That was... good.
Great, even. Survival was what we wanted.
Thrived?
That was even better. A bold goal one might say.
The man, his surgeon, clenched the used gloves in one hand and then tucked his arms over his chest. His shoulders rolled once, cracking loud enough for me to catch. “He just woke up a little bit ago.”
I nodded. “That’s good.”
If Marlow was already awake, that was a good sign for his recovery. It meant his surgery wasn’t hard enough on his body to require some sort of medically induced coma or an extended dose of meds to knock him out for the time being.
I wasn’t going to jump ahead and assume he would be out of here within the next day or two, that would be incredibly naive even if I wanted to remain hopeful, but there was a promise of a good prognosis at the end of this.
One where Marlow walked away from this terrible incident banged up but a plenty alive.
“Strangest thing, though.” There was no humor in this man’s tone, nor did the coldness in his eyes seem to dull despite the beginning of what should’ve been a very lighthearted sentence. “The first thing he did when he opened his eyes was ask about you.”
My eyes flitted to the badge clipped to the hem of his shirt.
Dr. S. Montgomery.
I glanced back. “He did?”
“Told me to go look for the hot guy in the lobby with a great tan, freckles and honey-colored eyes that you could ‘melt in’.” He held up one hand to use air quotes.
Inwardly I winced.
Oh, Marlow... what the fuck.
“Which is so weird considering the last time I saw him, he was pretty beaten up about some guy with that same description.” Dr. Montgomery tucked his arm back over his chest, popping out a hip while he shifted his weight to one side. “What a weird coincidence, considering the EMTs who brought him in said you were the camp’s director... Isn’t it?”
Both of my hands flexed around the chair’s arm involuntarily.
Clearly, this was some sort of shakedown meant to scare me away. Or at least scold me into feeling worse than I already did. I had a feeling this man was one of Marlow’s friends he’d spoken about back on the mountain, theeye for an eyeone if I had to take a wild guess.
Did I blame him for being pissed?
Absolutely not. I was lucky this guy wasn’t asking me to head out to the parking lot with him to settle the score the way he probably wanted to instead of being forced to remain professional.
Whatever Dr. Montgomery was hoping to accomplish by hammering down on my negligence, it was nothing compared to the unwavering storm inside of me, already beating me over and over again with my turbulent regret.
“I’m—” Pulling in a deep breath was doing nothing for my nerves. “You can tell him I left.”
He stared me down, his form unmoving like a statue’s. Those intense blue eyes glared through the lenses covering them, sharp and piercing with how extreme the silent judgment was.
It seemed as though in that moment, the entire waiting room grew deathly silent. No distance machines chimed with patient codes, no clacking of the nurses on their computer filling out reports, not even the sound of my own labored breathing being forced into my lungs could mitigate whatever soul sucking energy this man was smothering me in.
“Is that your final choice?” he said. The bait was dangling, edging me to take it and disappoint what little opinion he still had left of me.
The truth was that all I really wanted to do was march down to Marlow’s room and throw the door open to see for myself that he was alive and breathing, that he was well enough to be sitting up and talking like not a damn day had passed from our last conversation over the radio as he’d urged me to come join him on his hike.
I wanted the last words he’d said to me before he’d passed out again to become reality and not something I was forced to ignore because I was trying not to cross a line we’d already sprinted over ten times by now.
‘Stay with me.’
I shook my head, giving in to my own soft feelings. I couldn’t leave. I wasn’t strong enough to even if it was for his own good. “No... I want to see him.”
