Fear lifted Rox, and she was standing. “Yes and is he okay?”
She nodded. “He’s alive. He’s out of surgery. We didn’t find a wallet on him. Are you next of kin?”
“Um, no,” Rox admitted. “We’ve worked together about three years.”
“What can you tell us about him?”
“His name is Cash van Amsberg, and we have excellent health insurance, the blue kind, and it’s the super-platinum level. I can give you my insurance card, and I can call HR to have them confirm his coverage.” Rox could be efficient in emergencies.
The woman relaxed, and her Southern accent strengthened as she said, “That would help a lot. Is he married?”
Just hearing a down-home accent was comforting, and Rox nearly teared up. “No.”
“Are you sure, sugar?”
Fair question. They did work in the entertainment industry in L.A. “I’ve worked with him for three years, and I slept over at his house last night. Didn’t see a wife or any signs of one.”
The woman laughed. “Okay. Do you know his next-of-kin?”
“I don’t think they’re in the country. He’s Dutch,” she said, as if she had known that particular piece of information longer than twenty-four hours.
“Dutch? Like tulips?” the woman asked.
“Yeah, like tulips.” Maybe Rox should learn some more about the Netherlands.
“Okay,” the woman said. “I’m going to take you back to make sure we have the right guy, and then I’m going to ask you for some information. I’m Zora.”
Rox’s Southern manners kicked in. She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Roxanne Neil, but you can call me Rox.”
Zora smiled as she shook Rox’s hand, showing white teeth behind her plum lipstick. “Call me Zora.”
Rox followed Zora through the hospital, up an elevator, and when they stood outside the room, she could hear machines before Zora even opened the door.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Rox asked.
Zora nodded. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” She was tough. Her daddy had taught her to fish and clean her catch when she was five. She could run her thumb inside the belly of a trout, rip out the jaw, and toss the innards into a bucket in one smooth move.
Zora opened the door.
This was worse.
Gauze wrapped one side of the man’s face. Swollen bruises puffed around his eyes like poker chip-sized blood blisters. Monitors beeped, and IV bags floated around him like hovering jellyfish. White sheets flowed off the bed.
Rox swallowed hard. “Cash?”
“He won’t wake up for a while. Is this Mr. Amsberg?”
So much blood caked his hair that it might have been blond or brown, and his face was so distorted from bruising and gauze.
His left side was toward them. “Can I touch him?”
Zora shrugged. “As long as it’s not something I’d have to report you to the ethics committee for.”
“Oh, no.” Rox approached him, lying so still there in the bed. “Cash, honey. I just need to make sure. You just don’t quite look like yourself today.”
His left arm was under the covers, and IV lines snaked under there. She didn’t want to lift the sheet, maybe jostling those needles in his skin.
His right arm lay on the top of the sheet, and she gently rolled his hand outward, exposing the inside of his arm.
A few scrapes traced his golden skin, but black tattoo ink traced three shields around the triangular Celtic knot. The orange one held a white lion, baring his claws. One held three flattened crowns. The last was the red and white diamond checkerboard thing. Bruises stained his skin red around the tattoo.
Oh, no.
Some little hope had lodged in her heart that the shattered man in the bed wasn’t Cash, that Cash was in some other hospital room demanding tea or lunch or his laptop, but the little light of hope flickered out.
“It’s him,” Rox said. “His full name is Casimir Friso van Amsberg, and I’ll tell you anything else I can.”
WAITING
Rox answered all of Zora’s questions the best she could and liaised with the human resources people at the law firm to establish his health insurance, but she was stumped when Zora asked again for a phone number or name or anything for Cash’s next of kin. Even HR at the law firm only had one back-up phone number, and that was Rox’s cell phone.
“Luckily,” Zora said, “we don’t have any pressing medical decisions to make. They were all obvious save-his-life-now kinds of decisions, and he’ll be able to advocate for himself soon.”
“What happened?” Rox asked.