“Someone I care about, and anything beyond that is none of your business or that of anyone who might ask.” Brennan waved his hand dismissively. “If you’re just here to give me shit, why don’t you go home already? I have a problem, and if you refuse to help, you don’t need to be here.”
Orson drew back his chin as if Brennan had attempted to sucker punch him. “Well.” He adjusted his platinum cufflinks. “Let’s see how you handle it. Constance.” He held out his hand to her. “Why don’t we go?”
“Orson, we can’t leave him like this.” Constance looked at Brennan with a knitted brow. She reached to touch his cheek, which smarted and radiated a dull ache like he’d taken a two-by-four to the face at some point during the altercation he couldn’t really remember. “Who is she, sweetheart? We can be here for you both. Who is her family? I’d like to reach out to them if I may.”
“She’s just someone important to me, and this isn’t the best time for me to explain it. You don’t need to reach out to her family. I’ll handle this.” He kissed his mother’s cheek. “But thank you for your concern for her. Go ahead and go on home, Mama. I can take care of her and her family when they arrive.”
He managed to not cringe from the sheer blatancy of the lie, but surely that wasn’t a total lie. Surely once the staff officially identified her, her family would show up as quickly as they could. And then Brennan would do whatever he could to help all of them, limited as his resources probably were now.
Constance gave a discontent sigh, and Orson harrumphed. “See that you do, son. We’ll be discussing this again later.”
“Right, I gathered that,” Brennan said dismissively, turning away from his parents to follow the nurse.
They entered the trauma center corridor, and the green hue painted on the walls increased his dizziness. He rubbed the back of his head.Fuck. They’d fuckingshavedpart of his hair off. Where it used to be, there was a sizable ridge and the thin twine of stitches.
Salt in a fresh wound.
Of course, there was way worse shit to be pissed about right then. Brennan couldn’t wait to talk to the police. There was only one person in the world that could possibly be responsible for such an egregious attack, and they weren’t just a common thug.
The small whiteboard affixed to the exterior door frame declared JANE DOE and a series of numbers, the sight of which caused Brennan to narrow his eyes.
He pointed at it. “Why is she Jane Doe? Her name is Skye.”
“She had no identification on her and hasn’t been awake to provide us with her personal information. It’s just standard procedure, Brennan.” The nurse offered him a sympathetic look. “I can assure you she’s receiving the best care possible, just like all of our patients.”
The nurse pushed open the door and entered the room as Brennan trailed a step or two behind her, but he nearly walked right back out of the room when he saw the state Skye was in.
One foot in a splint. One arm in a cast that extended from her wrist to well-past her elbow. Cuts and scrapes and bruises littering nearly every exposed surface of her skin. Neck brace. A face so swollen and bruised he probably wouldn’t have recognized her even if it wasn’t half covered by a ventilator.
His stomach plummeted, and the nausea returned, and this was his doing. His dad wasn’t wrong in his vitriolic assessment. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in Brennan’s mind that Angelo and Vito’s thugs had done this to her, and it was all because of Brennan’s sheer stupidity.
“Oh God,” he mumbled behind his hand.
The various machines offered a series of steady beeps, and a machine flanking the bed breathed for her.
The nurse briefly placed her hand on his shoulder in a feeble attempt to reassure him of…he didn’t even know what.
“She’s got some broken bones and sustained some trauma to her spine.” She paused as if weighing her words. “What we’re worried about is that there seemed to be a period of decreased oxygen to her brain due to strangulation. And the fall—”
“She didn’t fall. They threw her out of a speeding car,” he corrected a bit too harshly, andstrangulation?
Son of a fucking bitch.
An image flashed in his mind of the marks he saw on her neck just before he passed out. Fuck his commitment to nonviolence because he wanted to strangle every last one of them right back. That wouldn’t even be violence. That would be righteous retribution.
“Correct,” the nurse said apologetically. “My point is all of that injured her brain, and it’s hard to say how that’s going to affect her recovery.”
“Is she going to wake up?” he asked as patiently and evenly as possible, though everything in him wanted to shout at the top of his lungs.
“She just needs to rest,” the nurse side-stepped.
“And you aren’t really allowed to tell me anything, are you?”
The nurse flattened her lips. “The trouble is we just don’t know much right now. All we can do is wait.”
“Can I sit with her for a while?”
The nurse nodded. “But I really need you to try to sit still and rest, too. You have a grade three concussion. That’s not insignificant, and we need to keep an eye on you, too.”
