Page 8 of Tarnished Queen

I can’t actually believe it. Even when the call ends and my home screen reappears—a picture of Elise and me with complimentary green face masks from the hotel in Iceland—I keep expecting to hear Nikolai’s warm assurances through the phone. I expect him to tell me he’s coming to get me, that he’ll take care of me.

But there’s nothing.

I’m completely and totally alone.

And it’s all my fault.

I drop the phone on the bed and hug my knees to my chest. If Nikolai is too upset to talk to me, what does that mean for Elise? She could be wandering around the city completely alone. Worse, Xena could have gotten her hands on her somehow.

The relief that overwhelmed me only minutes ago has been wrenched away violently. The door opens again, and I look up as the male nurse reenters. This time, with a wheelchair.

“Am I going somewhere?” I ask.

“A room transfer, remember?”

I start to shake my head, but he busies himself rolling my blanket down to the end of the bed and making my heart monitor and IV pole mobile.

“Shouldn’t I talk to a doctor first? I’m waiting to see my doctor. After the ultrasound. I thought—”

“Your room number has been updated in the system,” he explains. “A doctor will meet us there.”

He grabs for my hand and then wrenches me awkwardly out of bed. I wince, my shoulder twinging, and he mumbles an apology.

It all feels wrong, but I don’t know what to do or who to trust. I can’t even trust myself.

I thought Xena was my friend, and she was using me the entire time. I thought Nikolai would never turn his back on me, but he wouldn’t even talk to me. Now, my mind has been literally and emotionally rattled. I’m probably just seeing trouble where there isn’t any.

So I drop carefully down into the wheelchair and let myself be wheeled out of the room.

The hospital is a flurry of movement and bright lights. No one seems to notice me being wheeled down the hallway. Until the nurse knocks my IV against a passing gurney.

“Poles go on the outside,” the passing nurse reminds him, her voice low. “We don’t want to rip out an IV.”

My nurse shifts the poles to his right side, closer to the wall, and mumbles another half-hearted apology.

Then, a few seconds later, my entire wheelchair jerks to a stop so suddenly I nearly fall forward.

“These damn brakes,” he hisses behind me. He bends down to release the brake, struggling with it for a few seconds before he stands up, adjusts his mask, and keeps moving.

With every passing second, the wrongness of this situation grows. By the time we reach the elevator at the end of the hall, my instincts are screaming at me.

“Where are you moving me to?” I ask.

“The second floor.”

“What’s on the second floor?”

The question is simple enough. One any nurse in a hospital would know. And yet, the man hesitates. “Oh. Um… Cardiotherapy?”

“Do you mean Cardiology?”

He chuckles awkwardly. “Yeah. That’s what I meant. Sorry, I’ve been on for sixteen hours. My brain is fried.”

I smile and nod, but my eyes are darting up and down the hallway, trying to gauge how quickly I could rip the IV out of my arm, jump out of my seat, and sprint down the hallway away from this man. If I do that and it turns out the nurse is a completely normal hospital employee, can I explain away my behavior as a concussion side effect? Or will I end up in a padded room with my arms strapped behind my back?

Indecision has me drumming my fingers on the arms of the wheelchair and rocking back and forth nervously.

“These elevators are so goddamn slow,” he growls, leaning around me to jab the button again a few more times.

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