Briar straightens, and I pass down a paper towel for her to wipe her face. She grabs my hand and squeezes it tight.
The rest of the journey is torturous. Even with the sirens blaring, LA traffic keeps us moving at a snail’s pace. My phone is blowing up with messages from Matt and Kenta. Briar throws up every few minutes. When she’s not getting sick, she sits propped up against me, leaning her head against my chest and breathing slowly. Even though she’s staying quiet, I can feel the panic simmering underneath the surface. I run my hand through her matted hair, trying to help keep her calm.
Right before we pull into the hospital, Amanda crouches down in front of the cot, looking Briar directly in the eyes. “Okay, hon. When we get inside, the police are going to take your clothes as evidence, and the doctors are going to look at you properly. Can you tell me now if we need to examine for sexual assault?”
My throat closes. I grip Briar’s arm tighter. The thought of that man touching her makes me want to vomit, too. Or stop the ambulance, track him down, and finish him.
Briar shakes her head.
“I’d like a verbal response, please,” Amanda says, her voice gentle.
Briar shakes her head again. I stroke through her hair. “Are you sure?” I murmur into her skin. She nods.
Amanda smiles. “Okay. Good, that’s good. If you change your mind, you can tell any one of us, okay? We’ve called ahead for a VIP admission, so when we get to the hospital, you’ll be given a private room, to stop you getting bothered by fans. I can’t guarantee there won’t be paparazzi in the parking lot, but our guys will do their best to keep them from getting shots of you.”
Briar starts to cry again, silently. It must be so humiliating for her, I realise suddenly. Everybody here knows who she is. Every single person. She has no privacy, even in her lowest moments. At least when I was stuck in hospital, recovering from our last tour, no one gave a shit about a random bandaged-up soldier. But to the public, her being injured isgossip.
I gently pull her face away from me and check the cut on her cheek. It’s stopped bleeding badly, but it still looks shocking, curving down from below her eyes to her chin. If she doesn’t get it seen by a proper plastic surgeon, she’ll be scarred for life. Her career will be over. The thought makes my insides cold.
As I watch, she covers her slashed cheek with her hand and glares up at me. I force myself not to stare. I know better than anyone else just how bad that feels.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I tell her. She closes her eyes and nods.
At the hospital, everything speeds up. As soon as the doctors lay eyes on her, she’s transferred onto a bed and wheeled into a private room for examination. They hook her up with an IV, switch out her clothes for a hospital gown, and take a blood sample for a tox screen in a matter of seconds. Briar floats silently through it all, letting people move her around and stick needles in her, all without complaining. It’s so far from her usual bolshy bossiness that it terrifies me. She’s like a doll, empty and unresisting as her body gets manipulated. The doctors assess her wound and decide the cut on her hip is superficial; the knife sliced through the skin, but missed any major nerves or blood vessels. They clean the cut and stitch her back up so quickly I barely process it happening.
She doesn’t regain the ability to speak until all of the tests are done, and a surgeon is standing in front of her with some thread and a needle. “Last of all,” he says cheerfully, “we just need to patch up your cheek, Miss Saint.”
She eyes the needle in his hands. “I want to go home,” she orders, her voice thin but firm.
I’m so relieved to hear her talk that I could cry. “You’re almost done, love.” I press a kiss to her hair. A nurse in the back of the room raises an eyebrow, and I quickly pull back again, biting my tongue. Even now, after a near-death experience, any PDA is dangerous for Briar. Hell, that little kiss could end up in the magazines tomorrow. I slide across the bed, putting a professional distance between me and her. She stares at me blankly.
The surgeon nods. “Just let me stitch up your cuts, and you’ll be good to go.” He snaps on a pair of rubber gloves, but Briar shakes her head.
“I don’t care about the cuts.” She tries to slip off the bed. “I want to go home, now.”
“You will,” I soothe, stroking her arm, “You will. We’ll all go back to the hotel, and you can get some sleep. You just need to sit still for a bit longer.” I lift her gently back onto the bed.
The doctor smiles, reaching out to prod at the cut.
Briar flinches back. “No! I don’t want the stitches!”
“You’ve already had more in your side, ma’am,” he points out. “I’m not talking about major surgery. You’ll likely have to come in for a few revisions, but we’ll get your face looking completely healed in no time.”
“I’ll hold your hand,” I tell her. “They’ll numb you up, it won’t hurt bad.”
Briar looks at me with wide eyes. I have absolutely no idea what’s going through her head.
A nurse steps forward with a syringe, and the surgeon accepts it. “Exactly. A bit of this, and you’ll barely feel a thing.” He puts his gloved hand on her cheek, and lines up the needle. Briar jerks away, and the surgeon bites back a curse as he almost stabs her in the eye. “No. No.”
“Ma’am—”
“I do not consent to these stitches,” she slurs, trying to bat the man away from her. “Stop. No.No.”
The surgeon sighs. “Ma’am, you’re not in your right mind. I would strongly advise you to listen to your boyfriend. He can tell you himself; living with facial scarring can be difficult.”
“I’m not her boyfriend,” I correct, trying to stay calm. “But yeah, it’s very fucking difficult.” I have no idea why she’s digging her heels in now. I can’t stand the thought of her having to live with this scar forever. With a reminder of what happened tonight stuck to her facefor the rest of her life.
Briar scowls at us both. “So? I can do things that are difficult.”
