He didn’t quite have Luthor’s faith. Maybe she’d understand that Spook needed him right now, but maybe it’d be confirmation that he cared more for Spook than he did for her. It wasn’t true. He didn’t rank the people he loved.
What she had to understand was that while he’d apologise for his actions as many times as she liked, he’d never regret making them. Time over, he’d do the same thing again. And, if he was really the man she wanted him to be, the man worthy of her love, she’d never ask him to do otherwise.
The slam of the ambulance doors snapped him out of his thoughts. It didn’t matter. None of it did. The only thing of importance right now was Spook. He clasped his friend’s ice-cold hand. “Stay with me, eh?” The words were as much for his benefit as Spook’s. He wasn’t even sure Spook could hear him.
Spook came round as they reached A&E, but he only croaked his name to the paramedics before falling back into silence. He held onto Xane’s fingers through the bars on the bed as they wheeled him along the hospital corridors from one place to the next. X-rays, CT scan, a stream of nurses and doctors pushing needles into his veins, taking bloods, and attaching monitors. There was no brain bleed, no cracked skull, so no surgery needed, just a vicious cut that glue couldn’t hold together. Xane had to turn his head when they got the staple gun out; even the sound of it made his guts churn. By the time they were done, Spook was paler than the bedsheets. Leastways, the bits that weren’t a motley of reds and purples. One of his eyes was glued closed, half his face swollen almost to the point of him being unrecognisable.
“He’ll be fine,” one junior doctor reassured him. They all introduced themselves, but Xane couldn’t remember a single name. “It’s all soft tissue damage. It’ll heal. It looks bad now, but there shouldn’t be any long term issues. Just a scar you won’t see under all that hair.”
Funny how no one mentioned the psychological scarring, though there were plenty of questions about how it had happened.
Xane had endured enough counselling in his life to admit there were benefits, while still retaining a degree of scepticism over its worth. Spook had once likened his time in therapy to the Cold War, but maybe it was time to start addressing the fundamental issues that had got them to this point. Playing hedgehog did nothing for the internal bruising. The truth was that they were both so riddled with scar tissue it was a wonder either of them ever managed to get out of bed.
It seemed to take forever for them to wind up in a bed space. Graham Callahan, Black Halo’s formidable manager, appeared and exchanged some words with the staff. That eventually bought them some privacy; an isolation room at the end of the main ward. A visit from the cops followed. All to no effect. Xane told them what he knew, which was nothing, and Spook continued his unnerving silence, only making the odd indrawn hiss when someone fussing over his wounds applied a little too much pressure.
“Perhaps questions could wait a while,” the doctor advised when the coppers started getting impatient. “He has concussion and multiple other injures. It’s going to hurt to talk right now, and while I appreciate you want answers, the last thing my patient needs is agitating.”
Some sort of drip got wired up to feed him a steady supply of pain relief.
Xane understood the officer’s frustration, he was on edge waiting for answers too. Spook’s silence, if he was honest, scared him more than the injuries.
Evening rolled around before they got any time alone. Spook refused anything to eat, even a jelly pot. Xane didn’t have much of an appetite either, but he’d been shown the vending machine, and was on his third cup of horrible coffee and half-way through a packet of cheesy puffs. “What the hell happened? I was only gone a couple of minutes. Did you see them? How many were there? What did they want?”
Given the press piece that had landed that morning, it was hard not to draw conclusions.
Spook turned his head so that Xane was left staring at a patchwork of bruises. He got up and walked around the bed. “Get real, Spook. I’m not the police. It’s me. Who the fuck did this to you? Do you know?”
The heart monitor made a sudden bleat, and Xane watched the trace on the little screen climb. Spook didn’t turn away this time. It probably hurt too much. But he did pull his gaze away from Xane’s.
“You know. I know you know. Okay, you don’t have to say, not if you don’t want to. Probably hurts to talk, right?” The wounds he could see were bad enough, and shit, he didn’t want to open old ones, but— “They didn’t do anything more, right? Not more than this?”
Spook’s one good eye lasered him. He clasped Xane’s shirt front, reeling him in until his ear was only a hair’s breadth from Spook’s lips. “Alle?” he croaked.
The dry rasp sent Xane into a dichotomous state of rapture and despair. Hearing Spook speak, even a single word was good, but the rusty croak leaking from his windpipe, that…that was troubling.
“The guys went to find her. They’ll bring her.”
“No.”
The alarm on the monitor started pinging again. “Eh? Hold up. Are you—are you worried about her? Was she—Spook, was she with you?”
She couldn’t have been. There’d been no sign of anyone else. Xane pulled his thoughts back to the rain-drenched shipyard, the rusty tang in the air, seagulls screeching overhead, worn concrete hard against his knees, and the guys gathered around trying to reach her.
And that burr on his senses, the twittering little chirp.
It was obvious what it was now. He’d heard it every time one of them dialled. A terrifying vision of her sprawled out, just as broken as Spook only a few paces from where they’d all been assaulted him. Shit! He reached for his phone, only for Spook’s fist to tighten on his shirt again.
“Wasn’t…” He shook his head the tiniest degree. “Don’t… bring her here.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Spook?”
Another tiny head shake.
“Okay, but I can guarantee she’s going to want to see you. I know you’re not at your prettiest, but in these sorts of circumstances women don’t give a shit about that sort of thing.”
