“Good. Can I come out now?”
“Yeah, I think that’s best.” She looked up from her charting, and squinted into the room and our future. “I’d bet money that within a day there’ll be guards on his door.”
“Too bad for you I’m too smart to bet against you. Plus I’m poor.” I came out of the room, and she sealed the door, turning on the camera feeds. We could still look up at what was happening in the room—and hear things, as it turned out, when a pump beeped to warn it was running dry—while remaining safely outside the room.
“I’m looking forward to the end of tonight,” Gina said around three A.M.
“I’m going to be a cripple tomorrow.” I held up my right arm. “This is my mashed-potato-whipping hand.”
Gina snorted. “I keep forgetting that it’s Christmas.”
“Me too. I’m in denial.”
There was a lull in our conversation while she wrote down Winter’s latest set of vitals. I stared at the monitor showing Winter’s sleeping form. “Brandon said he has something big to ask me tomorrow,” Gina said from behind me.
“Brandon?”
“The guy I’ve been dating, whom I don’t talk about, so people won’t judge.”
I glanced over my shoulder, and Gina was still charting, but also chewing on the inside of her lip. I tried to figure out why she’d be sharing information with me now, and it hit me like a hammer. “Oh, God. He’s a former patient, isn’t he?”
“No. His brother was.”
I wasn’t sure how I ought to take that news. Did she want me to be the blindly supportive friend? Or the wise friend who told her she knew better? “He’s not a vampire, is he?”
Gina snorted. “No. He’s a were-bear.”
There was another long pause between us. I decided to feel things out. “How long have you been dating him?”
“A while.”
“What do you think he’s going to ask?”
“I don’t know,” she said without looking up.
I couldn’t seriously endorse marriage, for myself or for just about anyone. But that probably said more about me and my hesitant attitude toward commitment—and the fact that I rarely bothered to learn the names of men who shared my bed. “Well, just because my track record’s been bleak doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try,” I said.
“Thanks. I think.” She stood up and shook herself, a little like a wet dog. “It’s on the hour. Ready to go?”
“As ready as I’m gonna be.” We both suited up.
“The thing is, when you were sleeping with a zombie it wasn’t particularly contagious,” Gina said as she shone a light into Winter’s eyes again, one at a time, in case the size of either pupil had changed. Bleeds in the head would apply pressure to the nerves in control of the pupils—a blown or uneven pupil meant a fresh bleed.
“I made sure he didn’t bite me,” I said sarcastically. To be honest, I didn’t know all the ins and outs of becoming a zombie. And Ti, my erstwhile boyfriend, had been the cursed kind of zombie, not a mindless ghoul. “I showed him my bra but not my brains. I think that was the trick.” I went around the room to stand opposite from her, so that she never blocked my shot. I’d actually shown him a lot more than my bra, but I didn’t want to embroil Gina in a TMI.
“Do you miss him?”
“I don’t appreciate being ditched.” No matter how much it might have been for my own good. Ti had rescued me at the end of my trial, and I knew he’d felt he’d been seen by too many people there, even before that, when he’d been out acquiring extra … parts. We’d walked through the hospital lobby looking like we’d been through a bloodbath, and a lot of the blood had been mine. I could understand why he felt like he needed to lay low for a while, but I didn’t like being left behind. Even though we hadn’t been together very long, him choosing to keep his cover over me hurt. Especially when he hadn’t made any promises about ever coming back.
I felt foolish about caring, and then feeling foolish made me feel angry again. That anger shone too brightly for me to think of very much else.
“With Brandon, it feels real. As close as I think it’s ever felt for me.” Gina walked away from Winter to put the flashlight down and scan the IV pumps. “But if I date him—if it goes farther than that—the Consortium will step in.”
I hadn’t realized our extracurricular activities were that closely monitored. By the Shadows, maybe. But the Consortium too? No. “Where were they when I was dating a zombie?”
She made a face. “I mean it a little different from dating—”
An intercom I didn’t know we had in the room turned on, and I heard Meaty’s voice over it. “Ladies, incoming.”
Gina’s tone went from familiar to professional in an instant. “I knew it.” She reached back and snatched the gun from me. “Go outside.”
“What? Protocol—”
Gina started sweeping me out with the butt of the rifle. “Go, fast, now.”
Frowning and not entirely sure I should listen to her, I stepped out of Winter’s room, gown and all. “Gina—” I protested again.
She shut the door, closing herself inside.
CHAPTER TEN
“Gina?” I beat on the door with one fist. The monitor set beside the door flickered off. “Are you kidding me?”
There were footsteps coming down the short hall. I pulled my mask up and hitched up my suit to sit down in the chair like I was in charge of whatever situation was going on inside the room in front of me. Just me, nursing no one in particular, in complete isolation gear, just sitting in the hall. Fuck this. I frowned at the open charts.
Someone addressed the back of my head. “Where is he?” I turned on my chair and saw a squat bald man wearing a bowling shirt underneath a black woolen peacoat. “Where? I know he’s here—”
And this was why Gina’d shoved me outside. My innocence would make me a better liar. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir.” I quickly folded paperwork and closed charts, so that no identifying information was showing.
“You know exactly who I’m talking about.” He reached into his coat, pulled out a phone, and typed a quick text with stubby fingers. “He’s here, and you’re keeping us from him.” When he was done texting, he looked up at me, eyes narrowed. “The longer you lie, the more there’ll be hell to pay.”
Awesome. Just awesome. I inhaled and exhaled, taking the part of myself that might have felt outrage and stuffing it into a separate mental box. He was entitled to his anger, just like we had every right to be cautious. “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll need to come back tomorrow, when the social worker’s here—”
“I cannot believe you’re keeping us from him.” He came nearer, looming. I pushed my chair back. Being right wasn’t always a guarantee that you wouldn’t get hit. Behind him, a man and a woman, clinging to each other, rounded the bend.
“Jorgen. Stop that at once,” the woman commanded, and he stepped back. I reached forward, grabbed everything off the desk, and set it into my lap. Then I pushed back again, out of swinging range.
The woman was older, blond going gray, wearing a navy pantsuit. Her arms were wrapped around the younger man, like he was supporting her. She looked around and moaned.
“Oh, he’s here, Jorgen—just as I was afraid of.” She reached out to the bald man, and he held an arm out toward her. Like a swinging monkey changing vines, she switched the men she leaned on, coming closer to me. “How is he? Is he okay? What do we know?”
“Nothing,” Jorgen spat at me. “She won’t even admit his presence. Despite the fact that I can smell him here.”
The younger man took a step forward. He was my age, wearing casual clothing: jeans, an army-green hoodie.