Page 128 of Indigo Sky

"Is Natealive?" I asked impatiently.

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes meeting mine, and then he reluctantly nodded. "For now, yes. He's stable."

My chest deflated with a relieved sigh. "Oh, fuck, thank God."

"The next twenty-four hours will be critical in determining if he'll pull through. He lost a lot of blood."

Mom nodded, blinking back tears. "Can we see him?"

"He isn't awake," Dr. Schuster warned us. "But, of course, you can see him."

***

Three hours after Nate left the operating room, alarm bells rang from his spot in the intensive care unit, and his heart monitor flatlined.

Mom shrieked, Dad called Nate's name, and I jumped up from my spot beside him and ran for the nurses' station.

One minute thirty-two seconds later, they brought him back.

Forty minutes after he gave us all a heart attack, he opened his eyes, pulled his oxygen mask off, and looked at me.

"You look like shit," he rasped.

"I should get you a mirror," I grumbled.

He began to laugh, then winced and arched his back.

"Easy, honey," Mom said, taking his hand.

Dad announced abruptly that he was going to tell the nurses that he was awake, and I had the feeling he needed to shed a few grateful tears in the hallway.

Nate settled back into the bed, a look of painful distress on his face. "Fuck. I feel like I died."

"You did," I muttered. "Just a little while ago."

"Shit, really?"

"Yeah," I grumbled, shaking my head with disbelief. A little less than an hour ago, I’d thought I'd never talk to him again, and there I was, doing just that.

He began to chuckle again, then stopped himself with a cough and a groan. "Fuck, that hurts. What did I tell ya, Rev? Only the good die young. They took one look at me up there and said,Oh, fuck no, throw that one back."

I shook my head. How he could laugh right now, I had no idea. Or maybe that was just how he coped.

"How's Kate?"

A sigh pushed from my lungs. "I don't know. I haven't seen her."

Nate looked at me through narrowed eyes, bruised from when I’d punched him in the nose. Fuck, how was that only a day ago? Or was it two? Somehow, time had stopped passing normally.

"The hell is wrong with you?"

I huffed out a laugh. "She just went through hell. And we’d gotten into a fight—"

"I'm not listening to anymore of this crap," he said as Dad came through the curtain, Dr. Schuster in tow. "We didn't go through this shit for you to pussy out on me now."

"Nathan," Mom scolded, the way she did whenever he said something she didn't like. She smiled apologetically at the doctor. "Come on. You need your rest, and I'm sure the doctor would like to speak—"

"Go find her," Nate warned me, and I shook my head with a dismissive wave of my hand. "No. Do it now."

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