Page 13 of Out for Blood
“They laid their lives on the line for you. So yeah… even them.”
I stood on my toes and kissed his cheek, rough with stubble, then stepped through the glass doors leading to room 4328.
It was a big room, but I immediately understood why. There was a lot of equipment, some of it large, all of it surrounding a hospital bed against the far wall. Hawk almost looked small on the mattress, and I knew how hard it was to make Hawk look small.
He was attached to an assortment of tubes and lines that traveled from his chest and arms to the equipment, and his face was half-obscured by the ventilator next to his bed, the room filled with therush-pumpsound of the machine breathing for him.
I felt a moment of panic. Seeing Hawk in the hospital bed made the situation all too real.
There was too much at stake. I wasn’t strong enough for this. Wasn’t strong enough to face what had happened to him.
What might still happen.
But then I remembered. I remembered Hawk going with Vigo and Jagger to Travis Dorsey’s house even after I’d lost the Hunt. I remembered his voice, coming to me from the other side of my shattered windshield at the bottom of the ravine.
You’re not alone.
I remembered the way he’d cared for me after the accident, when I’d been blind. The way he’d cradled me in the hot tub after forcing me into the water.
We don’t let the darkness control us, Cass. That only gives it power. Embrace it. Sink into it.
And then I remembered the expression on his face when he’d shoved me into the elevator after the men at the paper mill had thrown the grenade.
I love you.
I walked toward the bed.
Tears streamed down my face as he came more fully into view. His chest was bare, several electrodes attached to his skin. He looked almost gray, and I wondered whether it was the dim lighting in the room or all the blood he’d lost, because Hawk had never been gray a day that I’d known him. He’d been overflowing with vitality, more alive than anyone I’d ever known, and it almost broke me to see him hooked up to the machines around his bed, not even able to breathe for himself.
Hawk was like a wild animal, meant for fresh air and wide-open spaces. Seeing him like this — the right side of his body covered with the same kind of silver dressing that had covered the burn on Jagger’s arm — was like seeing a leopard in a cage at the zoo.
I was afraid to sit on his bed. Afraid to do anything to disrupt the machines keeping him alive. I settled for holding one of his hands, careful not to interfere with any of the tubes.
For a long time, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to tell him all the things I thought I’d have forever to say.
But looking at him in the hospital bed, hearing the ventilator push air into his lungs, I had to face the fact that I might not have forever.
“I’m here,” I finally said. “You’re not alone.”
It was the thing I most wanted him to know: that I was here for him like he’d been there for me at the bottom of the ravine.
“I wish you hadn’t done it.” I choked on a sob. “I really really wish you hadn’t done it. But I know why you did. I know because if I’d had a chance, I would have done it too. I would have pushedyouinto the elevator even if it meant dying myself. And that’s how I know I love you too. I should have told you before, should have told you when you were awake and you could hear me say it. But… I don’t know. I guess I hope you can hear me say it now. I hope somewhere in there you know and that it makes you come back to me.” I was openly crying now, struggling to get air into my lungs around the sobs that felt like they were ripping me in two. “Because I really need you to come back to me.”
I lay my head on his arm and cried, still holding his hand, hanging onto the only part of him that still felt like it was mine.
And then the machines around the bed went crazy: alarms shrieking and beeping.
I lifted my head and looked around, the sounds filling me with panic even though I didn’t know what they meant.
The glass door slid open and two nurses rushed in, their brows furrowed with concern as they looked at Hawk on the bed.
“He’s coding,” the gray-haired nurse said. “Call for a crash cart.”
The second nurse moved around the bed to press a button and a second later a voice came over the hospital's intercom system.
“Code Blue room 4328. Code Blue room 4328.”
The gray-haired nurse seemed to notice me for the first time. “You have to move.”
