Page 48 of Embracing Sky
I parked in the nearest, non-handicapped spot I could find and rushed inside. As I reached the front desk, I slapped my sweaty palms down on the cool marble. The receptionist jumped and looked up at me with startled eyes. One sniff told me she was a doe—a prey shifter—and I felt like an asshole.
“Can I help you?” she asked quietly.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, straightening up and rubbing at my face. “I was told my partners were in a terrible car accident. Can you tell me where they are? Or can I talk to a doctor? Please?”
Her hesitancy turned into a look of sympathy. “What’s your name?”
“Adam. Adam Rose. Their names are Fletcher Rose and Sky DuPree.”
“Let me go check, okay? I’ll take you to the waiting room and you can have a seat.” She stood and gestured for me to follow.
The doors swung inward when she waved her hand over a sensor, and I walked after her, into a large lobby with chairsand small end tables, with a TV playing the home and garden channel, its volume so low that they’d turned the subtitles on.
I sat down and took a deep breath, trying to calm my rioting heart.Everything’s okay. They’re alive. They’re okay. They have to be.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, a dark-haired man in a white coat came out and crossed the room to me. “Mr. Rose?”
I stood to greet him. “Please tell me they’re okay,” was the only thing I could utter, my throat tight with emotion.
“Fletcher is still in surgery. His wounds were more severe. Once he is stable, he will be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, where he will stay for a couple of days.”
It was as if a rubber band had snapped around my chest, constricting and tightening and squeezing the air from my lungs. My Fletcher… God, I hated this.
I looked at the doctor. “What about Sky?”
“Sky is in recovery.”
“Can I see him?”
He frowned. “We don’t typically allow visitors in the recovery ward. For special cases, it’s family only. Are you his family?”
“Basically. It’s a long story. He’s my partner.” At the man’s quizzical look, I added, “I have two mates. My husband, Fletcher, and then our boyfriend, Sky.”
“I see. Does he have any family that we should contact?”
I shook my head. “No. He has a brother, but they’re not on speaking terms. Fletcher and I are all he has. The issue is, Sky has some…quirks. He’s been through a lot of trauma and has PTSD, and I’m worried that waking up alone in the hospital will trigger an episode. I need to be near him to make sure he doesn’t lose control. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Hmm. I suppose I can make an exception. Come with me.” The doctor spun on his heel and strode off down the hall, his shoes squeaking over waxed tile. I kept pace with him easilyenough, even though it felt like my soul might leave my body the deeper into the hospital we went.
All I could think about was Fletcher and Sky, battered and broken and covered in blood, crushed inside our car. How easily they could’ve died on impact. I could’ve lost both of them in one fell swoop and then?—
Stop. They’re alive. Don’t go there,I told myself.
Up ahead, the beeping and hissing of medical machinery could be heard, along with the murmur of voices as nurses handed charts off to one another, hurrying down the hall in colorful scrubs. I looked down at myself, still wearing my Bixby’s get-up and my apron from kitchen duty. I’d never felt more out of place.
None of that mattered, though, as a shriek cut through the air the very next minute—“DON’T TOUCH ME! STOP!”—and everything inside of me seized up. My wolf howled, frantic all of a sudden, and I didn’t wait for the doctor.
I couldn’t.
I took off running towards the sound of Sky’s screams. When I burst into the recovery ward, three nurses were grabbing at him as he frantically tried to escape the hospital bed. The IV was ripped out of his arm, the machines around him screaming as he yelled at the nurses, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“Sky? Sky!” I cried out over the chaos, and Sky’s two-toned eyes locked on me. Tears spilled down his cheeks as he made a lunge for me, stumbling to his knees.
“ADAM!” A near-hysterical cry escaped him as he clung to me, his fingers digging into my sides. “I WANT TO GO HOME, TAKE ME HOME, PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME HERE, PLEASE!”
“Sir, you can’t be here,” one nurse tried to say, but I shot her an icy glare.
Another one called out, “We need a sedative in here!”
