It was over a few seconds after it had begun. She pulled back, fingers to her mouth, looking stricken.
“What is it?” he asked, jerking from incandescent happiness to dread.
She leaned in and whispered, “I shouldn’t have done that. I have no idea if we’re being recorded, but we’d better assume so.”
Undoubtedly. He looked around, casting about for a safe topic while taking in the room he’d been lying in for a month,and noticed there was no other bed. “Where did you sleep last night?”
“Here,” she said, gesturing to the chair she was sitting in.
“Good heavens, how did you manage that?”
Her beautiful crooked smile did not disguise the exhaustion around her eyes. “Not well.”
He looked more closely and saw how pale she was. Ill, even. She’d made herself sick saving his life. “You ought to go home and?—”
“No! I’m not leaving until we get you out of here.”
He took her hand. “I don’t know how quickly I can arrange my escape.”
A knock on the door was immediately followed by an even bigger group of medical professionals than the one that had left. They were clearly operating on a different definition of “ten minutes” than the rest of the world. Then he noticed that one of the men in the gaggle was a wizard, and the desire to have leaves at hand—just in case—was so strong his fingers twitched.
He glanced at Beatrix and saw the grim set of her mouth. “This is Wizard Cleary, who was here last night,” she said. “Just for the record, Peter, do you have any desire to be transferred to the WA?”
“None whatsoever,” he said.
Cleary wore a pleasant smile. “You’ll continue to need care, and I assure you it will be the very best?—”
“Thank you, but no.”
Cleary’s smile did not slip. “The WA will be happy to help, should you require it later.”
“Good day, Wizard Cleary,” Beatrix said firmly.
As Cleary left, one of the doctors made a noise that seemed to be a swallowed snort. Peter caught the man’s eye and the doctor grinned.
“Gentlemen,” Peter said, “what has to happen before you can discharge me, and how quickly can you do it?”
“You have to understand, you’ve been in acomafor a month,” said one of the doctors—the grumbler, not the grinner, though even that doctor looked taken aback.
“Oh, I understand,” Peter said dryly. “I was aware during a good bit of it. Can you get me unhooked and see if I’m capable of walking?”
They finally negotiated that they would let him give eating a try, see how he felt in an hour and then let him attempt to stand.
“Wait,” he said to the nurse, seeing “Weller” embroidered on her dress and realizing this was the woman who’d always had a kind word for Beatrix. Quietly, so as not to be overheard by the retreating doctors, he said, “Would you do me the tremendous favor of bringing something substantial along with the liquid food?”
“You really must ease your stomach into it, sir. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
“Not for me,” he murmured. “For Beatrix. Please, she’s been here all night and I don’t know the last time she’s eaten.”
“Oh!” Her disapproving look vanished and she beamed at him. “Let me see what I can do,” she added in a conspiratorial undertone, and bustled out.
His plan to get himself sprung from the hospital that day, on the other hand, came to naught. He could walk, but he was so wobbly that the doctors were unanimous in their determination that he would need to stay another day at a bare minimum. There was talk of a brain scan until it was nixed by the grinning doctor, who turned out to be Alvarez, an older and gaunter man than Peter had pictured.
“Cerebral angiographies aren’t safe,” Alvarez said, once it was only the three of them in the room. “I wouldn’t want one myself.”
Peter nodded with a frown, wondering how many patients had been given one anyway. “There’s no alternative?”
Alvarez rolled his eyes. “Why bother making grants for medical research when spells are the end-all, be-all?” Then he seemed to recollect to whom he was talking. “Uh—no offense meant, Wizard Blackwell.”
