Page 25 of Never Give Up

“No.” A stern voice sounds off in the hall right outside my door, where I know the deputies and Birch PD officers have been taking turns standing watch. “You can’t see her right now.”

Straining, I can’t quite hear the response, and I almost tumble out of the bed in my attempt.

“I mean it, Brian.” Paul’s voice rings clear. “She’s barely alive. She’s hurt. And she’s not in any position to tell you to go to hell if that’s what she wants to do.”

“I need to see her.”

Silence.

My heart kicks up a beat, and I listen as the machine at my side rats me out, increasing in tempo.

“Shh,” I tell it needlessly. “You’re going to get us caught.”

“Maya.”

“Ack.” If there weren’t rails on the hospital bed, I would have fallen off the side and onto my ass at the intrusion. “What the hell?”

“I know you’re listening.” Paul, my boss’s counterpart, the chief deputy of the Birch County Sheriff’s Department, is standing there watching me with wary eyes. “Do you want to see him?”

He doesn’t tell me whohimis.

Was I just that bad at hiding my feelings?

“Yes.” He answers a question I hadn’t realized I asked aloud.

“Oh poop.” I blush scarlet, which is odd considering how many people have seen my exposed parts.

I blame it on the drugs pumping through my system. There’s no way I’d just blurt out the word poop otherwise.

“Yes,” I say before I chicken out. “I’ll see him.”

Paul watches me hesitantly for a second before shaking his head. “How high are you?”

I wave my casted arm in the air. “High enough that this doesn’t hurt anymore.” The smile on my face feels real, not forced like every single one I’ve offered the nurses and doctors who have come to check on me.

Everything freezes when I see the man step into the room behind him.

Everything except the stupid machine next to me that’s announcing my elevated heart rate to the room.

“Maya.”

Brian doesn’t step past Paul, and for a second all of the feelings I’ve been holding back threaten to overwhelm me.

“See?” I tell him with a sad smile. “I told you I’d be fine.”

That breaks the wall between us. Step by step, Brian moves closer until he’s clutching the rail on the side of my hospital bed like a lifeline.

Paul’s gone, or maybe I just can’t see him behind Brian. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.

“Why are you here?”

I can’t look away. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Instead, I silently beg him to leave. To let me rest.

Because I’m weak.

So weak.

I’m barely holding on, and if he wasn’t standing on the side of my bed where I have an arm pretty much pressed against my chest in the temporary cast they put on, I might be reaching for his hand.

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