Page 93 of Collateral Damage
This time, the team moves.
Twenty-One
Two weeks later…
Ava
The clinic is exactly as I found it. Axel’s notepad sits neatly beside his keyboard. The chairs are back where they belong, aligned with surgical precision. Nothing borrowed has been left behind, and nothing has been moved out of place.
Except that isn’t entirely true. I came here with considerably less than I’m leaving with, and none of it—none of the weight, the change, the perspective—fits in the bag sitting by the door.
"The visual disturbances concern me more than the EEG," I say, pressing the phone to my ear as I pace the limited floor space. "Has anyone done a thorough medication review? Post-blast patients self-medicate more than they report."
There’s a pause on David's end of the line, just the sound of his pen scribbling a quick note. "I'll have someone look at it."
"Don't have someone look at it. Look at it yourself." I soften the command slightly, leaning against the counter. "He's not going to tell a resident the truth about his symptoms."
"Noted." Another pause, and I can hear him smiling through the receiver. "You sound like yourself again, Ava. I’m not sure I would have managed it as quickly."
I hide a smile. “I had a lot of help healing.”
Before he can ask me the questions both the police and Silas have strictly cautioned me not to answer yet, I redirect him.
"I'll be back Thursday," I say. "I want to see him in person."
"I was hoping you'd say that." The relief in his voice is genuine. "I'll have his file ready when you arrive."
We wrap up the call and I set the phone down on the sterile surface.
From the examination chair she has comprehensively claimed as her own, Delilah looks up from her laptop. Shoes off. Coke in hand. She’s the picture of a woman entirely, unapologetically at home in someone else's space.
"Doctory," she says, looking over the rim of her can approvingly.
"That wasn’t a word three nights ago when you played it, Delilah."
"It absolutely is." She takes a long, satisfied pull of her Coke. "It might not be in the official Scrabble dictionary, but it’s in the Hightower lexicon. It’s filed right after Rangery and Bomby."
I snort a laugh. "Verity is never going to let you call her Bomby."
"She lets me call her lots of things." Delilah grins, her eyes bright. "She just doesn't know it yet."
From the corner of the room, Verity looks up from a device she assured us is just a "practice explosive device" she’s defusing. The look she gives Delilah is patient in the way that suggests it has been tested many times, survived, and reached a state of weary acceptance.
"I heard that," Verity says.
"I know," Delilah retorts without missing a beat.
I watch the two of them and feel something settle in my chest that I don't immediately have a clinical name for. It isn't quite just "belonging." It’s something adjacent to it—the warmth of being inside a joke you didn't have to earn, a space where you’re simply allowed to exist. I’ve been inside churches that were less welcoming than these women have been.
I pick up the notepad, cap the pen, and set it back beside Axel's keyboard exactly where I found it.
"I can't believe it's been two weeks," I say.
Delilah looks up. Something crosses her face—a quick, unguarded flicker of emotion—before she pulls it back behind a mask of casual indifference. "I can't believe you actually made me eat that macaroni and cheese you made."
"You didn't have to eat it. I warned you I was a terrible cook."
"You looked so proud of it," she says, shuddering with her entire body. "I felt sorry for you."
