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That couldn’t be denied.
It looked so bad that the floor tilted beneath Nick’s feet. Gut-punched and heartsore, it took him a moment to figure out how to make his legs work again.
There were two nurses in the room, and they smiled at him before turning back to the man on the bed.
Machines beeped and whirred, and Nick found himself distracted by the beat of his father’s heart, a spike of green that rose and fell. It was steady.
There was tape over his father’s eyes, keeping his eyelids shut.
There was a strap around his neck, attached to a breathing tube, holding it in place.
There were bandages wrapped around his right arm, where he’d been burned.
But it was the bruising that was the worst of all.
It looked as if every inch of visible skin was covered in deep bruises, blue and red and violet. His chest rose and fell, and therewas a white clip attached to the tip of one of his fingers, but even his knuckles were purple, as if all parts of him had been crushed.
“You must be Nick,” one of the nurses said, sounding inordinately cheerful.
Nick nodded, unable to take his eyes off his dad.
“I’m Becky. I’ll be your father’s nurse today. This is Renee. She’s going to be helping me out. You need anything, all you need to do is ask us, okay?”
“Or one of the officers outside,” Renee said, shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure they’d do anything you wanted too.”
“Your dad’s doctor will be in here in a little bit to talk to you,” Becky said, changing out an empty IV bag for a full one. “He’ll be able to answer any questions you have. You can come over here if you want. I know your dad will want to hear your voice.”
But Nick couldn’t move.
All he could do was watch the heartbeat.
“Nick?” Cap asked.
He turned and ran.
Gibby and Jazz found him.
He didn’t know how long he’d been curled under a table in the empty room he’d found on the second floor. It looked as if it’d been used for storage. Chairs were stacked on top of one another. Cleaning supplies sat on shelves against the wall. It smelled like bleach.
The door opened, light and noise filtering in from the hallway.
He heard a sigh above him. “In here.”
He blinked as two sets of legs appeared in front of him.
He turned his head.
Jazz and Gibby crouched down.
“Hey,” Jazz said, smoothing out her skirt.
“Hi,” he said back.
“Everyone’s looking for you,” Gibby said. “You’d think all those cops would be better at it than they are.”
“How did you find me?” Nick asked, looking at the underside of the table.
“Small dark room. It’s where I’d go too. It’s the tenth one we checked.”
