Page 87 of Offside Angel

The stairwell at the end of the hall opens and a security guard strolls in. I don’t have time to wait for this to go down. I turn back the way I came, heading down to the first floor.

Another alert from the security system buzzes in my pocket, but I can’t think about that now. Not when I have no idea where Mira even is.

The elevator doors open on the main floor and Jace and Owen are standing there like they’re waiting for me.

“Well?” Jace asks.

I throw up my hands. “I have no fucking idea. I can’t find her. Or Evan.”

“Hospitals and their fookin’ useless policies,” Owen mumbles as he stomps towards the front desk.

I move to follow him, but Jace grabs my shoulder. “Have you heard anything at all? Coach mentioned something, but no one knows what’s going on.”

“There was an accident. Mira and Evan were brought here.” The weight of everything I don’t know sits heavy on my chest. It’s hard to breathe. “That’s it. That’s all I have.”

“They’re going to be fine.” Jace has no way of knowing that, but fucking hell, I want to believe him. “It’s going to be fine. Daniel dropped Aiden off with Reeves and Jemma, and then he’ll be here. We’re all going to be here.”

It’s nice of him, but it doesn’t help right now. There’s only one person I want to see.

“She’s his lassie!” Owen barks at the stiff-backed elderly woman manning the front desk. “Who else would you tell about her condition?”

The woman presses her thin lips into a firm line. “I can only talk to her family.”

“She doesn’t have any family.” I hurry over and place my palms on her desk. “Her parents are gone, no siblings. I’m all she has. Please.”

The woman stares at me for a heavy second… then she checks her computer and writes something down on a slip of paper. She doesn’t look up as she passes it to me. “I can’t give you any information since you are not family. It goes against hospital policy.”

On the piece of paper is a room number.

I’m so grateful I could kiss this woman, but there isn’t time. I hustle down the hallway, tossing a hurried thanks over my shoulder.

Mira is alive.

She’ll be okay.

She has to be okay.

Mira is not okay.

If she was okay, she wouldn’t be lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

If she was okay, I wouldn’t be on the phone with Rachelle’s sister, who happens to be a nurse, going over the blurry photos I sent her of Mira’s medical chart.

I pace up and down the narrow space at the foot of Mira’s bed, my phone glued to my ear. “The nurses won’t tell me shit and I haven’t even seen a doctor yet.”

“That’s a good thing,” Rachelle’s sister says. I think her name is Kate or Katie or Kathleen. She said it, but I wasn’t listening. “If the doctor isn’t around, it means there are more serious patients to attend to. And based on her chart, it looks like she’s just there for observation.”

I glance back at the bed and it physically hurts. Seeing her in the bed, her cheek sliced open, her hands limp at her sides… it aches. “I’m observing her and she’s fucking unconscious. Shouldn’t someone be doing something about that?”

“I’m sure the first thing they did when she arrived was check her for signs of a traumatic brain injury. That’s why she’s still there for observation. They’ll want to wait until she wakes up to make sure nothing is seriously wrong.”

Someone plowed into Mira and got away, while she’s unconscious in the hospital. The fuck isn’t “seriously wrong” about that?

Katie, or whatever her name is, assures me she doesn’t see anything alarming in Mira’s chart. I try to let her confidence reassure me, but it doesn’t do shit.

I move a chair to the edge of the bed and take Mira’s hand in mine. Her fingers are cold, and I curl my hands around them, blowing warm air over her skin again and again.

“You’re going to be fine,” I whisper. “You just have to wake up.”

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