Page 48 of Running Feral

“Perfect. Doc wants to speak to you about her case. I’ll take you to him.”

“He can’t come here?” Tristan interjects, but the nurse is unfazed.

“We’re slammed tonight. He’s got too many unstable patients in ICU to come over here right now. We’re shuffling some things around. It’s easier if we go to him. It’ll only take a minute.”

Gunnar looks at me, drowning out the noise in my head with his stare. “Do you want me to come with you?”

I think about it. There’s a tingle of fear running through me, like always, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I can’t only exist with Gunnar as my shadow for the rest of my life.

And like I said before—if Eamon really wants to take me, he’ll take me. Gunnar can’t stop him. He’ll only get hurt trying.

I’m about to tell him I’m fine when the nurse interrupts.

“Sorry, sir. HIPAA. You can wait here.”

Gunnar turns a baleful glare on her, matched by Tristan’s expression behind him, but she doesn’t back down. She’s not wrong. And thank fuck Lola made me her medical proxy months ago for exactly this situation.

“It’s no big deal,” I tell him. “I’ll be right back.”

I lean down, telling Lola the same thing and kissing her on the cheek before following the nurse toward the door. Gunnar’sfingers graze the small of my back as I walk past him, but I don’t let myself look. The more I give into this feeling that every step I take is a step toward my funeral, the more it sinks its claws into me.

The nurse moves down the hallways at a brisk clip, unconcerned about whether I’m keeping up. I’ve been here so many times since I moved back, but I still can’t keep it all straight. Especially at night when the patient hallways and nurses’ stations are all dimly lit. Before I know it, I’m completely turned around.

Is this the ICU? I don’t think she’s ever been in the ICU, so maybe I’ve never been here before. It’s all kind of a blur. Wait, what’s the CVICU? Was that where she went last time?

I have no idea why I’m on internal ramble mode. Maybe to keep my thoughts from straying down the darker paths. Turn off and do as I’m told. Follow the nurse. She badges open a random door for me and indicates for me to go through, still looking like she’d rather be anywhere else than helping me.

I thank her anyway, but my attention is so far away from the present. It takes me a good fifteen seconds to realize that once the door clicks shut behind me, also with that little black box that means you need a badge to open it, I’m not in a room.

I’m in a stairwell. A dark, empty stairwell.

Well, empty except for the one person standing a few feet away from me, leaning casually against the railing.

My stomach drops out, but it feels like a physiological reaction. The adrenaline, the fear, the fight-or-flight. All of that is there in an instant, like it always is.

But my mind is calm this time. I’m not sure why. Maybe enough of me was expecting this, that I was genuinely prepared. Or maybe I’ve worried over it and tossed and turned so much that I don’t care anymore.

“Hello, lover,” Eamon says as he slinks toward me. “I thought I might find you here.”

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I wait and I think and I keep myself as unobtrusive as possible, already conserving my energy for whatever is about to come next.

Eamon sidles up next to me before running his fingers through the longest part of my hair.

“This little vacation is over, pet. We have work to do. And you have a lot of things to be punished for. Understood?”

I don’t answer straight away, because my vocal cords feel as frozen as the rest of my body. When he doesn’t get an answer, he tightens his grip on my hair and yanks my head back.

“Understood?”

His voice is low and his breath is hot in my ear. I thought I might feel an extra kind of repulsion to have his hands on me after all the softness of Gunnar’s touch, but I don’t. It’s the same as it ever was. Blankness. My body is suspended in time as it waits.

“Yes, sir.”

They’re the only words I can choke out, but it does the trick. He lets go of my hair and gives me a small shove to get me walking down the stairs.

I wonder how far away Gunnar and Tristan are right now? How far had I just walked? Would they hear me if I screamed?

Then I shove the thought away. Like I thought before, there’s no point. He was always going to find me in the end. At least this way, nobody gets hurt but me.

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