Chapter 4 #2
“All right,” she said and strode off to get started, wondering if she would spend the rest of her life doing work for men that they needed her to keep under wraps.
She was glad to have this assignment, though. Finally, something useful. Something to distract her from everything she couldn’t bear to think about.
She arrived in Peter’s room that night to find two men sitting beside his bed. One was Dr. Alvarez, head of the coma unit. The other was a wizard.
She steadied herself on the doorframe, hoping the man was a fellow doctor. He wasn’t the wizard who’d attended Peter before.
Alvarez got to his feet. “Miss Harper, this is Wizard Cleary, with the Department of Wizards Affairs.” He hesitated. “I don’t know quite how to put this …”
“Wizard Blackwell has no living relatives,” said Wizard Cleary—brisk, businesslike.
He was sitting in her seat, the armchair that Nurse Weller had brought over for her two weeks earlier.
“The next-of-kin role defaults to his appointed guardian after his grandmother died—that is, the Arlington Wizardry Academy. They have designated that authority to my office. Therefore, we will now make decisions about his care.”
She forced herself to set aside the shock for later. She took a deep breath. “I am his fiancée. Surely that supersedes a temporary guardianship that ended when he turned eighteen?”
“It does not,” Cleary said pleasantly. “Dr. Alvarez?”
The doctor sighed. “Our lawyers tell me Wizard Cleary is correct.”
Your lawyers figure the magiocracy is far more likely to pay his hospital bill than I am. She stood up straighter. “And what, Wizard Cleary, are your plans for my fiancé’s care?”
“We will be transferring him to the Wizards Affairs Hospital, effective tomorrow.”
“No!”
“He’ll have excellent care at the WA. You will, of course, be permitted to visit. Though not this late,” Cleary added, rising. “Visiting hours there are from noon to 5. Good day, Miss Harper.”
He walked out without waiting for a response.
“You can’t do this!” she called after him. He didn’t so much as break his stride.
She made it to her chair and collapsed into it, hands shaking.
“You know this isn’t right,” she said bitterly to Alvarez, who looked as if he wanted to sink into the floor.
“Yes. I argued against it.” Shaking his head, he added, “They’re all wizards—at least they’ll take good care of him.”
The thought of Peter completely in their power was too horrible to contemplate. But how could she tell the doctor that, with so little she could offer as explanation? Voice breaking, she said, “I have to work. I can’t possibly get to the WA during their visiting hours.”
“They extend through the weekend, I understand,” Alvarez said miserably. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Harper. Truly, I am.”
She nodded, taking Peter’s hand. “I’d like to spend some time with him, please. While I still can.”
“Of course,” the doctor said. He slipped out, closing the door behind him.
“Oh,” she gasped, doubling over, and had to press her lips together to keep the sobs in until her chest stopped heaving and she had control of herself again.
“Peter, I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.
She’d come here intending to ask for Wizard Hillier, the doctor, to look again for signs of magical problems. But now …
Would the magiocracy listen to her at all?
Did they in fact steal Peter’s will for the express purpose of denying her the right to oversee his care and pay for it with his money?
They would never help him recover, if such a thing were even possible. They would let him fade away and die as the runes sapped what the weapon hadn’t already managed to steal.
No, damn it! She’d restarted his heart while covered in his blood—she wouldn’t let this happen without a fight.
She sat with his hand in hers, a plan forming as she considered what she’d already tried and what she now knew.
I can make out my hand pretty well while you’re holding it—that was what he’d said.
She stood. “I’ll be back soon,” she told him, and rushed off to a payphone, dialing her house.
Rosemarie answered, short and to the point. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” she said. “I’m too tired to come home tonight. I’m staying in Washington.”
Rosemarie paused before replying, and Beatrix imagined what her stand-in mother wanted to say. How do you intend to pay for that? Do you really think this is wise? Where will you go?
But the house phone was tapped, so anything she said, the wizards would hear. Rosemarie settled on, “I see. And when do you think you’ll be back tomorrow?”
“Not right away,” she said. “I want to visit with Peter as long as I can. Tomorrow’s Saturday, after all.”
She could practically see Rosemarie shaking her head. “All right, then. I’ll tell your sister.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
She went next to the cafeteria and bought the cheapest dinner they had, one that would leave her with just enough money to buy a single meal the next day and a train ticket home. She wolfed it down and ran back to Peter’s room.
The hospital staff had always said she could stay with him as long as she wanted. No one had ever said this privilege didn’t extend overnight.
She sat next to him and put her lips to his ear. “I’m going to try an experiment. See if anything changes. Every time I say, ‘Can you feel it,’ I’ve switched something, so pay attention.”
She slipped her hand into his and said, “I’m holding your left hand, Peter. Can you feel it?”
She did nothing for a few minutes but that—just held his hand.
Then she let go, took it up again and said, “I’m holding your left hand a second time—can you feel it?
” Now she sent magic his way. A few minutes after that, she repeated the procedure, this time focusing specifically on what she wanted the magic to do—pummel the barrier that trapped him.
She did all three steps again, this time with her hands on his chest. Then his forehead, throat, back, ankle, right hand, cheek and the top of his head.
Once she ran out of places to try, she abruptly noticed how parched and tired she was.
Hungry, too, but there was nothing she could do about that until tomorrow.
She got herself water from the adjoining bathroom and an extra pillow from the closet, and settled back into the chair—her stomach rumbling, her corset digging into her.
If she fell asleep, it would be a small miracle.
“I’m still here,” she said to Peter. “Good night.”