I’d know that cranky bitch anywhere.
“The time on the door says five. We walked in at four-fifty-nine,” the woman with Professor Wood said, sounding cantankerous.
I’d bet my left tit she was fun to be around on a constant basis.
I smiled, though it didn’t reach my eyes.
Because my eyes had settled next on the young boy who was with them.
The perfectly aged young boy who looked exactly like his father.
I smiled, though it was fake as shit, and said, “This way. What is going on today?”
Odin and Bernice didn’t follow me into the exam room as I took the boy’s vitals and got all the relevant information.
As I did, I took notice of a few things.
The boy never once spoke.
He had haunted gray eyes that looked so much like his father’s that it physically hurt my heart to look at him.
“What’s your birthday, young man?” I asked the boy.
The boy—Dean—didn’t speak.
It was like he’d been trained not to by his parents.
Professor Wood cleared her throat and gave a birth date that I would know by heart for the rest of my life.
There was no longer any doubt in my mind.
Gentry’s son was alive.
And he was in our exam room.
“I’ll be right back with the doctor.” I smiled at all three of them before I hauled ass out of the room.
Odin got up to follow me back in, but I caught his arm and dragged him into the breakroom and slammed the door closed.
Odin blinked at me as Bernice came off of her seat and looked at me like I was levitating.
I might have been.
“What is it?” she asked.
I swallowed past a lump in my throat and said, “Gentry’s dead son isn’t dead.”
“What did you just say?”
I turned to find that we weren’t completely alone in the breakroom. There was someone else in there, too.
Twenty-Three
Punch today in the dick.
—Text from Sage to Gentry before shift
Gentry
