Page 151 of Forever Dead
“Let me check with his nurse.”
Blethan spoke to the woman at the nurses’ station, then returned.
“His nurse is just outside if you need her.”
Selena nodded. “All right.”
He led her through two sets of doors and along a quieter corridor.
Selena’s pace slowed as they approached the room.
Fear returned, but differently now. Connor was alive. She had heard it from Blethan. The surgery had gone well.
Still, she was not prepared for the first sight of him.
Connor lay beneath a white blanket with the bed raised slightly behind his shoulders. A clear line ran into his arm. A monitor beside him traced his pulse in green across the screen. His skin had lost its usual color, and dark stubble covered his jaw.
He seemed smaller somehow.
Not physically. Connor was still a large man, his shoulders filling the hospital gown.
The bed changed him.
Blethan touched Selena lightly on the arm.
“Five minutes to start.”
Selena nodded.
The doctor left.
She stood just inside the doorway.
Connor’s head shifted toward her.
His eyelids lifted slowly.
“Hey.”
The weakness in his voice almost brought the tears back.
Selena crossed to the chair beside the bed and lowered herself into it.
“Hey.”
Connor watched her for a few seconds.
“You came.”
“Of course I came.”
Connor pressed one hand into the mattress as though he meant to sit higher. The effort stopped almost immediately.
“Leave it,” Selena said. “I can move the chair.”
She brought it closer without asking him to help. Yesterday he would have reached for her elbow before she sat down. Now he had to wait while she settled herself beside him.
His attention moved toward the cane.
