“It’s not for me,” he said, pocketing his change. He checked his watch as they headed into the visitors’ entrance. Half past ten. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it.
The hospital’s lobby was stark and clinical, lit by buzzing fluorescents. He’d always hated hospitals. He hated the way time came crashing to a halt. The way everyone looked just a little bit lost. The way, at any given moment, it was likely someone was dying.
But this hospital?
This hospital he hated because it housed something old and cold and nameless.
A beast, stuffed inside the body of a boy.
He checked his watch again. Next to him, Lane fussed with the cuff of her sleeve. She’d changed in the airport—out of her sweatshirt and into some sort of plaid apron and buttoned blouse.
Eyeballing him, she asked, “Do you have somewhere else to be?”
“No,” he said. “Why?”
“This is the sixth time you’ve checked your watch.”
“I want to make sure it hasn’t stopped.”
Her nose crinkled. “Your watch?”
“Time.” He flicked the tip of her nose. “Obviously. Why’d you change?”
She tugged again at her sleeves. “I wanted to look nice.”
“Got it.” He fell into step alongside her, the cardboard sleeve doing little to protect his hand from the scalding latte. “You want to impress your undead boyfriend.”
She skidded to a stop, heels clattering. “God, Colton. You don’t have to be such a—”
“Back already?” The voice that rang out from the check-in desk was loud and maple sweet. Colton took the opportunity to evade Lane’s ballooning wrath. Sidestepping her and her ire, he slid the latte across the counter. Behind a plexiglass divider sat a bottle-blond nurse in bold blue scrubs. Her smile stretched as she took the offered drink. “You remembered!”
“I wouldn’t forget.” He could feel Lane’s glower on the side of his face. “I wanted to pop back in and check on our boy. How’s he doing?”
Lane’s stare knifed into him and twisted hard. A killing blow. He didn’t look.
“He’s in and out,” the nurse admitted. “It’s not technically visiting hours, but you can go on up. I won’t tell. His mother’s up there now. Hold on, I’ll buzz you in.”
He thanked her and led Lane away by the hand, drawing her down the hall and through the wide, open doors into the patient corridor. She made her displeasure known through short, stilted steps, so that he was forced to drag her along in his wake. The rocky pace was compounded by the rheumatic chafe of his bones. More than once, he considered scooping her up altogether and fireman carrying her the remainder of the way.
“Can you walk properly,” he asked, tugging her around another corner, “or do I need to stuff you on a cot and wheel you? Because I will.”
The air felt thinner here. The temperature several degrees too cool. Overhead, the lights ran past in thin strips of white. Motion activated, they flickered on one by one by one. Humming with electricity. Turning the accusation in Lane’s stare to a cadmium green.
“You’ve already been to see him,” she bit out.
“Yes.” They were halfway across a yawning sky-bridge. Lane’s reflection was briefly mirrored back at him in the wide plexiglass panels. He could tell by the look on her face that she was seriously considering the cost-benefit analysis of punching him square in the jaw. He wouldn’t blame her.
They passed by a series of empty rooms, small and unlit and separated from the hall by thick-plated glass. Every once in a while, another person shuffled by. Sometimes dressed in a suit, sometimes in the sterile white of a lab coat. Always too immersed in their clipboard, their file, or their phone to take notice of two bickering college students.
“It’s just that you made such a big deal over me wanting to come to Chicago,” Lane said, wresting her hand free of his. He shook out his fingers, seeing stars. A deep, subchondral ache dug into his bones.
“I did do that,” he agreed.
Lane made a face that could have curdled milk. “You didn’t think that was pertinent information? Like maybe I’d—Hey!”
He’d stopped abruptly and Lane skidded into him with an indignance that bordered on violence. Shushing her, he gestured ahead. Outside a windowed room sat a lone woman, her head bowed, her eyes closed. She looked frail and thin, her hair shorn short.
Lane’s irritation flagged. “Is that his mom?”
