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Pony nodded. “You got it.”
“And stay close to the MC. I don’t want you getting jumped while you’re alone. I know you can handle yourself, but…”
“But nobody’s invincible,” Pony said. “No, I hear you. Thanks, Griz. I’ll be nearby if you need me.”
Pony left, then, leaving Griz alone in the room with his dad. Now that the conversation was over, the room seemed strangely quiet, overly quiet, as if the silence was filling the room like pressurized gas.
His dad looked peaceful, at least. Other than the tubes coming out of his body, which Griz couldn’t look at. Boomer was always so strong, so capable, that it looked wrong to see him like this.
He looked frail, like a china cup that had been broken and then glued back together. It was hard for Griz to see him like this.
A sudden high pitched yelp erupted behind him. Griz was the sort to rarely get startled, but he nearly jumped out of his skin from the sudden noise in the midst of such deep quiet.
He turned around and the little receptionist was there, the one he recognized from his previous trips to the hospital. She was friends with Kate, as he recalled.
“Ah!” she said, holding a hand to her chest as if she had the vapors. “Gosh, you scared me!”
“Sorry,” he said.
She waved him off, smiling now that she was over her scare. “I thought that I heard someone in here, but visiting hours are over, so I wasn’t sure. God, you gave me a fright!”
“I just needed to see my dad,” Griz said. “You’re Nikki, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she said, looking pleased that he remembered her name.
“I’m Griz. I’m friends with Wyatt, and Kate.”
“Oh, I remember you, big man.”
“Oh, right,” Griz said, “from the scene Devil and I made a while back in the lobby, to mess with Gloria. Sorry about that.”
He’d forgotten about that, how back when Wyatt had first met Kate, he and Devil had come in to the hospital to torment Kate’s no-good supervisor to get her back in line. They’d made quite a spectacle of themselves.
“No, it was good,” Nikki said. “That helped us all out.”
“That was a while ago, though.”
“You made an impression, walking around with your pants around your ankles. You and that little cute bald-headed friend of yours.”
“Yeah, I guess we did,” Griz said. “So you’re working the night shift, hunh?”
“Yes,” she said. “I needed the extra hours. Is this your dad?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you look like him!” she said. “I’ve seen how your MC keeps someone here to keep an eye on him. That’s nice. Make sure there’s somebody there when he wakes up.”
“If he wakes up,” Griz said.
“He will. You have to have faith, you know?”
“Yeah,” Griz said. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to talk to my dad. I know that may sound weird, since he can’t hear me…”
“It doesn’t sound weird,” Nikki said. “I see people come in here all the time, with relatives or friends who are in really bad shape. You should talk to him. It helps them. The ones in a coma.”
“Does it?”
“Definitely. They hear you. Maybe not the way you think, but they do. I think so, at least.”
