored him.
“You said there are no jobs in Bay,” he continued. “A new ER would need people who know how to run one.”
“Oh my God,” Blue muttered.
“It would need you.” His gaze moved toward Evan and me. “And people you trust beside you.”
I stared at him. “You can’t solve every emotional problem by building infrastructure.”
Priest considered that. “Wanna bet?”
Evan laughed before he could stop himself. I dropped my forehead into one hand. “He’s serious.”
“He is,” Evan said, sounding delighted despite everything. “That’s the best part.”
Ink pushed away from the doorway. “Prez gets like this when he decides something matters.”
Blue turned toward him slowly. “I am sitting right here.”
“And?” Ink asked. “He’s gonna build you a damn ER, Doc.”
Priest’s mouth twitched. “I’m not saying we break ground tomorrow. I’m saying there’s a solution.”
“There are permits,” Blue snapped. “Licensing. Equipment. Compliance. A thousand things you can’t glare into submission.”
“Good.” He nodded once. “That’s a plan.”
“It is not a plan. It is a migraine wearing boots.”
Evan pressed a hand to his chest. “I would like that embroidered on something.”
The absurdity almost hid how serious Priest remained. “Fallen Harbor benefits too. Fallen Angels know that better than anyone. They’ve got people running federal contracts through their town, and they still don’t have fast medical access if something goes wrong on their side of the county.”
Ink’s amusement faded into thought. “He’s not wrong. A facility there gives both territories neutral ground. Medical, not club. Useful to everyone.”
What landed for me was the medical part. In an emergency, every mile between a patient and treatment mattered.
“For us too,” Ink continued. “Deacon was east. Wicker Falls was the right call for him. But west of Bay, toward Fallen Harbor, there’s a hole in the map. If somebody goes down out there, distance gets a vote.”
Priest looked back at Blue, smug satisfaction pulling at one corner of his mouth. “This isn’t just about you.”
I wanted the whole idea to remain ridiculous. The timing certainly deserved ridicule. But beneath Priest’s delivery, it had a spine. Bay of Saints needed better emergency access toward Fallen Harbor, and too many people depended on distance being kind when seconds mattered.
Distance had never been kind.
Little Jax shifted against Blue’s chest, wrinkled his tiny face into a fierce scowl, and released an indignant grunt. Evan leaned forward immediately. “That’s right, little man. Tell your father he can’t start civic projects because he’s emotionally compromised.”
Priest looked at his son. “He doesn’t seem opposed.”
Blue broke into tired, unwilling laughter, clutching Jax closer while the absurdity softened the room. When she finally caught her breath, she shook her head at Priest. “You are impossible.”
“Maybe.” The humor left his face. “But I’m not leaving you here unprotected.”
There it was beneath everything else.
Fear.
He had turned it into logistics, geography, jobs, and an entire emergency department because sitting with what almost happened to her was harder than building something large enough to fight it.
Blue saw it too. She looked down at their son before lifting her eyes back to Priest. “Don’t build me an ER.”
His brow lowered. “Blue.”
“I said don’t build it for me.” Her voice softened without losing its edge. “Build it because the town needs it. Build it because it will help people. If we do this, it has to be real. Not just a grand gesture.”
Priest went quiet, then nodded once. “Alright.”
I settled farther into the chair. “You’re all insane.”
“Probably,” Evan said. “But maybe productively insane.”
Ink tipped his head. “That sounds like a campaign slogan.”
Laughter moved through the room again, softer now, less like escape and more like air finally finding its way back in.
Blue held her son against her chest, Priest stood close enough to touch them both, and Evan looked disturbingly interested in the possibility of causing trouble inside an entirely new emergency department.
Nothing about our jobs was settled. Blue had barely survived the worst day of her life, and Priest had somehow transformed his terror into a potential civic project before any reasonable person could stop him.
But the room no longer felt like somewhere we had gathered just to recover from what happened.
It felt like the beginning of something none of us had planned.