4. Cassie
CASSIE
I woke with a start, panic blooming in my chest, my pulse racing.
“It’s okay,” Maeve said. “The doctor’s here.”
I blinked and jumped to my feet when I spotted the blonde-haired doctor who’d treated me after my car accident standing at the entrance to the waiting room.
I’d spent the first two hours after the Hawks had been brought in pacing the halls of the hospital before finally falling asleep in the waiting room.
It was dark on the other side of the glass doors of the emergency room, hard to believe it had only been twelve hours since I’d piled into the G-Wagon with the Hawks to follow Anna Reed’s clue.
“Family of Hawk Cruz, Vigo Keaton, and Jagger Voss,” the doctor called out.
I hurried over to her with Bram and Maeve on my heels. Poe and Remy had disappeared while I’d been asleep.
“I’m… I’m the only one here,” I said.
Guilt washed over me. I’d been so out of it when we’d gotten to the hospital that I hadn’t even thought to try and get ahold of Vigo’s family.
I thought of the elegant couple I’d met at the award ceremony for Vigo’s dad — Graham Keaton and Elise Fairchild — and wondered how I’d get in touch with them.
I’d never met Jagger’s or Hawk’s family, but I’d need to get ahold of them too.
“Hi, Cassie.” Doctor Sterling’s voice was warm and familiar. She’d been one of the few bright spots during my time in the hospital when I’d been swimming through the darkness of my temporary blindness. “I’m sorry to see you again under such difficult circumstances.”
She knew the Hawks. Knew we were together from the days they’d taken up residence in my hospital room, occupying the floor like they occupied everything.
Totally.
Madly.
Tears stung my eyes.
“Are they okay?” It was the only question I could muster.
The only one that mattered.
“Let’s talk over here.” She touched my arm and started leading me to a private room off the main waiting room.
I froze and shook my head. “No. I… I can’t.”
I knew what it meant when a doctor took you to a private room. Knew because that was where they’d taken me when my parents had been killed, when Bram had been fighting for his life.
“They’re alive,” she said gently, like she knew what I was thinking. “But there’s a lot to tell you. It’ll be better if we can talk in private.”
Bram took my hand. “It’s okay, Cass. I’ve got you.”
I followed Doctor Sterling into the private room. I could tell someone had tried to make it nice — plastic plants and comfortable chairs and serene watercolors on the wall — but I wasn’t fooled.
This was a place where people got bad news, maybe the worst news of their lives.
And now I was here, waiting to be told what had happened to the Hawks when they’d sacrificed themselves for me.
“Please,” Doctor Sterling said, “have a seat.”
I hesitated, afraid to make it real by sitting. Afraid to hear what she had to say next even though it felt like my whole life hinged on her words.
But then she sat and I found myself sitting too, like I was hypnotized, following an unseen script as if in a trance.
Bram and Maeve took the chairs on either side of me and Doctor Sterling leaned forward, like we were old friends about to exchange some gossip.
“Your friend Vigo got very lucky,” she said. “He’s pretty beat up, but he’s conscious and causing trouble.”
I choked on a sob mingled with laughter.
“He’s got some lacerations and quite a few stitches, some of which he wanted to ‘try doing’ himself, plus a couple of cracked ribs and some bruising, but the CT scan doesn’t show any internal bleeding. He also has some hearing loss in one ear. That may or may not be temporary.”
I exhaled slowly, trying to calm my racing heart, allowing myself a moment of relief.
Vigo was going to be okay.
“What about Jagger and Hawk?” I asked.
“Jagger has multiple shrapnel wounds — one of which is on his back and pretty deep — and a moderate burn on one arm. He also has a concussion, but he’s coherent, and his scan didn’t reveal any permanent damage.”
“Is he awake?”
“He’s in and out,” she said. “We have to be careful about pain management with a concussion, but Jagger’s case warrants it. He was in a great deal of pain from the deep laceration on his back, and burns are always very painful.”
I nodded, processing the information, imagining my men somewhere in the hospital.
Alive.
“And… Hawk?” I was almost afraid to say his name, afraid to hear what Doctor Sterling would say about him.
I knew how it worked, knew that the worst news was usually saved for last. That was how it had been with my parents and Bram: the doctor— accompanied by a social worker because of my age — had told me Bram was alive before delivering the news about my parents.
Doctor Sterling’s green eyes were filled with a sympathy I wanted to reject.
Accepting the sympathy I saw there meant accepting that something bad — something really bad — had happened to Hawk.
“Hawk has the same kinds of lacerations suffered by Vigo and Jagger. We see that a lot with this kind of trauma. Shrapnel travels at a high velocity with an explosion. Hawk also has a second-degree burn on his right side, but the most serious of his injures is a laceration to his liver.”
“His liver?” My head was swimming as I tried to piece together the injuries sustained by the Hawks, as I tried to connect them to the grenade that had been thrown at us at the paper mill.
“His abdomen was punctured during the blast,” Doctor Sterling explained.
“We removed a large piece of metal from his liver. There’s a lot of bleeding with this kind of injury so we’ve given him a transfusion to bring his blood count up.
We’ve stitched the wound closed and packed it — we’ll have to go in and remove the packing in a couple days but the packing will prevent more blood loss — and he’s recovering in the ICU now. ”
I swallowed around the lump that had formed in my throat. “But he’ll be okay?”
Doctor Sterling’s mouth turned down in a sympathetic frown. “If the sutures hold and we can keep the bleeding at bay, he has a good chance of recovery.”
“And if you can’t?”
I needed to know everything. Needed to know the truth.
I love you…
Doctor Sterling drew in a breath. “We could go in again and remove the damaged tissue, but we’re hoping that won’t be necessary.”
“You’re saying he might die.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and I immediately wanted to take them back.
They felt like a curse. A jinx.
“The next twenty-four hours are critical,” Doctor Sterling said. “We just have to take it an hour at a time.”
I hated her for not telling me he would live, then felt like an asshole because Doctor Sterling was the nicest doctor I’d ever met.
I stood. “I need to see them.”
She got to her feet. “You can see Jagger and Vigo, although Jagger may be a bit out of it. Give us a few hours to stabilize Hawk. Leave your number with the nurses’ station and I’ll have someone call you when he’s cleared for a visitor.”
“Thank you,” Maeve said.
Doctor Sterling nodded, then reached out to squeeze my arm. “I’m so sorry. You’ve been through so much the last few months.”
It took me a second to understand what she meant: my accident and the temporary blindness that had plagued me for weeks afterward.
That all seemed so far away. All that mattered now was the Hawks.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’ll have someone come and bring you to Vigo and Jagger’s rooms in a few minutes.” She started for the door, then turned around to look at me. “Is there anyone else we need to contact?”
I shook my head. “I’ll let Vigo and Jagger call their families, and I’ll… I’ll contact Hawk’s.”
I didn’t even know what that would look like, and I realized how truly little I knew about him. I still didn’t know where he went when he disappeared alone, and I still didn’t know his real name, although he must have had it legally changed if Doctor Sterling was referring to him as Hawk.
I felt a clutch of panic: that Hawk would die before I really knew him.
Before I told him I loved him too. That the beat of my heart depended on his.