I dig for it and find nothing but a sharp white gap. I remember headlights and then black water. Not the exact moment of the hit.
“No.” That bothers me more than it should. I hate not knowing. Not having the footage in my head. “How long?”
“You were found unconscious at the scene,” he says evenly. “Your men pulled you out, but you were disoriented, vomiting, in and out. That’s normal. I had you scanned—no intracranial bleeding, no skull fracture. Grade II concussion. You’ve been sleeping most of the last forty-eight hours. I woke you every few hours at first to check your reflexes and orientation. You’re more coherent now.”
Forty-eight hours. Two days?
My heart rate spikes, the monitor’s beeping suddenly speeding up. One of the guys by the door shifts his weight, glancing over.
“No,” the doctor says sharply, palm pressing against my sternum to keep me from trying to sit up. “Do not move fast. Your brain needs time. You move too quickly, you’re going to vomit and pass out again, and I am not in the mood to intubate you on this mattress.”
“And Kiara,” I rasp.
My throat burns, the words scraping through it like glass.
“Kiara?”
He exhales through his nose. It’s the first sign of anything like discomfort.
“I’m handling your head injury first,” he says. “Then we’ll talk.”
Wrong answer.
I shove against the mattress, trying to push myself up on my elbows. The room immediately punishes me—one violent spin, a flash of black at the edges of my vision, nausea slamming into me so hard I gag. The doctor and the nearest man react at the same time, pinning my shoulders and forearm back to the bed.
“Lie down,” the doctor orders, not unkindly, but with the voice of someone who expects obedience.
My chest heaves and I swallow bile, eyes burning.
“If you stand up now, you’ll collapse and you might not wake up as cleanly next time,” Sebastian adds, softer, his face right above me. “You have a moderate concussion. The hit was bad. Brain rattled, short loss of consciousness, memory gap, persistent symptoms. That’s what Grade II means. You do not push it,” he explains.
My eyes flick left, and that’s when I finally notice him.
Adrien.
Lying on the second bed by the far wall. IV in his arm, torso wrapped tight in compression bandages, oxygen tube under his nose. Skin pale, lips cracked, blood crusted in his hair. He’s breathing, shallow, uneven, but breathing.
A small piece of the weight on my chest eases.
The doctor follows my stare.
“He regained consciousness once,” he says quietly. “Very briefly. He’s stable, but he lost a significant amount of blood from the side wound. Hypothermia didn’t help. His temperature is still low, vitals slow but improving. He’s sedated to keep his heart rate down. He was fighting us.” He pauses. “Bullet passedclean through, no organ damage. But the blood loss and the cold pushed him close.”
I grind my teeth, forcing myself to stay still because he’s right, and I know it. The beeping from the monitor is still too fast. My head feels like it’s packed with wet cement and broken glass.
“Drink,” he says.
He slides an arm under my neck, lifting my head just enough to tip a glass of water to my lips. The movement makes my stomach roll again, but the first swallow is worth it—cold, clean, cutting through the sour taste in my mouth. I take a couple of careful sips before he pulls it back.
“Slow,” he warns. “If you vomit, your head will feel like it’s exploding.”
I sink back into the pillow, breath coming out in short, controlled exhales.
“Light and noise will make it worse for a while,” he continues. “You’ll have headaches, dizziness, maybe trouble focusing, maybe some mood swings. You’ll think straight one moment and feel foggy the next. That’s normal for this kind of trauma.” His gaze sharpens. “But if you get a sudden, severe worsening headache, repeated vomiting, confusion, weakness on one side—I get called immediately. No heroics.”
I stare at him, jaw set. “I don’t have time to rest.” My eyes burn with tears, and my vision blurs.
“You don’t have a brain to spare either,” he snaps back. Then, quieter, “You’re lucky you don’t have a bleed. You want to go from concussion to coma because you can’t stay horizontal for twelve hours?”
