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“Only a little. I hate being alone in a room,” she admitted. “At least until the nurses come back around.”
“Take all the time you need.”
Within fifteen minutes the nurse came in for her rounds, suspiciously eyeing Anastacia as she rose from her chair, wiping moist palms on her hospital gown. The mother stood wordlessly, her gaze never lingering far from her daughter’s body. She wrapped her thin arms around Anastacia in silent gratitude.
With a last squeeze of the woman’s hand, Anastacia left the room feeling exhausted and energized at the same time.
Maybe that’s what happened when someone like her listened instead of running away.
“Maybe thereissomething good in this.” She shuffled up the stairs to her floor. She had little trouble passing nurses on her way back to her room. Most of them focused on supporting the mother who made the hard decision to let go of her daughter.
Reaching her floor’s landing, she peeked through the small window before trying to sneak back to her room. The nurses’ station seemed empty, but she also heard some kind of machinery alarm at the end of the hall. There must have been an emergency, and it gave her time to get back to her room.
Hopefully, she hadn’t scared Mel by disappearing.
“There you are.”
Anastacia turned to apologize to the nurse behind her, but there was something instantly wrong about the figure she turned to. The scrubs didn’t fit right; the build was too familiar, and so were the hands.
She took a step back toward her room, unsure if she could reach it in time to lock him out. She put her hands up to defend herself.
“Curtis, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.” He pulled a knife from where he had it stashed in the large pocket and pointed it at her. “You look real good for someone who's supposed to be dead.”
She took another step back, feeling the press of eyes pulse across her skin, but they weren’t just watching her. No, these were watching out for her. She felt the icy presence at her back and the lights flickered directly above her and down the stretch of the hallway.
“You don’t want this to continue, Curtis. You are making someone very upset.”
Curtis’s eyes darted across the length of the hallway.
“You saw someone in the warehouse,” she continued. “He’s very real, and he’s very protective.”
“You— you a witch or somethin'?”
“Definitely ‘or something,’” she answered as the hallway went dark.
She felt a frigid grip on her arm a second before it yanked her into her room. The door slammed shut, locking easily behind her. She pressed her face against the thin window in the door. Anastacia couldn’t see anything, but she heard Curtis screaming about the evil thing hunting him as a couple of nurses tried to calm him. Footfalls pounded down the hallway accented by the stairwell door banging open with a crazed howl as rushed voices called for help. The hallway lights turned solid again as the lock on her door clicked open. She opened her door and was treated to the sight of a very angry man.
“Mel?”
“I told you to stay in your room. The call button in your hand. He was in your room, waiting for you to come back.” He strode past her so she could close the door. Once in, he did a tight circle around her and made sure there were no new marks or injuries. “Where did you go?”
“I was helping someone say goodbye,” she explained. “I felt it was more important than sitting alone.”
The panic and fight dropped from him. “You handled it without me.”
“I had to. You keep running off on me.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, reaching out to touch her cheek. His hand hung in the air for a second before he dropped it at the last minute, his face a mask of dejection. “I’m just going to phase through you.”
“Never stopped you before.”
He paused as her heart thumped, hoping he would try again. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder. “Curtis won’t be the last to try for an opportunity like this. Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”
ThechaosoutsideofAnastacia’s room was more than enough cover to get her out. As hospital personnel scurried to an emergency in the stairwell, Mel led Anastacia to the nurses’ station and over to a large container of lost and found. One baggy sweatshirt and pair of yoga pants later, she was able to leave her hospital gown behind. Taking the stairs down a floor or two, they strolled into an elevator and rode it the rest of the way down. Mel urged her to go faster, leaving cold spots against her back, making her shiver.
Rushing as much as they could without drawing attention, they made it into the employee parking garage away from the front door when exhaustion pulled at Anastacia. Leaning against the cold, cinder block wall, she tried to catch her breath through the thrumming ache.
