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When my thirst was quenched, I leaned back and stared at him.
“Nurse is on her way,” he stated. “You set off the alarm. She’ll be here in a minute.”
I blinked but said nothing.
“Where the fuck is she?” He grimaced and ran a hand through his dark hair and then he marched to the door. He almost yanked it off its hinges in his haste.
I stared at the ceiling and waited for him to return.
My mind played over the last thing I remembered. The gunman cornering me in the bathroom. Charlie opening the door and hitting him by accident. The gun going off?—
And then nothing.
Charlie.
I struggled to sit up as I looked around for my phone. Panic swelled in my chest. I needed to know what had happened to Charlie.
The door to the hospital room opened and Bones returned with a blonde, middle-aged nurse. “Easy, sugar,” she crooned.
“Where’s Charlie?” I asked, my pulse spiking, causing the alarm to go off again.
“With Walker,” Bones replied. “She’s been by your bedside the last four days—Walker finally convinced her to leave the hospital and go home and get a few hours of sleep in her own bed. She’s okay.”
I took a deep breath.
The kind nurse gently placed her hand on my shoulder and urged me to lean back. She checked the monitors, tapped out some notes on her device, and then said, “Your anxiety is off the charts and I need you to try to relax. How’s your pain?”
“Pain?” My body wasn’t registering pain. “I don’t feel much.”
“Good. If you start to feel pain, you press the call button. I’ve paged the doctor to let him know you’re awake. He should be here soon.”
“Thanks, Janet.” Bones took my hand and laced his fingers through mine.
Janet left and I looked at Bones.
“Four days?” I asked softly. “I’ve been out of it for four days?”
“No, Duchess. You’ve been out for a whole week. We didn’t know if…”
“If what?”
“If you were going to wake up.” His eyes filled with anguish. “Your mother’s been here constantly. They brought in a cot for her to sleep on, and she’s stayed by your bed. Charlie and I slept in the chairs. The Old Ladies and brothers have stopped by. Oliver, too.”
“Oliver,” I murmured. “A week? Really?”
He nodded.
“Tell me what happened,” I insisted.
“You were shot,” he said, his hand tightening. “The fact that you’re alive is a miracle. The bullet didn’t hit dead-on. The angle…it came in shallow and slid underneath your skin instead of punching through. It zipped around underneath your scalp and then shot out the side of your head. If Charlie hadn’t opened the door when she did…”
“And that’s why I was unconscious for a week.”
“No, you were unconscious for a week because you hit the floor so hard your brain swelled. They put you in a medically induced coma to give your brain a chance to heal and relieve the pressure. You were intubated. They removed the tube this morning and you breathed on your own just fine.” He paused for a moment. “After that, they began to wean you off the drugs so you could wake up.”
I sat with the information for a moment. It felt like it had happened to someone else.
“And Charlie…she’s okay?” I frowned. “He didn’t go after her?”
