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“Of course.” Annette’s cool gaze captures mine. A beat of silence snaps taut between us. “Despite what you may believe, Will, I’ll always help one of Kingsette’s own.”
5
HOPE
The ICU is laid out like an upside-downUwith ten glass-walled patient rooms anchored to the nurse’s station at the center. Beeping and hissing underscore the voices of nurses speaking in hushed, urgent tones, and the forced hot air hums through the vents like an elegy. Doctors shuffle between rooms, and the smell of antiseptic lingers on walls and hands. It’s a place of few happy endings.
It’s impossible this world exists in the same reality that Logan’s wedding did, separated by just a few days.
The first room I enter is dark and smells of sleep and sickness. The patient—a thirty-four-year-old mother of two with a brain tumor—needs a miracle.
She stirs only once as I take her vitals, and my throat tightens. One of the first things I learned when I started working was to keep an emotional distance between my patients and me. For reasons I can’t understand, that’s becoming impossible.
“She’s dying, isn’t she?” The question billows through the hollow quiet of the room, catching me off guard.
I turn to find Mr.Matthews, my patient’s husband, standing in the doorway, his expression stripped of everything but worry. Thick, black-rimmed glasses make his watery eyes seem too large for his face. The hospital-cafeteria coffee cup in his hand tips to one side, the liquidthreatening to spill over. He rights the cup and hugs an oversize tote bag to his chest with his free hand.
“Dr.Welsh is one of the best brain surgeons in the area.”
The machine monitoring the patient’s blood pressure releases a deep sigh. Wires escape from beneath a thin white blanket and disappear behind handmade cards that her husband taped to the wall.
He swallows hard. “What if she doesn’t make it tomorrow? How will I—I can’t live without her.”
His eyes lock on mine. I inhale, but my chest still feels empty.
“You will. You’ll live. You’ll wake up and you’ll breathe. And by muscle memory and reflex, you’ll live. Then you’ll go to bed and wake up and do it all again the next day—and the day after and the day after that.”
His eyes shine, and I wish I could deliver a happy ending. But I can’t promise he’ll be okay—that it will be okay. The universe isn’t safe. Bad things happen to good people. Words get said, and they can’t be unsaid.
A yip escapes from his bag. His eyes widen as his gaze darts from me to the bag and back to me. He hugs it tighter to his chest.
“You can’t have a dog in here,” I say. Lydia, the nurse manager, is not only a stickler for rules, but severely allergic. “It’s against the rules.”
A furry snout appears from inside the bag. Color flushes Mr.Matthews’s cheeks. The dog hiding in the tote bag yips again, and the woman in the bed stirs. She makes a small noise, sounding more alert than she has in days.
“Please,” he says, something caged and desperate haunting his features. “Just once. I’ll only stay for a few minutes.”
I bite my lip and glance back at the patient. Another stir at the dog’s yipping. She’s someone’s mother, someone’s wife—the keeper of someone’s whole heart.
It shouldn’t matter, but it does.
“He’s her good luck charm.”
Automatically, my hand goes to the hollow of my throat, where the locket Brandon gave me—my good luck charm, which has beenmissing since he died—should be. Good luck is only the beginning of what they need.
“I know what I’m asking is crazy. But I need a miracle and whatever luck and magic I can get.” Heartache chases his words, and it unravels every part of me except the part that would have done the same for Brandon.
“Okay,” I say, fixing a stern look on my face. “Two minutes and then he doesn’t come back.”
“Yes. Absolutely. He doesn’t come back.”
The dog yips, and from the corner of my eye, I see my patient stir again as I walk out of the room.
Two nights ago, I trespassed on a roof-deck. Today, I’m breaking hospital rules. One more infraction and I’m officially on a spree. Which would bring my lifetime spree count up to ... one.
“Hope. There you are.” Lydia’s raspy voice stops me in my tracks just feet from the Matthewses’ closed curtain.
My heart plummets.
