What happened? Where’s Kathryn?
Morphine messes with the mind, but not this much. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
The more Jake came to, the more he worried. Did something happen to her? He scanned the room, realizing he wasn’t imagining the person standing next to him.
Chels? What’s she doing here?
The news was on, silently broadcasting from a flat-screen TV hanging from the ceiling. Based on the captions scrolling along the bottom of the screen, today was Thursday. I’ve been here two days. A few minutes passed, and the doctor and nurses surrounding his bed explained they’d slowly inch the tube from his throat.
And not a moment too soon. He needed to find out what had happened to Kathryn.
Once the tube was gone, his husky voice strained to push out a semi-coherent thought. He meant to say Kathryn, but it came out differently. “Kitten.”
Confused, the doctor and nurses looked at Chelsea, who looked back at him.
“Sounded like you said . . . kitten,” Chelsea said, and his drugged head nodded. “You want a kitten?”
Her laughter couldn’t irritate him more, a high-pitched mix of relief and ridicule.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll get you a kitten as soon as you get out of here. Just relax. You’ve got a lot of recovering to do, mister.” She rubbed his arm, and his opioid-laden body was alarmingly fine with her hand on him. “And I’m going to be right here by your side.”
He mentally repeated her words.
Right here by my side? Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone?
His eyes tracked her as she stood.
“I need to go, but I’ll be back.” Her lips pressed against his as he tried backing his head further into the firm hospital pillow.
Holy shit, this isn’t the Twilight Zone. I’ve died and gone to hell.
With Chelsea out the door, he managed to move, grabbing the scrubs of the nearby nurse as he struggled to speak.
“Easy. Don’t strain too hard,” she said. “Voice loss is a common side effect of the tube. It’ll come back.”
He motioned with his hand, miming scribbling in the air.
“You want a notepad?” the nurse asked, and he nodded with a relieved smile.
He couldn’t quite grip the pen she brought him at first, but pushed out the large letters across the pad to write Kathryn and then Chase.
The nurse shook her head, and he added the word nurse before it. Again, nothing.
Nothing?
He had another idea and flipped to a fresh sheet, where he wrote three words: Detective Scott Delaney. The nurse shrugged, finally catching on when he added the word Urgent.
With a nod, the nurse headed out. “I’ll get a hold of him.”
* * *
Jake had dozed off but jolted awake at the knock at the door.
Scott let himself in. “Hey. If you’re sleeping, I can come back.”
Jake waved him in, smiling in relief at the sight of his good friend.
“Damn, man. Once a hero, always a hero, huh?” Scott rolled the nurse’s stool over next to the bed and sat down. “Don’t worry. That son of a bitch will be behind bars for a long time. Hey, they said your voice will take a few days to return, so now I can give you all the shit I want without all the pesky back talk.”
Still clutching the notepad, Jake flipped back to the first sheet and tapped the pen to the page, pointing at the word Kathryn.
“What about her?”
Desperate, he added okay with a question mark.
Scott nodded with a curious lift of his shoulders. “Yeah, I think so. She was here.”
Jake’s frantic scribbling resulted in a string of all caps. FIND HER.
“Okay, okay. No need to yell.” Scott hurried out the door, then ducked his head back in. “Glad to see you’re better than ever, barking orders like I work for you.”
They exchanged a grin before Scott headed out for good.
With the important stuff out of the way, Jake drafted another note. Satisfied as he reread it, he rang for the nurse. Cheerfully, she entered. “Hey there. How can I make your day brighter?”
Jake handed her the folded piece of paper, studying her as she looked it over. The kittens stamped across her scrubs made him smile.
She nodded. “You got it. I’ll make sure the staff knows to keep her out.” She checked his saline bag and vitals, then flipped through his chart. “Looks like you’ve declined pain meds for a while. You should really stay ahead of the pain.” Too late. “Need a little something to take the edge off?” Even pain addicts have their limits. His slight nod was all she needed. With a wink, she said, “I’ll be right back.”
With a deep sigh of relief, he laid back. At least he could rest easy knowing when he woke up, Chels wouldn’t be pawing him.