She still couldn’t see.
Bram had told us to go home, that he would keep us posted, but no fucking way were we leaving our mouse without seeing for ourselves that she was okay, without letting her know that we were still here.
That we would always be here.
Well, I couldn’t say that part. She’d only been staying with us for a month. I didn’t even know if she wanted to stick around any longer.
But in the dark at the bottom of the ravine? When I’d thought maybe Cassie wouldn’t stay alive long enough to make it back to us?
I’d known then and there that I wouldn’t be ready to give her up after ninety days. I’d known because I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe, because instead of wanting to tear a path through the forest or climb all the trees — anything to avoid being still next to the shattered remains of Cassie’s car — I hadn’t wanted to be anywhere but right there with her.
Now I was determined to see her for myself. Determined to let her know that Bram wasn’t the only one who wanted her to be okay.
“They’re not going to let us in,” Jagger said, probably because the nurses had made it clear that Cassie was only allowed visitors who were family.
And we weren’t that.
“Since when does anyone ‘let’ us do anything?”
I smiled at a dark-haired man in scrubs as he approached, then shoulder-checked him hard enough that he stumbled.
“Fuck, man.” I grabbed his arm to steady him with one hand and used my other to snatch his badge. “Sorry about that.”
The guy scowled and jerked away. “It’s fine.”
He continued in the other direction while I did the same, pocketing his badge and looking for the door I’d spotted in the middle of the night, when I’d been too worried about Cassie to sleep.
I spotted the door up ahead, a generic-looking slab with a plastic plate readingSupply Closet.
I’d picked the lock during one of my nighttime forays, and I stepped inside and waited for the few seconds it took Hawk and Jagger to join me.
I wasn’t surprised they didn’t ask questions. Smashing-and-grabbing jewelry stores and robbing banks was our day job. Skulking around a hospital where everyone was either too busy or too worried to notice us wasn’t exactly stressful.
I threw scrubs at them both and pulled off my shirt, then started on my jeans.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jagger asked.
I kicked off my jeans. Now I was standing in the supply closet in nothing but purple boxer briefs. “Putting on the scrubs.”
Hawk rolled his eyes and pulled his scrub pants over his jeans. “You put them over your clothes, dumbass.”
I looked down at my nearly naked body. “Really?”
“No way this works,” Jagger said, pulling one of the flimsy tops over his T-shirt while I started getting dressed.
“So? What are they going to do if they catch us?” I asked. “Ban us from the vending machines?”
“They could ban us from Cassie’s floor,” Jagger said. “Or the hospital."
He was obviously as fucked as I was, worried about getting banned from the hospital because that meant we wouldn’t be able to see Cassie.
We were becoming a bunch of fucking saps and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.
Scrubs finally on — over my clothes — I fished the badge I’d lifted off the doctor out of my pocket and clipped it to my scrubs.
“What about us?” Hawk asked.
“Improvise.”
