Chapter Twenty-Nine
The ceiling of the Rogue Division medical facility was white acoustic tile. Fluorescent panels dimmed to something the staff probably thought was soothing.
It wasn’t.
Fallon pushed herself upright. The motion sent a deep, sick throb through both wrists and up into her elbows, and her left shoulder seized hard enough that she had to stop halfway and breathe through it before she could finish sitting up.
Her thumbs were splinted and taped, immobilized in positions that felt foreign against her palms. The rest of her hands were swollen, the knuckles tight and hot, her fingers thick and clumsy when she tried to close them.
She swung her legs off the bed. Her knee protested but held.
The nurse appeared in the doorway before Fallon’s feet hit the floor.
“Ms. Hemingway. Back in bed, please.”
“I need to see him.”
“Mr. Baxter is stable. His team has been updated, you’ve been updated, and the doctor will?—”
“I need to see him myself.” It had been nearly twenty-four hours since she and Isaac had been rescued in that warehouse.
“Ms. Hemingway.” The nurse stepped fully into the room and positioned herself between Fallon and the door. She was a compact woman with short gray hair and the kind of calm that came from years of difficult patients. “You have bilateral thumb dislocations, a partially torn scapholunate ligament?—”
Fallon stood up. She didn’t need a list of what was happening in her body. She was getting updates in real-time.
She didn’t care. She was going to see Isaac.
The room tilted. She grabbed the bed rail with her forearm and steadied herself until it passed, then took a step toward the door. The nurse didn’t move.
“I need you to get back in bed.”
“I need you to get out of my way.”
“I understand you’re worried about him. But you are my patient, and I have a responsibility to?—”
“The last time I saw Isaac, he was on a concrete floor, unconscious.” Fallon’s voice came out low and hard, and she didn’t try to soften it. “He dragged himself across that floor to reach me. He wrapped his body around mine while a tactical team crashed through the door because even half-conscious and bleeding from a dozen places, his instinct was to put himself between me and harm.”
“Be that as it may…”
“So when you tell me he’sstable, that word means nothing. I am going to see him with my own eyes or you are going to have to sedate me, and I promise you that will be harder than you think.”
The nurse’s expression shifted. She didn’t step aside, but her weight changed, the certainty leaving her posture one degree at a time. She was recalculating.
Fallon took another step. The space between them shrank to two feet. Her hands were useless, her wrists were wrecked, and her knee was grinding with every step, and none of that was going to stop her from going through this woman if she had to.
“Hey there, slugger. You sure you want to do this?” Ryder filled the doorway behind the nurse, still in the same clothes from the warehouse, his sleeves pushed to his elbows, his face carrying the weight of a man who hadn’t slept.
“I’m going. I need to see him.” She glared at the nurse in front of her. If she had to, she would take this woman down. It wouldn’t be pretty, and it would definitely hurt, but she didn’t care.
She was going to Isaac.
Ryder’s eyes moved from the nurse to Fallon and back. “Okay. I’ll take you to him.”
Fallon exhaled. Her shoulders dropped by an inch. But somewhere much deeper her core fear eased. If Ryder was willing to take her to Isaac, then he was still alive. Ryder would’ve stalled too, tried to talk her out of it, if he wasn’t.
Ryder looked at the nurse. “I’ve got her. She’s going to see him one way or another, and I’d rather she not rip out her IV and fight her way down the hall to do it.”
The nurse shook her head. “If she tears that ligament the rest of the way, it’s surgical.”
