As it was, Aaron was still unconscious. Recovering from surgery, blood loss, and a gunshot wound just shy of hitting important internal organs. She knew the doctor meant to be encouraging, but right now, things didn’t feel solucky.
The doctor had also said that all she could do now was wait. Wait there in the same room she’d been in since they had arrived, wait for Aaron to wake up, wait to see what his long-term recovery looked like.
She decided she was done waiting.
She marched up to the closest nurses’ station and put on her best charming smile even though she knew she must look crazy—bleeding and disheveled—from what she’d been through.
She took a calming breath. “Hi, I need to see my friend. We came in together. He was shot and just got out of surgery, and I need to be with him when he wakes up.”
The nurse looked a bit shocked but quickly regained her composure. “Ma’am, you seem to be injured as well. Can we have a doctor look at you?”
“No,” Bailey replied forcefully, “I just need to see Aaron Ward.”
The nurse smiled patiently. “Okay, I can take you to his room, but maybe you could let someone bandage up that shoulder once you’re there.”
She nodded in agreement and the nurse led the way down the maze of identical hallways to the room where Aaron was lying, still unconscious, from his surgery.
Just seeing the rise and fall of his chest eased some of the anxiety in her stomach. She let out a relieved breath as she walked across the room to his side.
“I’ll send someone in to look at your shoulder and any other injuries,” the nurse said before closing the door behind her.
Sure enough, a different nurse came in a few minutes later to clean up, stitch, and bandage her injured shoulder, and look her over for any other injuries. Once that was done, she sat in the chair next to Aaron, holding his hand and waiting for him to wake up.
Her eyes started to get heavy as she listened to the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. She decided to climb into the bed next to Aaron and close her eyes, just for a few minutes. She knew she shouldn’t—she was filthy, after all—but she just wanted to be close to him right now. She’d rest a few minutes and then she’d wake up before he did and be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.
She curled up next to Aaron’s uninjured side and dozed off thinking about how thankful she was that they were both alive.And she realized that at that moment, lying next to Aaron,luckywas exactly how she felt.
Bailey woke to the feel of someone’s fingers running through her hair, and it took her a moment to figure out where she was.
The smell of antiseptic filled her nostrils, and she sat up. Oh God, she remembered now. She had insisted on being let into Aaron’s room after his surgery, and had fallen asleep lying in the hospital bed next to him.
He had collapsed just outside of the hospital, and the panic that had run through her veins in that moment was unlike anything she had ever felt before. She blamed herself for getting him involved in this situation and she was furious at the crooked cops who had hurt them both so much, both physically and emotionally.
But, as she opened her eyes, she saw that he was awake and smiling at her. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, emotion rising up inside of her.
“You’re okay,” she gasped.
“Well, I feel like I just got shot.” He grunted at the impact of her attack, but she could hear the smile in his voice. She sprang back, eyes wide.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, realizing she had applied pressure to his fresh wound.
“No, it’s okay,” he replied. “It feels a lot better than it did when I passed out. Sorry for giving you that scare, by the way.”
“Yeah, you should be sorry,” she joked, swatting him playfully on the arm as she shook her head. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“My bad.” He smiled, and she grinned back.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her, nodding to the bandage on her shoulder. She had wanted the nurses to focus on Aaron instead of her, but she was thankful they had taken care of her wound as well. She’d hardly been paying attention to it, orderingthe nurses to focus on him instead, but she was thankful they’d ignored her.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “Better than ever, actually.”
And even though Aaron was waking up in a hospital bed today, it was the truth. She and Aaron were alive and they would both be okay, though they’d need some time to heal and get back on their feet. But, this time around, they weren’t going to have to look over their shoulders the whole time for fear of someone coming after them. Ziegler and his cronies were behind bars, and there was already an ongoing investigation into what they had been up to. They were going to spend a long time in prison for what they had done.
“Have you heard anything about Ziegler and the others?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, I spoke to Willis while you were in surgery and it sounds like they’ve got plenty to work with just in the van—unregistered weapons, stuff like that.”
What she left out was the shovel, rope, and plastic wrappings they had found in there, too. The shovel was no doubt going to be used to dig her grave if they had succeeded in finishing her off. The rest, she didn’t want to think about. She’d already be having nightmares for a while to come. She didn’t want him knowing about that part, either. It just didn’t seem fair to put him through that when he was the one who had taken a bullet.
