“See you soon,” Jagger said, farther away from my bed now, moving toward the door. I thought.
“We’ll bring you some real food,” Vigo called out. “Definitelysome Oreos.”
“She doesn’t need?— ”
The door shut and I was enveloped in silence.
Alone in the darkness. The way I wanted it.
10
JAGGER
I clutchedthe box of donuts in my hand — a cardboard tray filled with coffees from Cassie’s shop balanced on top — and stared at the bland interior of the hospital elevator as I rode up to Cassie’s floor.
Cassie had been in the hospital for three days and was in less pain now than she had been at the beginning, but she still couldn’t see, and I couldn’t help wondering if maybe the damage to her brain was permanent.
Even thinking it felt dangerous, a curse I was visiting on myself.
On her.
On the plus side, Nurse Treadwell, the battle ax who’d kicked us out of Cassie’s room the first day, had finally resigned herself to our presence, although not at all happily.
It was Vigo she hated most. He’d become a kind of impish thorn in her side, chatting up the nurses (male and female alike), engaging in wheelchair races with Jagger in the halls, and introducing himself as Doctor Trauma (complete with a white coat when he could steal one) to the other unsuspecting patients on Cassie’s floor.
One time I’d even caught him answering the phones at the nurses’ station, his feet on the desk while he plowed through a party-sized bag of Doritos Roulette like they were chocolate chip cookies.
The elevator dinged and I stepped out in front of the nurses’ station where two of the nurses — Harvey, a big black man, and Dawn, a younger woman with brown hair — laughed behind the long counter that separated them from the general population.
They looked up as I approached and I set down the donut box and looked at Harvey. “I got two of those strawberry ones you like.”
“My man!” Harvey moved his considerable girth to open the donut box and peer inside, his dark eyes shining with anticipation.
Dawn groaned. “I’m almost glad you’ll be gone tomorrow. At this rate my jeans won’t fit by the weekend.”
I’d been preparing to head to Cassie’s room, but now I stopped and backtracked. “Why will I be gone tomorrow?”
“Your girl's being discharged,” Harvey said, removing a donut and placing it on a napkin.
Dawn winced. “Although maybe not to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I followed the tip of Dawn’s head just in time to spot Bram stepping into the elevator.
“Fuck.”
“Sucks to be you, man.” Harvey’s mouth was full of donut. “And I don’t mean that rhetorically. I mean itreallysucks to be you.”
“You aren’t kidding.”
Everyone was scared of Bram: Dawn, Harvey, even Nurse Treadwell. Hell, being scared of Bram Montgomery was a universal pastime. He’d been stalking the halls for three dayslike a black cloud, trying to avoid Hawk, Vigo, and I while we all jostled for time with Cassie.
That she didn’t seem to care — about anything — was another problem entirely.
She was depressed, and who could blame her? She was battered, wounded, blind.
I fucking hated that I couldn’t change any of it. Hated that we were as at the mercy of time as she was, forced to wait, hope the swelling in her brain would diminish, hope that would restore her eyesight.
