CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (44 page)

             
Kate stood alone in the hospital waiting room, rubbing her arms and wishing somebody, anybody would come out of that door and tell her Teague was going to be all right. She knew he was alive. But she'd never seen so much blood.

             
Wooziness struck her, and she staggered to the drinking fountain. She bent down, put her face in the stream of water, and hoped none of the other people in the waiting room had noticed.

             
As the faintness subsided, Kate stood. Leaning her hand against the wall, she stared at her feet.

             
Teague had been irrational in the ambulance, trying to hit the paramedics and shouting. She'd calmed him down enough for them to give him his medication, but dear God. So much blood. And then .

             
She wanted her mother.

             
Kate rubbed her forehead hard.

             
She wanted her mother, and she was going to get her whole family. They'd been nice at the cemetery, introducing themselves, petting her as if she were a long-lost dog. But Kate didn't know them. Hope and Pepper, Dan and Zack, Gabriel...

             
Who were they really? She didn't remember any of them. They couldn't comfort her right now any more than the strangers who sat in the waiting room or the cowed volunteer who manned the sign-in desk or the callous nurse who ran the ER like a drill sergeant. Kate wanted her mother.

             
"Darling!" The beloved, familiar voice spoke from the doorway. "We came as fast as we could."

             
Kate jerked her head up. "Mom!"

             
Her mother hurried into the waiting room and took Kate into her arms. "How is he? Is it bad?"

             
"I don't know." Kate let her head drop onto her mother's shoulder. "Oh, M-Mom." Kate's first sob broke forth. "I'm afraid he's going to d-die from saving me."

             
Gentle hands clasped Kate, clasped her mom, led them both to a couch.

             
"The bullet sliced through his scalp," a man's voice said. "It's probably not serious."

             
Kate lifted her head.

             
Everyone was here. Her whole family. Surrounding her and her mom.

             
She looked at the man who had spoken. Dark eyes, blond hair, tanned, tough-looking. He was related to her.

             
Right now, she couldn't remember his name.

             
"That's Dan, my husband. He's a rancher and a former terrorist hunter." Kate's sister seemed to recognize Kate's confusion.
Pepper
recognized Kate's confusion. Black, curly hair, green eyes, a face that should, in years past, have led Kate into mischief.

             
"Probably?" Kate choked.

             
"Dan's not a doctor, but he's seen a lot of wounds," Hope spoke. Kate's other sister. Brown hair, blue eyes, a face that made Kate feel as if she'd come home.

             
"He was . . . was fighting them." Tears welled in Kate's eyes. Impatiently, she brushed them away. She couldn't see, and she needed to see, to hear, to be alert in case the doctor came out to report on Teague. "The paramedics. He was fighting them. I got him calmed d-down. Th-they gave him a painkiller, and all of a s-sudden, his eyes rolled back in his head and he was uncon . . . unconscious."

             
Mom kept her arm around Kate's shoulder.

             
"I've seen a lot of bullet wounds, had a few, too, and being unconscious is not necessarily a bad thing," Dan said.

             
"The paramedics thought it was. They jumped on him, started oxygen and . . . I don't know what they were doing." Kate took a long, wobbly breath.

             
Hope turned to her husband. "Zack, can you find out what's going on?"

             
Zack—black hair streaked with silver, dark eyes, distinguished-looking—nodded, patted Kate's shoulder, and strode toward the desk where Godzilla the Monster Nurse reigned with contempt and disinterest.

             
"Don't worry, Caitlin, people tell Zack what he wants to know." Gabriel spoke. Kate's foster brother. Dark hair, green eyes. Handsome.

             
"She wouldn't talk to me." Kate's voice still wobbled abominably, and she never took her gaze off Zack. "She wouldn't tell me anything."

             
Zack spoke to Godzilla, and when she answered scornfully, he put his hands flat on the desk, leaned over, and spoke again.

             
Godzilla straightened. Without removing her gaze from Zack, she picked up the phone and made a call. She took notes, then handed them to Zack, explained them, and watched as he strode back to the waiting family.

             
"How did he do that?" Kate whispered.

             
"You should have seen him calling in a helicopter for us so we could follow you here." Marilyn sounded awed. "He has a way of addressing people that makes them want to help him."

             
"It's the result of having way too much money all his life," Hope said.

             
Zack walked up. "The bullet creased Teague's skull. He's in shock. He has a concussion. That's why he's unconscious."

             
"Is he going to be all right?" Kate asked.

             
"She wouldn't say a word about that. She said she's not allowed. But she sort of nodded, so I assume the prognosis is good. Or at least not bad." Zack nodded, too, in satisfaction.

             
The relief was so strong, Kate closed her eyes and put her head back on her mother's shoulder.

             
"Thank God!" Hope made the words more than an exclamation. They were a prayer.

             
"Yes, thank God." Kate's mother rubbed Kate's back in that mom like manner that comforted her so much.

             
"Teague's in ICU," Zack said. "Kate, you can see him. The doctor's coming to walk you down and fill you in."

             
Kate stood at once.

             
Her mom remained sitting, her hand still in Kate's.

             
"That nurse told me only relatives could see Teague." Kate kept her gaze on the door. "I told her there weren't any relatives. She said she guessed he wouldn't have visitors then."

             
Everyone looked toward the nurse in horror. Not a muscle moved on Zack's face. "I convinced her otherwise."

             
At that moment, Kate realized how protectively the family hovered around her.
Her
family. Until four hours ago, Kate hadn't heard their names since she was ten months old. Now they were here. They were anxious— about Kate. About their little sister.

             
It was odd and wonderful and . . . just odd.

             
But she didn't have time to think about it, because a tired-looking woman in a white coat stepped into the room. "Miss Montgomery?"

             
Kate hurried toward her.

             
"Hi, I'm Dr. Kahn." The doctor shook Kate's hand. "You can see Mr. Ramos, but I warn you, he's very still and very pale."

             
On the way to ICU, Dr. Kahn assured Kate the bullet had barely touched Teague's skull, but any contact between a bullet and the head made her unhappy. Still, she thought he would recover with no problem except for some crushing headaches. She warned Kate that the bruising from the accident and the bullet looked worse than it was. She led Kate to the bed, where Teague was connected to tubes, monitors, and printers that spat forth unintelligible gibberish, and admonished, "Ten minutes only."

             
His stillness hit Kate like a blow. She was used to seeing him vital, responsive, and so alive that a current of awareness always arced between them. Now he was pale, his purpling bruises showing beneath the white bandages that wrapped his skull. "Oh, Teague," she whispered. Carefully she took his hand. It lay limp in hers. "Teague, listen. I love you. I want you to be awake so I can tell you. Teague, I love you."

             
He squeezed her fingers. Just the slightest pressure.

             
And one of his monitors went off.

             
Dr. Kahn and a nurse hurried toward the bed. Dr. Kahn looked at the readout, then lifted Teague's eyelids, and shone her flashlight in his pupils. She smiled. "Well. Good."

             
"Is he conscious?" Kate asked.

             
"No, but he won't be unconscious forever."

             
The satisfaction in Dr. Kahn's voice made Kate straighten. "Was there a chance of that?"

             
"We're talking modern medicine and the human brain. There's always a chance for anything." Dr. Kahn put her flashlight away. "Five minutes, and keep talking to him."

             
When Kate walked back into the waiting room, the family, her family, assaulted her with questions. "How did he look?" "What did the doctor say?" "Do you feel better now?"

             
Kate told them the whole story, and when she was finished, her family indulged in a discreet celebration that made Godzilla say, in chilling tones, "Other families are here, and their less fortunate circumstances should be considered."

             
"She's right." Gabriel herded them toward the door. "Come on. I scouted out this floor. There's a patio this way for patient and visitor use."

             
Godzilla's glare made them feel like guilty schoolchildren.

             
As they escaped, Pepper gave a muffled snort. Hope snickered. Soon the whole group shook with guilty, suppressed laughter as they made their way toward the glass doors that led outside onto a roof garden. There dim lights shone on the few hardy potted plants that struggled for life against the chill wind.

             
Dan and Gabriel held the doors while Kate and her sisters stepped outside. Then their hilarity burst forth. They giggled together, saying things like, "Did you see her?" "I thought she was going to breathe fire."

             
They hiccuped to a halt. Their gazes met.

             
Family
. The truth began to sink into Kate. These were her sisters. She had a family.

             
"She looks so much like Mama," Pepper said in an awed voice.

             
"We would have found her eventually." With shaking fingers, Hope pushed Kate's hair away from her face. "She would have become a national reporter and when we saw her, we would have known."

             
"Thank you for . . ." Kate hardly knew what to say. They remembered her. She didn't remember them, and she didn't know how to deal with the obviously wrenching emotions her sisters experienced. Feeling awkward and out of kilter, she said, "Thank you for looking for me. For never giving up. When I think of all the years you spent, I can't believe it. You were so strong."

             
"You were our baby. We had to find you," Hope said.

             
Kate glanced at the three guys. They still hadn't come out. They were still bunched together holding the doors, and they looked uncomfortable and unhappy— men caught between two conflicting currents of emotion and uncomfortable with them both.

             
"Where's Mom? Where's my mother?" Kate looked inside, and there stood her mother, watching Kate with her sisters and wiping silent tears off her cheeks.

             
"Mom?" Kate started back inside.

             
"Oh, no!" Hope said. "We forgot about your mother."

             
"We're shits, all happy to see each other while we neglect her." Pepper sounded disgusted.

             
Kate threw her arms around her mom's neck. "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

             
"I feel so h-horrible." Mom could scarcely speak. "All these y-years, I d-deprived you of this wonderful f-family and them of y-you. It's all m-my fault."

             
Hope followed and elbowed Kate aside. "Your fault? All these years, we've been so afraid for Caitlin. We were afraid she was mistreated. We were afraid she'd been sold into slavery." Hope choked up. She shook her head as she unsuccessfully tried to speak again.