Awaken (Divine Hunter Series) (14 page)

“I’m looking for my colleague. S
he’s visiting a patient here.”

“
What’s the patient’s name?” She sat down on a chair and placed the file on the desk in front of her.

“Nina. Nina Murphy
.” He fastened a couple of the buttons on his trench just to make sure his weapon was hidden.

“
Ah yes, you’re with Miss Holloway?”

“Yes. S
he asked me to pick her up.”

“
No problem. She’s in room 3.08 just down the hall on the left.”

“Thanks.” He smiled, and headed in that direction.

When he approached Nina’s room, he stopped at the large window, looking through to the cream room with its navy blue linoleum floor. The lighting was dim and the bed was in the middle of the room with a boom arm−which was attached to the ceiling−that housed the EKG machine which was monitoring the student’s vitals. Lacy had fallen asleep in the chair next to Nina’s bed, her hand resting on Nina’s arm.

Michael couldn
’t help but watch as Lacy slept. Some of her blond hair had fallen loosely over part of her face and she looked so peaceful. He couldn’t understand why she’d become so emotionally attached to Nina. She’d never met her, never even knew who she was until he’d pointed her out in the dining room a few days before, but she was acting like a family member would. Maybe it was just her nature. He hadn’t known Lacy long, but he knew her enough to know she had a kind heart. She was there for Nina purely out of kindness when the girl had no one else. That knowledge, and the way she looked as she slept in that chair, was what made Michael realize how much she’d captivated him. He suddenly realized how beautiful she was and not just on the outside.

He frowned as his conscience spoke up and told him to get a grip. This wasn
’t going to happen. He couldn’t let it.

He noticed a hot drinks machine down the far end of the hall so he left Lacy
to sleep for a little longer while he went to get them both a coffee. He felt around in his jeans pocket for change and managed to scrape together the three dollars fifty he needed for two cups. The swishing noise from the machine was a stark contrast to the quiet of the ward so it was good that it was right out of the way of the bedrooms. All that was by it was a linen cupboard and the family waiting room−to which the door was open. He heard sniffling coming from inside, but ignored it as he sugared the coffees and stirred them with a lollipop stirrer.
Useless things.

He was
heading back to Nina’s room when he glanced into the waiting room and saw who the sniffling was coming from. A woman sat by herself with her head in her hands. He walked inside, approaching her slowly so he wouldn’t startle her. “Are you okay?” He kept his voice low.

The woman looked up at him and began to wipe her face with a tissue.
“Uh. . . Yes.” As she looked up and her eyes met his, her brow furrowed. At first she seemed weary of him, but then she looked surprised by something. A strange calm then settled over her face and she sat unmoving, staring at him from the small gray sofa across the room. Her tears had stopped falling and her hiccuping breath calmed. Her mouth curled up slowly into an unsure smile and she spoke in almost a whisper, “Are you here for him?” She looked down at her fidgeting hands then back to him. “My son. . . Are you here to take him?” Her hand snapped to her mouth as she choked back a sob.

Clearly she was going through some kind of emotional breakdown resulting fro
m somebody close to her being on the ward. He approached her, slowly, placing the two coffee cups on a sideboard as he passed. “Would you like me to get a nurse?”

The woman, who looked to be
in her sixties, brushed her shoulder length gray hair from her face, stood up from the sofa and began to walk towards him, reaching out for him and stopping him in his tracks. She didn’t seem to register that he’d spoken as she repeated her question with a calmness that seemed out of place given the way she’d been when he’d entered the room. Her vacant stare set him on edge−like she was looking right into him, not the body he inhabited, but to
him
inside of it. For the first time since being dead, Michael felt cold. The skin he was in prickled all over with goose flesh, feeling like thousands of ants were crawling all over him and he found that he couldn’t speak.

The lady
placed both her hands on his arms and smiled up at him with such poignancy. Her deep blue eyes glistened with unshed tears as she spoke, “Please, take good care of him. Look after him until I get there.”

Michael swallowed hard
. What the hell was she talking about?

T
hen she kissed her own hand, reached up and placed it on his left cheek and nodded her head to him before walking out of the room.

Aft
er pausing for a moment, feeling quite bewildered, he followed her into the corridor and watched her walk into one of the hospital rooms. He walked over to the window and watched as the woman sat down on the chair next to a young dark-haired male lying unconscious on the bed. Her son, he assumed. That’s why she’d been so upset. From the weak signals on the
EKG
machine just above his bed, and the respiratory machine that was breathing for him, he looked like he was barely hanging on. The woman placed her hand on his on top of the bed covers and leaned in close to his ear to speak to him. Just as Michael was about to walk away, the woman looked at him through the window and smiled. Then she went back to watching over her son.

The whole interaction had left Michael feeling confused and a little uneasy.

Before he returned to Lacy, he went over to the nurses’ station and spoke to the same nurse who’d been there when he’d first arrived. “The man in room 3.10? What happened to him?”

At first it looked like
she wasn’t willing to discuss it with him and Michael prepared himself for the usual you’re-not-a-relative speech, but after a sigh she explained. “He was hit by a car, a hit-and-run; doesn’t look like he’s going to make it. They’re turning his life support off later.” Her face was sympathetic. Even though she was probably well used to that kind of thing happening, the look on her face said that it was still hard to deal with.

“
Is that his mother in with him now?” he asked.

“
Yes. She’s hardly left his side, the poor lady.”

“
She was pretty upset just now. You might want to send someone to look in on her.”

She looked up at him, her smile grateful.
“Of course. Thanks for letting me know.”

He decided it was probably the woman’s emotional state that had made her act that way and shrugged it off. He had too much on his plate right now to concern himself with other people’s anguish.

He got back to Nina’s room and as he clicked the door shut Lacy stirred. He walked over to her slowly, realizing he’d left the coffees in the waiting room. He figured they’d be cold by now anyway.

“
Michael?” Lacy blinked quickly, placing her hand on her neck and stretching her head back. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I fell asleep.” Her voice was huskier than usual. He liked it. She shifted in her seat and put her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn.

“
You look exhausted.” He went to the opposite side of Nina’s bed, checked out the reading on the EKG machine−which was a lot more steady than the poor guy’s down the hall−then looked down at the young woman’s face. She was pale, with no help from makeup, and even though she was unconscious and fighting for her life Michael noticed that she looked much better without it.

“
How’s she doing?” he asked.

“
No change. She’s out of it on pain meds at the moment.” Lacy laughed a little and shook her head.

“What is it?”

She looked down at her hands as she twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I’ve prayed for her you know. Sat here and actually prayed.”

“
It’s understandable.”

She looked up at him, her expression
somber. “But it’s not easy when you don’t believe in God. I haven’t
believed
since I was a child. Religion, ghosts, life after death, all of it seems so story-book to me. I’ve never even been to church. What I was taught about God, I was too young to really understand. I think I remember my mother talking about God once, but she never cared about religion so I don’t know why she even bothered. I think she thought it was just something she should do.”

Ironic, he thought, considering she was
standing talking to a dead guy.

“
But I’ve prayed for Nina and I don’t know why. I suppose it had something to do with what you said this morning.”

He walked over to the window,
looking out into the bland hallway of the quiet hospital wing. “It’s just circumstance that’s all. And there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said with his back to her. He’d never really had an opinion on God either until now. But there had been times in his life when he’d prayed and hadn’t really known why. Sometimes, even if you weren’t totally on board with the whole religion thing, just believing in the idea of it was a kind of comfort.

Now, however, he had a whole other opinion about it.

“But it didn’t work last time.” Lacy said, followed by a sniffling noise which made him turn around to see her wiping away a tear that had just rolled down her cheek. He frowned, not really knowing what to say. He knew it had to be hard for her seeing Nina lying in a critical condition in the bed in front of her. At least he understood now.

“
The first, and only other, time I’ve ever prayed was for Beth; it didn’t work. She died anyway.”

He couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her, being alone and having to deal with something horribly
traumatic from her past. He wanted to reach out to her, but thought better of it. In the window’s reflection, he saw Lacy get up from the chair and he turned to face her as she walked over to him.

“
I don’t feel right talking like this in front of her,” she said quietly, looking back over her shoulder. She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “All those years ago, I pleaded with a god that I hardly knew anything about to help my little sister live and yet she didn’t. So why am I putting faith in that same god for Nina?”

Oh to hell with it
. Pun intended. He reached down and took hold of her hand and placed it between both of his. He looked into her pale green eyes, which were now a little red. “Because you care, and deep inside you want to believe he exists just like the rest of us. You’re a good person, Lacy. And the way you’ve cared for her”−he nodded towards the bed−“is proof of that.”

They
both stood and looked at each other for what could have been anything from five seconds to five hours, he wasn’t sure. But he knew one thing: he was filled with a sudden urge to reciprocate what she’d done to him last night, but kissing her was really going to complicate things. He studied her face, noticing for the first time the faint freckles that dusted over her nose. Her long eyelashes curled up at each outside corner, reaching almost halfway to her neatly plucked eyebrows. His attention was drawn to a small, faded scar just above the left brow. He’d tried to ignore what he’d begun to feel for her. He couldn’t possibly get involved with someone given his circumstances and the timing wasn’t at all right. But right now−in this moment−she was drawing him in and he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

Still holding her warm
hand in his, he felt her edge closer. He didn’t pull back, ignoring the shouting and screaming of his subconscious, which was now practically doing back flips trying to get his attention. He knew she was going to kiss him and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. “Lacy. . . I. . . ”

He was about to put his will power to the test
and say something to stop her when she paused, breaking her gaze away from his to look over his shoulder. It was then that her whole body stiffened and her eyes widened as she inhaled a sudden gasp. “Jake,” she whispered.

Michael spun around to see Jake moving away from the window quickly. He turned back to Lacy grabbing her by her arms.
“Stay here for five minutes. Then I want you to go downstairs, jump in a cab and go straight home, okay?”

She nodded
.

He was out of the door and running down the corridor after the SOB without even thinking about it. He reached into his ins
ide pocket for his cell, flipped it open and dialled his buddy. “Evo! We have a visitor.” Michael pushed through the door that Jake had just run through that led to a stairwell at the other end of the hospital wing. “We’re on the far left side of the main building. He’s no doubt heading for the fire escape at the bottom of the stairs.”

“On my way.” Evo replied, h
anging up straight away.

On his descent, Michael
leaned over the rail and saw that Jake had nearly reached the bottom of the stairwell and was headed for the door. Meanwhile, Michael was only halfway down, still having two more floors to go.
Screw this.
He placed both hands on the rail and leapt over the thing. He had no idea why, but he held his breath while he dropped down through the middle of the stairwell, seeing the tiled floor approach pretty quickly. He landed without even so much as a wobble, just in time to grip Jake around his neck before he left through the now open door.