I barely contained the urge to laugh.
“Is she there?” I asked.
“She’s inside. I’m outside,” he grumbled. “It’s fuckin’ cold out here.”
Courtland was in the same boat as I was in. He’d hailed from Georgia, where it was never too cold during the winter. It got some snow, but not like what we got here.
“Knock on the door and let me talk to her,” I requested.
“Hold on,” he mumbled as a muffled sound of him pressing the phone to his jacket sounded, then a soft knocking on the door. “Hey, Crazy Pants! Creed wants to talk to you!”
The sound of hissing could be heard, then, “Let me talk to him.”
There was a muffled scuffling sound and then Charleigh said, “How is she?”
“She just came to,” I lied. “She’s doing good. They moved her down to room 2203. She’s on the second floor, end of the hall. She’s asking for some of her things. Do you know what happened to her phone and her purse and stuff?”
“I have her phone. Her purse is still in her locker where she locked it this morning.”
“Cool,” I said. “Can you and Court go over to her house and get some of her things?” I asked.
“The front door is fucked up and she has a dresser in front of it. I’ll have to go through the back door, and I’m short. I can’t get up there.”
“I have someone over there working on it. The door will be open,” I promised.
Her door would likely already be fixed. I’d had a crew over there to fix it first thing this morning.
Granted, I’d thought that she would be able to let them into her house, and hadn’t expected for her to already be at work. But the crew was Koen’s, and Koen had promised that he would take a look and supervise as they fixed it. I trusted him to figure out how to get into her place and get started without her actually there.
Koen also was supposed to be changing her locks and fixing any issues with her windows, too.
“You have someone fixing it?” Charleigh asked.
“Yes,” I promised.
“Good,” she muttered. “I’m still not happy with you about that.”
She shouldn’t be.
I’d been out of line.
Speaking of the reason I was out of line, my sister texted, and I pulled the phone away from my ear to see her say “landed.”
Texting back “good,” I put the phone back to my ear to hear Charleigh say, “We’ll go back to Great Dane’s to get her things once she can tell me the code. I’ll stop by and get that, then your asshole of a friend can take me to Great Dane’s and we can pick up the SUV that they gave her.”
That explained the SUV in Birdee’s driveway.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Also, be nice to Courtland. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“If you say so,” she muttered and hung up.
The nurse, Medina, breezed out and said, “She’s all ready for you. Going to get the blankets now. I forgot them.”
I came back in to see Birdee hooked up to a whole lot less wires and tubes.
She looked tiny with my jacket draped over her entire torso and even some of her thighs.
I scanned my eyes slowly over her from her messy hair to her toes.
