Liza snapped her fingers in front of Brennan’s face, causing him to cut his eyes to hers. “Karma’s not real. And stop having a bad attitude. When we leave here, we’re going by the hospital to check on Skye, and then we’re going to hang out with everybody at Scott and Ophelia’s.”
Brennan arched an eyebrow. “And I’m assuming everyone in Algiers Point knows all about this hot mess now, too.”
Connor slapped Brennan’s back and then crossed his arms over his chest. “You know how we do, bruh.”
“Right.”
It was all as good an idea as any for what the hell to do with himself in the middle of all this. He gripped the stack and picked it up, meandered to one of the rooms in the house that had a vacant desk and a phone, and started making calls.
16
UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER, NEW ORLEANS
Three weeks.
Skye had now been in a coma for three fucking weeks. It was three weeks closer to Vito getting back from his sabbatical in New York to collect the money Brennan owed him. Three weeks of him working in sales and staying with Connor and Liza. And Brennan was slowly losing his ever-loving mind.
Three weeks of this had Brennan convinced Skye wasn’t ever going to wake up. At three weeks to the exact day, it was particularly shitty for some reason, and he didn’t go into work. Didn’t tell anyone where he was going. Put his phone on silent.
When Connor and Liza were climbing into Connor’s steel blue Range Rover to head to work, Brennan was already peeling away from the curb, headed straight for the hospital. It wasn’t visiting hours, so it took a lot of negotiations with the nurses to get into Skye’s room, where he planted himself in a chair at her bedside and stayed there.
From 8:30 in the morning until God knew when. He dozed off at two separate junctures, so the timespan felt like two days, but it was only the following afternoon when Brennan finally reconnected with reality.
A middle-aged nurse was leaning across Skye’s still body to adjust something. The woman’s ample bosom blocked Brennan’s view of Skye’s face for just a tad too long. Irritation simmered in his chest, and he gripped the arms of the stiff, hard wooden chair to avoid snapping at the nurse to move.
Brennan cleared his throat. “Does she seem okay?”
The nurse turned her head to look at him through weathered gray eyes flanked by wisps of crow’s feet. “Yeah, she’s okay.”
Her tone was puzzling, but it managed to get Brennan’s hopes way up. “Is she?” He leaned forward in the chair as though bracing before launching himself out of it. “Do you think she’ll wake up soon?”
“That…” The nurse exhaled a long sigh as she moved away from Skye’s bed. “Nobody knows. What I mean by she’s okay is that she’s got everything she needs right now.” She parked one fist on her ample hip and pointed at various items connected to Skye via tubes. “Oxygen, fluids, nourishment, medicine.” She dropped both arms to her sides and started moseying out of the room. “A good man who loves her.” She smiled at him as she pulled the door partially closed. “She has all that, she’s okay.”
A good man who loves her.
Psychoanalyzing a statement like that would put Pandora’s Box to shame, so it was best to just…not.
Instead, Brennan went back to staring at Skye’s motionless face and hating himself for putting her in this situation. He inched his chair closer and laid his hand on top of hers. Her skin was unsettlingly cold, and his eyes flicked all over the room at the monitors to remind him that if she wasdead, surely all those machines would be beeping up a damn firestorm.
Nothing but steady beeps that hadn’t sounded any different the whole time she’d been here. So she was probably just cold. The hospital room was a tad on the chilly side, and that was with him wearing a full suit, sans tie. If he was cold, surely Skye, in her otherworldly state, was freezing.
Reaching across her body, Brennan pulled the blanket up over Skye’s injured shoulder and tucked it in around her as best as he could without disrupting any of the tubes. Taking her hand in his again, he leaned forward in the chair, shoulders hunched and elbows resting on his knees, and began rubbing her hand between his to warm it.
Her fingers were so delicate. Her skin was so soft. It seemed wrong on some level for her hand to be so chilly. Bringing his lips to her knuckles, he blew slowly as he continued to rub the top and bottom of her hand. The feel of her skin under his lips—even just the skin on her hand—after three weeks of not feeling it broke something inside him.
A sudden and completely out-of-character sob burst out of his throat, and he pressed the backs of her fingers against his mouth to stifle anything further.
“Holy fuck, Skye,” he mumbled into her hand. “I hate everything about this.”
Brennan heaved a long sigh and dropped his head below his shoulders, still holding her hand. He stroked his thumb across the back of it once or twice, and then he lifted it to press it against his forehead.
Another span of time stretched, and the light footsteps of a nurse entering the room tapped across the linoleum floor. A pair of hands settled onto his shoulders in a way that indicated he needed to move because they needed her hand for some reason. He unfolded his torso and sat up straight.
Liza was standing next to his chair.
“Oh.” Brennan adjusted his collar and raked his hand through his hair. “Hey, L. I didn’t know you were coming by.”
She touched his shoulder for two seconds and then pulled her hand away. “That’s because you’re ignoring your phone.”
