He kneels to the floor, gazes deep into my eyes with a bright, penetrating stare and says, “I can’t do that; you need medical attention.”
I fall forward, the palm of my uninjured hand biting into the hard surface, a violent tremor racking my body.
His hand touches my spine gently. “Come with me to the hospital.”
“He’s going to kill me,” I whisper after several seconds of silence.
“Who?” He takes my shoulders gently in his grasp.
Mastyx may kill the doctor, too, if I don’t get rid of him. I have to stop this. I launch to a stand, nearly knocking him over. “I said leave!” I yell down at him.
He nods, his eyes fixed on my shaking hands before saying, “Okay.”
Slowly, he rises, his eyes never leaving mine, before backing down the steps and turning to walk away. As he takes a step toward his car, he glances down at his hand and stops. His head whips in my direction at the sight of blood on his palm. “You’re coming with me.”
He’s not asking anymore, he’s telling. I back up against the door as he charges up the steps two at a time and sweeps me off my feet, carrying me swiftly down the steps. I thrash in his arms, but he holds me firm. “You’re going to the hospital, Contessa,” he orders. “You’re bleeding.”
I stop fighting him, my eyes widening at the anger I hear in his voice when he calls me by my first name. And with that outburst came something else—a presence and a feeling of something wrapping around me like a warm blanket or an embrace. It was like the feeling you have after a refreshing shower or crawling under the covers after an exhausting day. There’s a familiarity to it that makes me feel safe—safer than I have in a long time.
He sets me in the passenger seat of his vehicle and wraps the seatbelt around me before closing the door softly.
The driver’s side door opens after a brief hesitation, and he sinks into his seat. He sits there, his thumb grazing his bottom lip.
A quiet has come over him. It’s as though he has said or done something he shouldn’t have and now regrets it. He glances at me briefly with a half-hearted smile before turning the key. I peer out my window and see a small puff of smoke escape the underside of my front door as if someone huffed out a cigarette beneath it.
I shrink into my seat, hugging my body with one arm and resting my injured one on my leg. The air turns cold, and goosebumps cast across my flesh.
Dr. Z presses the heated-seat button on my side and turns the heat to low.
“Tell me about your arm,” he says quietly as he turns the low-playing radio off.
I keep my eyes forward and say, “I fell out of bed.”
It’s not a lie. I did, in fact, fall out of my bed. Why I fell is another story.
“And your back? Did you hurt it when you landed?”
Telling him the truth will just make me look crazy, and I’ll end up on an emergency psych hold. He wouldn’t believe me anyway.
No one will.
We roll to a stop at a traffic light, and I lean my head against the window. A car pulls up beside us and sparks draw my attention to their window. The color drains from my face as the flame from their lighter flashes across the driver’s face onto the glass and scorches a one-word message in fire.
Mine
I grab my chest, my heart pounding, and the air becomes too thick to breathe. Dr. Z reaches for me as I choke on the invisible smoke that’s filling my lungs.
“Breathe,” Dr. Z says. “In and out, nice and slow.”
The car shakes violently, chattering my teeth as we bounce over multiple potholes, the doctor speeding up, the hospital sign in the distance. “We’re almost there,” he says reassuringly.
Mastyx is too. He’s following us, jumping from one flame to the next. My head bobbles on my shoulders, dizziness overwhelming me as the doctor cranks the wheel into the hospital parking lot. Sweat trickles down my spine, burning as it enters the holes in my flesh. Spots dance before my eyes, and my body suddenly feels weighted and numb.
The door beside me flies open, and the sun, exiting from behind a cloud, blinds me. A flashback of Mastyx entering my burning car years ago sends me over the edge. I scream, pushing the doctor out of my path before falling to the ground and crawling across the pavement, trying to flee. He wraps his arms around me, and I cry out, “Let me go!”
His fingers thread through my hair, and his palm cups my scalp, sending prickles through me from head to toe. An overwhelming calm I can’t explain follows as he folds me in his arms, lifts me from the cold ground, and carries me inside.
As we pass the lobby fireplace, the flames rise, and I know Mastyx is here. My eyes roll in their sockets, and my body goes limp, my energy draining, losing the battle with my anxiety attack.
