Fallen (23 page)

Michael told us to wait here—that he would send somebody for us. Police sirens wail out in the front car lot, and there’s nothing else that we can do. Lacey and I sit there, and we wait.

******

A Widow Maker shows up twelve minutes later. It’s Carnie, one of the men I met at Julio’s; I have no idea how he managed to get here so fast, and I don’t ask questions. It’s a miracle that we haven’t already been discovered. Lucky that the unconscious cops haven’t woken up, either, although that’s more of a worrying point. They’ve been out for so long, I begin to worry they actually are dead, but a quick check of their pulses reveal they are very much still alive.

Just like us, Carnie’s absolutely drenched; he looks faintly amused at our situation, although his smile vanishes when he realizes it’s on him to lift Zeth. In the end, even he’s not strong enough to do it on his own. He takes Zeth’s arms, and Lace and I get a leg each. It’s so undignified that I’m almost glad the bastard’s finally passed out on us; he would never consciously tolerate such manhandling.

Carnie has an industrial van waiting at the rear of the hospital, the engine still running. Down one side, the paintwork reads
Encore Dry Cleaning
. He’s parked it right up against the bay doors, as though he’s waiting for a delivery of the hospital’s soiled linen. The hospital cleans its own sheets and scrubs, but it’s a reasonable disguise. We manage to haul Zeth into the back—the van is actually piled high with sacks of clean laundry—and then Lacey and I climb in right behind him. “Where the hell did you get this?” I ask Carnie, already suspecting the answer.

“I borrowed it,” he replies, and then he slams the doors closed. Everything falls into darkness. A moment later, the van lurches and we’re moving. In the dark, the engine and our breathing seem very loud. I suddenly realize how cold and wet and tired I am. Lacey fumbles around and finds my hand, squeezing it tight.

“Is he going to be okay?” she whispers.

I squeeze her hand back, and I tell her the truth. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

The man I called a back-alley doctor back at Zeth’s warehouse told me his practice was in a basement, but he lied; it’s actually above a tattoo shop in Greenwood. He looks less than happy to see us when we walk through his door, although his tight-lipped grimace isn’t one of surprise. He knew all too well that we were coming.

The unit he operates out of is clearly where he lives, too, although the room he guides us to is immaculately clean and equipped with nearly every piece of hospital gadgetry he could possibly need, including a life support machine pushed back into one corner.

“Put him on the table,” he orders, rolling up his shirtsleeves. Carnie, Lacey and I heave Zeth up onto the table, and I try not to succumb to the overwhelming urge to throw up. Everything hits me all at once. I just screwed up any chance of continuing my career. I should never have run, but it was hard to refuse when everyone seemed so frantic and desperate to move. When it appeared that everyone had come to get
me
, to prevent Charlie from doing anything to harm me. I didn’t really have another choice.

None of that matters now, though. Not in comparison to the still form lying on his back on this stranger’s makeshift operating table. My heart feels like…it feels like it’s wrapped in barbed wire, and every time I breathe in and my chest expands, my heart swells and presses against that wire, and is pierced a little deeper. The caregiver in me wants to check Zeth’s vitals, to establish what’s happening with him, but I’m too damn scared. I’m worried about what I’ll find, and I’m worried about how it will affect me. It already feels like I’m on the verge of losing control; if I see for myself that he’s dying, I know exactly what will happen. It will be the end of everything for me. I’ve railed against it, and I’ve fought and denied it, but there was little point in even trying. I’ve fallen for this reckless, dangerous, terrifying soul, and now that I’ve realized it, I’m not ready to give it up.

I walk back out of the room, and head straight to where Lacey is sitting on a thoroughly worn leather sofa, staring into space. She looks traumatized enough already, but I’m going to ask one more thing of her. “Lace, what’s your blood type?”

Her eyelids flutter, and then she refocuses, looking up at me. “I don’t know.”

I exhale, closing my eyes and taking a moment. I’m type A; I already know that. I can only donate to people with the same blood type, or type AB. If Zeth’s type O, like half the freaking population of the world, then transfusing him with my blood could easily kill him. And now Lacey doesn’t know her blood type. If she’s AB, the holy grail of blood transfusions, it won’t matter what Zeth is; she will be able to help him anyway. The likelihood of that is almost nil, though. But giving Zeth Lacey’s blood is still our best bet at this stage. She’s his sister. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the same blood type, it does mean they’re more likely to be compatible.

“Can I help him?” Lacey whispers, jarring me out of my panicking thoughts.

“We can only try,” I say. There’s no way I can steal more blood from the hospital, and it’s unlikely we’re going to find a better candidate.

I let the other doctor hook them up, and I don’t sit around to watch. I pace back and forth in the other room, fighting against the prickle of fear that I’m now more than well acquainted with. Lacey is whiter than a sheet once the blood transfusion is done. She comes and sits in the room with me, turning on the television, although she doesn’t watch it. The sound of
The Simpsons
playing in the background is just there to fill the silence, and I’m glad of it. It stops me from screaming.

Three hours later, Cade shows up. He’s wearing his cut and a dangerously irritated look on his face. “That bitch sure can drive,” is all he’ll say. After some prompting, he confirms that Michael took the brunt of the heat but that he got away and will come as soon as he can. He also confirms that as far as he or Michael can tell, Charlie wasn’t arrested. God knows what the psycho did to avoid that.

Cade sits down next to Lacey on the couch, and his eyes grow wide with surprise when she turns and curls herself up into a ball, nestling into his side. They only met briefly this afternoon, but he doesn’t know that Lacey’s simple need to be held sometimes overrides all forms of social etiquette. He takes it well, though; he shrugs at me and then puts his arm around her, and I feel like kissing him on the cheek.

It’s the middle of the night by the time Zeth wakes up. The doctor—his name is West, Cade tells me—comes to let me know. “He’s bandaged up tight and I’ve given him a sedative so he doesn’t try to move. You think you could
try
and not get him too excited?”

Cheeky bastard. I give West a dour smile and push past him into the room. Zeth’s bleary eyes are staring straight up at the ceiling while he frowns, slowly blinking against the light.

“You should know I’m pretty mad at you,” I whisper softly. Zeth’s head slowly rolls to the side like it’s heavier than a bowling ball. His lips pull into a lazy smile.

“I’m pretty mad at me, too,” he says. For someone who’s clearly been shot up with enough tranquilizer to sedate a small elephant, his speech is surprisingly unaffected. My heart pulls a little, aching in my chest.

“Why are you mad at yourself, Zeth?”

“Because…you’re leaving,” he says, his words taking some effort to get out. A bolt of something painful and too hot races through my veins, lighting me up. He thinks I’m leaving? I have to take a moment to consider that. If he already thinks it, then maybe I should. Maybe I should walk out of the door and never look back. As quickly as I consider this option, I know it’s just never going to happen.

“Why do you say that?” I walk farther into the room and sit carefully on the edge of the table where he’s pinned under the weight of the drugs coursing through his body.

“Because of this…because of…
me
.”

I have no doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t be talking like this if he were fighting fit. He’d be growling something about me doing whatever the hell I wanted and how everything was my choice. But I think the drugs might be loosening that tongue of his a little bit.

“Yeah, well. I’m not gonna say that you probably handled the hospital situation a little rashly, but I’m not blind, Zeth. I see the underlying motive.”

Zeth grunts, shaking his head slowly, as though he’s suddenly caught himself thinking something he doesn’t want to be thinking. Such a huge man, covered in ink, with a fierce hardness to him that often fools others—but I’ve
seen
this side of Zeth hiding underneath the cold exterior. I’ve just been waiting to meet him properly.

I reach for his hand, not caring anymore. Not caring about my pride, or his arrogance, or both of our stupidity. I’ve questioned myself, and I’ve questioned him countless times, and I’ve doubted the both of us as many times, too, but that’s not the way things are going to be anymore. This is the turning point. This is where I stop holding back. This is where I become his. Nearly losing him twice has made me realize that I really
want
him. Want this. Want
us.
And I’m going to have it. “I’m not going anywhere,” I say.

Zeth’s pupils are like the lens of a camera enlarging and contracting, desperately trying to focus properly. This might be a bad time to do this, but it’s happening all the same. I lace my fingers through his, the rough callouses on his palms and fingers reminding me that he works with his fists. I accept that. Right now, I’m accepting him. He blinks at me again, and then a faint attempt at a cocky smile works across his face.

“Knew you couldn’t resist me,” he says softly.

I can only laugh. “Against all the odds, no,” I admit. “I can’t.”

“Then I’m a happy man, Dr. Romera,” he says, letting his eyelids sink closed for a moment. “Because from the moment I saw you…I haven’t stood a chance.” He wiggles his fingers, and I realize he’s trying to free his hand. Disappointment rushes through me—he still can’t hold hands with me?—but then he heaves his arm up high over his head and leaves it there, waiting. “Are you coming up here or what?” he asks.

He wants me to lie on the table with him. He’s covered in sweat and blood, and he looks like hell, but quite frankly there’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be. In that small, concentrated action, the last fragile piece of my heart that I’ve been trying to keep back, to keep for myself, is suddenly lost. It’s all his. It’s wrapped itself entirely around him, and I have no hope of ever getting it back again. I climb as carefully as I can up onto the table and I let my head gently rest on his shoulder; his arm encircles me, and I feel like doing something utterly ridiculous—I feel like crying. We haven’t been here before, but this, me and him together, our bodies pressed close—and not only pressed close, but with him pulling me even closer—it feels like we were made to fit together like this all along, and if we’d only just given in and tried it, we would have seen that right at the beginning.

“What’s this?” Zeth asks, quietly murmuring the words into my hair. His hand is resting on my side, over the pocket of my now totally disgusting scrub pants. I reach inside, and I pull out the orange envelope that I found this morning, at the beginning of the worst shift in the history of all time.

“Oh, yeah. I meant to read this earlier.” I open it carefully, feeling a pinch of regret. I already suspect I know what this is; when I slide the thick, engraved card out from inside the envelope, my suspicions are confirmed. “You are cordially invited to attend the wedding of Ms. Rebecca Gibbs to Mr. Suresh Patel, on November thirtieth of this year. Festivities will be hosted at The Grand Alms Hotel, commencing at eleven a.m. for the service and vows,” I read. Yeah, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t immensely sad right now. After listening to Suresh talk about it for so long, I’ve actually been looking forward to his wedding. I run my fingers over the paper once more, and then I slide the card back inside the envelope.

“Are you going to invite me to be your plus-one?” Zeth asks, his voice rumbling in my ear.

“Oh, come on. I’m hardly going to go. It wouldn’t be safe.”

“Would I get the invite if you
were
going?”

I want more than anything in this world to kiss Zeth right now, but I know it’s not a good idea. Instead, I throw caution to the wind and I press my lips against his ribcage, closing my eyes. “Yes,” I say. “You’d get the invitation.”

Zeth inhales deeply, in that way that patients do when they’ve had too much pain relief and it feels good to stretch their lungs to maximum capacity. He is immensely high right now, but he’s doing a solid job of keeping his shit together. He exhales slowly, and then he speaks. He’s so quiet, I have to strain to hear him. “I told you once this could be a fairy tale if you let it. And I told you the part I’d play in that fairy tale. But if you want to go to this thing…” He stops talking for so long that I assume he’s fallen asleep. But then he turns his head, his lips moving as he brushes them against my hair. “If you want to go, Sloane…I’ll make it happen. For you, I can switch characters. I
will
be Prince Charming for a night.”