“You seem like a really good guy, and I’m glad that I met you when I did.”

I smile, because at some point maybe the memories will come flooding back. Even in bits and pieces.

“I’m gonna go to the cafeteria and get something to eat and possibly some coffee. Would you like anything?”

“A cheeseburger would be amazing right now. A coffee too, please.” She winks back at me.

Shutting the door behind me, I let Scott know I’d be back, and make the long walk to the cafeteria. It gives me time to think about everything, and something comes to mind. If they found fingerprints in her house, besides the ones they couldn’t identify through the database, whose else were they? If watching cold case files has taught me anything, sometimes the person responsible could be right in front of our face and not even realize that. Her boss even, or a colleague. But that wouldn’t explain the insight from her nightmare where she obviously knew him before, because she would have recognized him before the break-in. My mind is going over all kinds of different scenarios while I pick out two cheeseburgers, coffees, and then pay for them to head back to Harper. The tray of food they brought her in her room looked god awful.

The elevator takes me back up to the fourth floor and it opens to chaos. Nurses are running around, and then I see her doctor running into Harper’s room, and the food and coffee fall to the floor.

“What’s going on?” I rush over to Scott.

“It’s been two minutes. Literally stepped away to go to the bathroom and when I came back, the nurses were already in there.”

I shove past him and go into the room. Nurses are trying to wake her.

“Harper, can you hear us?” The nurse keeps asking, trying to get her to wake up.

The monitors are beeping rapidly, and that’s when the nurse yells, “Ten ccs of Naloxone. Someone increased her morphine drip.”

My eyes fill, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take right now. “What’s going on?”

The nurses do their job, and then one pulls me outside the room. “Someone upped her morphine which caused an overdose. Too much, too quickly. The Naloxone should help alleviate and bring her back to normal.”

That’s it, I’m never leaving her alone again. “Why the hell did you leave her alone? You know he’s still out there, and you still left. This is your fault!”

I run to her bedside. “You’re going to be okay. I’m never leaving you for a second until we get out of this god forsaken place.”

And I don’t.

Scott hasn’t been in to check on her in hours, and honestly I didn’t care. My anger toward him right now is through the roof, and not sure what else I would say to him at this point.

A knock sounds at the door, and the doctor checks Harper and then stands next to me.

“So, Scott has decided to share some information with you.”

“And?”

Scott walks into the room, head down. “We pulled security footage and got a still image of a man coming into her room.”

“That’s great. We can finally get this guy's ass in the electric chair.”

“It’s not that simple. He was very careful at not letting himself be exposed to the cameras. There are no clear shots of his face, but maybe she will see something else that can help once she’s awake.”

He shows me the man in the photo and Scott is right, it is blurry and very poor placement. It didn’t show any distinguishing factors of someone just his back, which means he probably couldn’t be identified. “Why does this keep happening? At some point, we need to get this guy put away. Harper can’t keep living her life in fear of this guy coming after her.”

“Understood and agreed.”

They leave me alone with Harper, who should be waking up sometime soon. Whatever they are giving her is bringing her vitals back down to normal.

Please just come back to me, baby. I’ll never leave you again.


Tags: Ashley Zakrzewski Rough Edges Romance