Page 86 of Captive Omega

Sadie shakes her head. “It belongs to Dad and me. Dad always had big dreams of leaving consultancy and going back to private practice, so he’d have time to do more outreach. He couldn’t do that while he was doing fifty-sixty hour work weeks at the hospital. You have no idea how many Christmas dinners I would bore my family to death with stories about how, one day I was going to start my own practice where I’d help patients who couldn’t afford medical treatment.”

“Garrison made both your dreams come true?”

“Dad brought a lot of his old patients with him, and we have a couple of doctors and a handful of nurses on staff now. We do more outreach and emergency medicine for those who have nowhere to go than see regular patients, but that’s why we got into medicine in the first place.”

“Is Garrison still funding this as long as you help out Lucas Security?”

“No. Garrison is still funding, so we can continue to help as many people as we can.”

“What did Garrison help your dad out with before?”

She offers me a small smile. “He saved Blaine’s life.”

Oh.

Blaine had to have gotten those burns from somewhere, and I’m dying to ask how.

Sadie helps me into a wheelchair that she wheels from the corner of the room. “That’s it. You are ready to be discharged.”

On the drive back to the house, I sit quietly at the back of the Hummer, thinking.

Blaine drives, and his hands are tense. No one is talking to him, though Garrison and Vaughn occasionally talk to each other.

They dropped everything for me.

I think of how, in one of the most terrifying moments of my life, Garrison wasn’t just there. He assured me everything would be okay.

And it was.

Chapter 25

Blaine

The day after we brought Resa home from the clinic, I feel Garrison watching me as I make lunch. Lex is with Marie, so we’re fending for ourselves, and that usually means picking through the contents of the refrigerator.

“You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping,” he says.

That’s because I haven’t.

That unexpected trip to the clinic with a bone white, trembling Resa was a shock to the system. Not just because I was terrified we would lose Resa and her baby.

Going to a clinic—or any hospital—for a checkup requires preparation. I need to know it’s coming, need to breathe through the panic that wells up at the thought. Need to know that it’s only for a brief time, a couple hours maximum, and it’s over for the year.

Going from near asleep to walking into a clinic in under thirty minutes was a bigger shock to the system than I was prepared for.

Since taking Resa to the clinic, I haven’t had so much as an hour of sleep. That hasn’t stopped the endless loops of flashback after flashback.

The smell of antiseptic, white hallways, squeaky floors, operations, physio that hurt, drugs that made me throw up, and yet more operations when the grafts didn’t take.

And pain.

No matter how many drugs they pumped me with, every time I was conscious, I was in pain.

I still haven’t made an appointment for my checkup, and I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I need time to recover from a sudden trip to the clinic I wasn’t expecting.

I’ve turned my phone back on, and those voicemails have been building up. Soon Sadie’s father, and my regular physician, will call Garrison or Vaughn and ask how I am. Then they’d know I was dodging this appointment.

“I’m fine. Did you check on Resa last night?”

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