I close my eyes.
“Stay awake,” Kiro says.
I stay awake. He talks to me. I hang on to his voice.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kiro
Duluth Memorial MedicalCenter is a place that I hate. It’s where they took me two years ago. I was on a different floor, but the smells are the same. The colors are the same. The sounds are the same, too. Worse, there are beeping sounds that are exactly like beeping sounds at the Fancher Institute, and they make me want to destroy something.
I stand in the waiting room just to the side of the double doors that they won’t let me through.
I could go through if I wanted to. I did it before, but the nurse, a man named Chris, pushed me out and told me that if I go through the doors again, they’ll stop helping Ann because they’ll have to concentrate on me. “Is that what you want?” he asked me. “Do you want the medical staff to have to deal with you instead of helping your girlfriend?”
I’m not good with words. I didn’t know how to tell him how badly I need them to help her, and how badly it hurts to be away from her. I don’t know how to tell him that she’s everything in the world to me.
And I need to protect her. Those men from the cave could still be alive. The wolves were there to protect us, not to slaughter our attackers. The wolves would have left as soon as we were gone.
The man named Lazarus could be coming. Garrick explained the situation to me—or as much as he knows, which is that Lazarus wants to kill me, and he thinks going through Ann is the best way.
It drives me crazy. So many entrances I can’t guard.
So I stand next to the doors, making sure not to block them. They’ve scolded me for that, too. I stand, fists balled, waiting for them to tell me when I can go to her.
Garrick comes to me. “Murray spoke with her family.” Murray. The editor. The boss of Ann and Garrick. “He’s keeping them updated.”
I can see a window. If I go to it, I’ll be able to look down to the edge of the parking lot far below. That parking lot was filled with reporters the last time I was here. “You were one of them,” I say. “Out there when I was here last.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Not Ann.”
“Fuck no,” he says. “Ann would’ve never been down there. That’s not her style. She doesn’t do the money stories.”
“She looks for the humanity.”
“Exactly.”
The buzzing in my ears is so loud, it’s deafening. My woman. My mate. “You will not make a story of Ann.”
“I’m not making a story of her,” he says.
Is he lying? I don’t trust this one. “If you anger me in any way, I will rip your throat out.”
“How about you tell me what exactly will anger you so I can avoid that then.”
“I’ll know what angers me when I become angry.”
“Hey.” He nods at the pair of men in blue at the desk on the far side of the waiting room. “Cops,” he says under his breath. “You ready?”
Garrick warned me that they’d be coming. He told me to “act cool.” He had me memorize a fake name and phone number.
“I’m ready,” I say.
The pair of them come to us. An officer with a young, square face draws me away from the door and asks me questions.
I don’t trust Garrick, but he seems to hate and fear the police as much as I do, so I follow his instructions. I act cool, or at least I try. I give them the information Garrick told me to give. I suppress the urge to fight, to get away. Twice I tell the officer that I didn’t witness the shooting.