I swallowed hard as my mind traveled involuntarily back to Ace. He'd looked like Grace did now: a broken, unnatural shadow of who he used to be. That room could have been a twin of the one I stood in now. Stale light, sparse furniture, a wall of machines whirring and beeping while they fought to keep death at bay. I sat in that room with him for twenty four hours, praying and begging anyone that would listen to save him. But it did no good. He slipped away. They always slip away.
I realized I was shaking. Not just a tremble, but an uncontrollable, body-wracking convulsion. This was a mistake. I couldn't be here. I couldn't do this again. I'd promised myself I wouldn't have to. If it were anyone else, I think maybe I'd have been okay. I could have summoned that comfortable numbness and let it all just wash over me. But I couldn't watch Grace die. Not her. I wouldn't survive that.
In a heartbeat I was through the door and then out onto the street. Joy was yelling something behind me, but it was just noise in the background. Everything inside me was at war. Guilt surged in my stomach. Leaving was a betrayal. It was the worst thing I'd ever done. I tried to will my legs to stop, but they wouldn't.
I wasn't strong enough to be there for her, just like I hadn't been strong enough to reject her, and now we were both going to pay the price.
Chapter Twenty Two
Grace
Everything hurt. For a while, that was all I was aware of. I drifted in and out of consciousness, catching snippets of the world along the way. Concerned voices, crying, people poking and prodding. I knew I should be able to put all of that together into a picture of what was happening, but my brain wasn't working properly. I felt like I were floating, and any time I tried to grasp a concrete thought it just drifted away on the wind. I wasn't even sure I was awake at all. It felt like a dream.
Time passed. I couldn't say how long. Gradually, I began to become more lucid. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a bed in a drab white room. There was a TV bolted to the wall in one corner and a bag of clear fluid hanging near my right arm. A hospital. I felt an inordinate amount of happiness that I managed to find that word.
As the fog faded from my mind, questions began to replace it. What the hell had happened to me? Despite the giddy euphoria that wrapped my mind like a warm blanket, I could tell something was seriously wrong. There was an undercurrent of pain lapping just below the surface, held at bay but not vanquished. A quick glance down at my torso confirmed my fears. At first, I felt like I were looking at someone else. My body was all bandages and bones. I almost laughed at how ridiculous it was, to think it might belong to me. I couldn't possibly be this thin, this damaged.
I tried to drag myself into a sitting position, but even that slight movement sent a lance of agony through my chest. I groaned, and then coughed. My throat felt like someone had used it to sand back a chair. Perhaps it really was my body.
A few moments later, a nurse appeared in the doorway. "Easy now," she said, striding over to check my wounds. "You've been through a lot. You need to move slowly." She was a kind looking woman of about forty, and she wore one of those genuinely compassionate smiles that seems like it would take a hurricane to remove.
"What happened?" I rasped, sounding like a lifetime smoker on her deathbed. Panic was rising in my stomach now. All I'd done was shift my body a few inches and it felt like I'd torn myself in half.
She studied me for several seconds, as if assessing how much truth I could take. "You were in an accident, but you're going to be fine. The doctor will be very happy to see you awake and talking."
That didn't ring any bells at all. The last thing I remembered was leaving my shift at The Apollo.
"How long?" I asked, feeling my eyes growing heavy. She was right. I needed to take it easy. Even the simple act of talking was exhausting.
The nurse licked her lips. "Three weeks."
Three weeks. God. That was terrifying. An entire chunk of my life effectively gone without a trace.
I sucked in a long breath and summoned what energy I had left, but everything was already dimming at the edges. "Logan?"
"I'll call your friends. In the meantime, you need to rest." She didn't sound entirely comfortable anymore but, before I could ask why, the darkness took me again.
*****
When I woke for the second time, it was to Joy's face. She sat on one of the chairs next to the bed, gazing out the window with a worried expression.
"Hey," I said.
She jumped, then her lips curled into a huge smile. "Oh my god, you're awake!" she squealed. "I mean, they told me you were, but still, oh my god!" She seemed to realize that half the hospital could hear her and took a moment to compose herself. "That is to say, hey."