TOBY
My thigh burns as I drop to my knees to help Jodie push her feet into her boots.
“Toby,” she grumbles, her voice still rough from the smoke. I know it’s wrong, but every time I hear her raspy growl, it hits me straight in the dick. It makes me feel like an arsehole because I know she’s suffering, but I can’t help it. “I’m more than capable.”
“I know. Humour me.”
She glares down at me, but I don’t let up.
Yeah, it hurts, but I know she’s sporting a couple of bandages that match mine. Hers might hide fewer stitches than I needed, but that’s not the point. I want to do this. I need to do this.
It’s the exact reason I told Joanne that I’d be the one escorting her home from the hospital. I might have caved about letting her go home and not insisting that I lock her up in my flat, but I wasn’t being talked out of this.
“Hard-headed idiot,” she mutters under her breath as I pull her boot on and push to stand. Slowly. “Don’t expect any sympathy if you rip those stitches,” she warns.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Demon. You ready?”
I fucking well know I am.
After a night curled up in a hospital bed with her, with doctors and nurses coming in and out like the room had a freaking revolving door on it, I’m more than ready to go somewhere quiet, wrap my arms around my girl and let her get the rest she needs.
Her bottom lip trembles at the prospect of our first stop before heading back to Joanne’s.
I told her it wasn’t necessary, that she didn’t need any more pain on top of everything else, but unsurprisingly, she was insistent on visiting the ICU before we left.
Sara shouldn’t be having visitors aside from her next of kin—her parents, whom she hasn’t seen since the day she announced she was moving in with Jesse—which is a fucking joke, if you ask me. But thankfully, we’ve managed to buy our way around those rules, allowing Jesse in with her whenever he wants, although he wisely disappeared when her parents did turn up for a visit this morning.
Jodie thinks that if she were awake, she’d actually ban them from being here at all, but while she’s still critical there’s not much she or Jesse can do about it.
“She’s going to be okay, isn’t she? Tell me she’s going to make it.”
Wrapping my hand around the back of her neck, I press my brow to hers, staring her deep in the eyes.
“They’re doing everything they can.”
Jodie’s eyelids lower, and as they close, a lone tear falls from the corner of her eye.
The sight of it physically hurts me.
I wish there was something I could do. I wish I could wave some sort of magic wand and fix everything. But I can’t. We just have to put our faith in the professionals and Sara’s strength.
“Come on.” I take her hand in one of mine and the small bag of things we accumulated during our overnight stay in the other.
With a heavy sigh, Jodie falls into step beside me. Silently, we make our way out of the Cirillo ward with a few grateful nods toward the nurses at the station before we head toward the ICU.
I tap a code into the pad beside the door that allows us the access we shouldn’t have and push the door open for Jodie.
She trembles in my hold as I wrap my arm around her shoulders and guide her toward where I understand Sara is.
As we round the corner, we find Jesse sitting hunched over in a chair beside the door that leads to her room.
All the air rushes from Jodie’s lungs and she rushes forward.
Jesse glances up just before she reaches him, and my own breath catches in my throat at the wrecked expression on his face.
It’s the exact reminder I don’t need about just how close I came to losing Jodie yesterday. If I didn’t find her as quickly as I did, if the wall she was sitting against came down just a few seconds earlier…
A shudder rips down my spine, but it’s hard to feel grateful for what I still have when his entire life is falling apart.