5. Chapter 5
Chapter five
Jessica
Sophia is still talking into my collar when the clinician clears her throat.
"—and I want you to know that I said at breakfast, I said to Renzo, she's been weird about that appointment for a week, and he said that's because it's an archive and archives are weird, and I said—"
"Miss Dimitriou." The clinician has a voice you could iron a shirt with. "You can walk in beside her."
Sophia detaches herself one arm at a time and then takes up a position at my right elbow like she's been glued to me.
Torres holds the chair while I lower myself into it. I'm too tired to argue.
Renzo falls in on the other side.
"So the good news," he says, "is that the whole campus thinks you fought off a wolf pack with your bare hands, and I have done absolutely nothing to correct that—"
Then he actually looks at me under the entrance lights. At my face, my injuries, and the bloodstained shirt.
"Okay," he says, much quieter. "Okay. That's — yeah."
"It looks worse than it is."
"It looks terrible, bella."
Declan is already at the doors holding one open with his hip. He has a canvas bag over his shoulder and my room key in his free hand.
"There's soup in this and it's still hot. Do you want it now or after?"
"After."
"After." He puts the key in the bag's side pocket where I can find it. "Anything else, you say it and I'll go and get it."
Freya hasn't spoken since the car door opened. She's got the back of the wheelchair in a death grip, walking at exactly my pace, and when the doors swing she puts her free hand out to stop one coming back.
The others follow us inside. Luke goes ahead to give the clinician what she needs. Soren moves a cart out of the corridor. Jon hands over Doc's folder with the medication sheet already on top. Ander stops at the edge of the light and waits.
"You can come in," I tell him.
"Are you certain? There are going to be a great many people in that room."
"Ander."
"Coming," he says.
The clinician's name is Bergstrom, and I like her almost immediately, because the first thing she does is read Doc's sheet cover to cover before she touches me.
"Whoever wrote this deserves a drink," she says. "Doses, times, and her own observations of your neurological status at each stage. Do you know how rarely I get any of that?"
"She was extremely thorough."
"She was a professional. Right." She clicks her pen.
"I'm going to image your shoulder, because a through-and-through that's crossed muscle deserves a proper look, and because you've then used that arm in ways I don't want described to me tonight.
Then I'll look at your flank, your wrists, and the injection sites.
I'll tell you what I'm doing before I do it.
If you want anything stopped, say stop and I stop. Questions?"
"Two. Can I sleep in my own room?"
"Possibly. Ask me again in an hour."
"When do I get cleared for physical activity?"
"Not tonight," she says, and something in her voice is almost sympathetic. "Ask me that one in a few days."
The imaging is deeply boring, which after today is practically a holiday. Bergstrom comes back with the results and puts them up where I can see them.
"Doc's assessment was right. No bone involvement, no damage to the joint, and nothing left inside. It looks great, all things considered." She points. "That's the channel. It'll fill in. You'll have a dent and a story."
"And the arm?"
"Sling when you're upright. No lifting above shoulder height, nothing heavier than a cup in that hand, and if you feel it pull, you stop whatever you're doing, immediately.
" She looks at me over her glasses. "And no shifting.
Not for anything. I'll reassess with you, in writing, and I will not be persuaded by somebody who feels much better on day four. "
The flank gets a fresh dressing. My wrists get cleaned and wrapped and she is quietly appalled by them. The dart sites get something cold and something that stings, and she's careful around the two that are red and swollen.
Halfway through, one of the orderlies comes past behind my chair and reaches over my left shoulder for a swab pack off the shelf, and my whole body goes rigid.
"Sorry," she says immediately. "I should have gone around."
"Yeah."
"Would it help if I told you before I moved?"
"It would, actually."
"Then I'll do that." And she does, for the rest of it. "Reaching past you now. Coming around on your right." It takes her no effort at all and I could weep about it.
Torres has my right hand through all of this. He's been quiet through most of it, which from Torres is close to a medical event. When Bergstrom finally straightens, he says, "Can she go back to the suite? Everyone out there is waiting to find out whether you're keeping her."
"She can go back to the suite. Somebody stays with her tonight. Follow-up here at eleven. Don't make me come looking for you." She caps her pen and glances between Jon and me. "I'll send the discharge instructions to both of you. Follow-up treatment comes through the infirmary."
"Understood," Jon says.
"Good. Everybody out."
"Can Freya stay for a minute?"
Bergstrom looks at both of us, then at Freya's hand now gripping the rail on my bed.
"You can have four."
They file out. Freya stays in the chair beside the bed, still holding the cuff of my sleeve.
The door closes, and she grabs my hand.
"You're okay."
It comes out rough. She ducks her head, but not before I see her face crumple.
"I'm okay."
"You were shot."
"Technically, that happened after the kidnapping."
She makes a sound that might be a laugh if she weren't crying. Then she leans forward and presses her forehead against my hand.
"Thank you," she says.
"For what?"
"For making me get behind the wall."
"Freya—"
"I know what would have happened if I'd stayed with you. I know you protected me." She lifts her head and wipes her face hard with her sleeve. "I'm still furious with you."
"That seems fair."
"No, I don't think you understand. You shoved me out of the way and ran toward men with guns."
"They were already shooting."
"That does not make it better."
"I didn't know what else to do."
"You could have trusted me to help."
"I did trust you. That's why I needed you somewhere safe."
"That isn't the same thing." Her fingers tighten around mine. "You decided you were the one who could be risked and I wasn't. You didn't even look at me before you did it."
There isn't much I can say to that, because she's right.
"I couldn't let them take both of us."
"And I couldn't stop them from taking you." Her voice breaks again. "Do you have any idea what it was like running away and hearing the guns?"
"I'm sorry."
"I don't want you to be sorry for saving me." She shakes her head. "I want you to let me help next time."
"I hope there isn't a next time."
"You're a direwolf everyone thought was extinct, you may be heir to a Great House, and you have a few princes for mates. I wouldn't count on a quiet life."
That gets a laugh out of me, although it pulls at my shoulder.
Freya waits until I stop wincing. "I can fight, Jessica. Maybe not like you, but I'm not helpless. Trust me enough to give me something to do beside you."
"I do trust you."
"Then act like it."
"I'll try."
"That isn't a promise."
"It's the best you're getting while I'm drugged."
She studies me, then nods. "Fine. I'll ask again when you're sober."
"Fair."
Freya stands and leans over me carefully. Her arms go around my neck without touching my shoulder, and she holds on. I close my good arm around her and feel her take one shaking breath against my hair.
"I'm so glad you're here," she whispers.
"Me too."
She stays there until someone taps once on the door.
When she pulls away, her eyes are red, but she looks more like herself.
"Your hair smells like a car."
"Thank you."
"I'm going to write down what Bergstrom said about the sling, because you will absolutely lie about it."
"Freya."
"I nearly lost you. You're never getting away with anything again."
Then she opens the door and lets everyone else back in.
The suite is warm, and there are three bags standing by the door, packed and zipped, boots lined up beside them.
There's a blanket on the couch folded the wrong way with a dent in the pillow at one end.
On the kitchen counter there's a sheet of paper with the day written down its left-hand side in four different hands — Jon: route confirmed east. Sophia: WHY IS NOBODY ANSWERING.
Ander: has a road. The last line just says GOING.
"Who wrote the log?"
"Declan started it," Sophia says, already in her corner of the couch. "Then everybody wanted a go. It stopped being useful at about four in the afternoon and became more of a coping mechanism."
"Whose bags?"
"Ours. For when they let us come." She says it as though it's the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Luke said no. Declan argued with him until Luke stopped answering.
So we packed anyway and put them by the door, because if somebody rang at three in the morning I was not going to be looking for socks. "
Declan has the soup on. Renzo is arranging a plate at the table, and when I get close enough, I see the scrap of paper beside it: HERS in block capitals.
"Roast potatoes," he says. "From lunch. Which I saved, and then defended, because Declan tried to put them in the trash at six o'clock and I said absolutely not, those are for when she gets back, and Sophia said if, and I said—"
"I said it once," Sophia says.
"—and I said when, and everybody got upset, and then Freya made me put a label on them so nobody would eat them by accident." He pushes the plate an inch toward me. "They're probably not even good anymore."
I sit down and eat cold roast potatoes at two in the morning while my friends watch. For the first few bites, I can barely swallow.
"They're fine," I say.
"They're a war crime," Declan says from the kitchen.
"Don't say war crime," four of us say.
Then there's soup, bread, and a long argument about whether Renzo is allowed to tell people I fought off a wolf pack. I end it by threatening to tell Natasha he cried.
"I did cry. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm a man of great feeling."
"You cried at a door," Declan says.
"Declan broke the door, and nobody's talking about that—"
Torres has ended up on the floor with his back against the couch. His hand rests on my ankle. Every so often his thumb moves, absently, and I feel it all the way up.
Luke sends one message, reads the reply, and puts the phone face down on the table and doesn't touch it again. He takes the far end of the couch and lets Sophia interrogate him about whether his family owns a helicopter. Apparently, they do. She finds this outrageous.
I shift against the couch again. Soren gets the cushion off the ugly chair and tucks it behind my shoulder. Then he sits beside me, and I lean into his warmth.
Ander remains just inside the door until Declan notices him.
"Ardent, do you eat, or is it beneath you?" Declan asks. He hands Ander a bowl before he can answer. Ander sits down with the bowl in his hands, looking faintly stunned.
Jon stays by the counter with a cup he isn't drinking.
"Elise?" I ask him.
"Guest accommodation, two rooms down from a very tired Council recorder.
Her material's in the secure store with two signatures on the sheet, one of them hers.
" He turns the cup. "Falken wanted a meeting scheduled for tomorrow.
I said nobody's questioning her until she agrees to the meeting and chooses who sits in, and he agreed without arguing, which surprised me. "
"Good."
"She asked whether you'd eaten." The corner of his mouth lifts. "I told her you were about to."
"I like her. She keeps trying to feed me."
My friends keep talking and it starts to blur together.
I lose the thread of a sentence twice. The second time, everybody notices.
Sophia takes me into my room and finds the enormous gray shirt I stole from Soren without asking any questions. She helps me out of the borrowed shirt, working the left sleeve down an inch at a time, and doesn't make a single comment about the state of me.
Then she goes through the pockets of the pants I came back in, because she is Sophia, and lines everything up on the nightstand. A hair tie. A folded receipt from before any of it. And a heavy gold ring with a wolf over four mountains on the face of it.
"What's this?"
"Frances gave it to me."
She looks at it for a second and doesn't touch it.
"Does anybody official know you have it?"
"No, I’m keeping it in my room. I don’t have the energy to explain it."
"I’m sorry Jess, let’s get you in bed. Sling on, sling off?"
"Off. She said upright only."
"Okay." She hangs it on the bedpost where I'll see it, kisses the side of my head, and goes.
Torres comes in with a glass of water and sets it where my right hand can reach. Then he cups my jaw and kisses me hard, keeping the rest of his body clear of my injuries, until I have a fistful of his shirt again.
"Mm." He rests his forehead against mine. "That's what I needed."
"Luke."
"Yeah." Luke is straightening the blanket at the foot of the bed with one hand while reading the back of Bergstrom's discharge sheet.
"Put it down."
He puts it down.
"Sit here and stop arranging things."
He sits on the edge of the bed. His breath leaves him slowly, and he covers my hand with his.
"Curtains open," I tell Soren.
He opens them, pulls the chair around, and puts his feet up on the trunk.
Ander stops in the doorway on his way out.
"Eleven o'clock tomorrow," he says. "I'll be somewhere close if you need me."
"Ander, come here."
He comes as far as the end of the bed. I hold out my good hand. He takes it, his thumb brushing across my knuckles as the new bond warms beneath my ribs. Neither of us says anything about it.
"Goodnight, Jessica."
"Goodnight."
Jon is last. He pauses in the doorway.
"There's a panel meeting in the morning about my role," he says. "It's not a bad thing."
"I know."
His hand closes around the doorframe. His sleeves are pushed up, and even exhausted, I notice the flex of his forearm.
Apparently being shot doesn’t dull Jon’s effect on me.
His eyes hold mine. "Sleep. Please."
Then he leaves, and the room goes quiet.
Torres has the near side of the bed with his boots off and his back against the headboard. Soren has the chair. Luke hasn't moved off the edge of the mattress.
Three of them are still in the room. Ander has gone, but his new bond hasn't. All four sit warm and separate in my chest.
"Stay until I'm asleep," I say.
"Yeah," Torres says.
Luke turns the lamp down. Soren stretches his legs out. Torres finds my hand under the blanket and keeps it, and starts telling Soren something about his classes that is transparently designed to be boring.
I go out somewhere in the middle of his second sentence.