“Shoulda seen me last night,” she muttered, raising her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry. What?” He blinked and leaned forward, but he just couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the ring of safety pins studded through her shirt collar.
“I’m here to see a friend.”
The guy’s eyes lifted and settled on her lip ring before he cleared his throat. “Your friend’s a patient here?”
“Yeah. Ember Gaderow. They admitted her last night.”
“Sure.” The receptionist met her gaze and nodded.
Guess they don’t see the same kinda horrors over here as in the ER.
Cheyenne pointed at the outdated computer monitor between them. “I don’t know what room she’s in, so could you…”
“Huh?”
“Look her up? Please and thank you.”
“Right. Right, sorry.” The man blinked and got to typing.
Wow. People still get jobs typing that slow?
“Ember…what was the last name?”
“Gaderow.” Cheyenne shifted her weight onto one leg and folded her arms.
“Date of birth?”
“Really?”
Her reaction startled him. “Well, I mean, I need it for the system.”
Cheyenne glanced at the ceiling and tried to remember. “Yeah, it’s March twenty-sixth. Two thousand one.”
The keys clicked with agonizing slowness beneath the guy’s not-so-nimble fingers. His eyes widened when he pulled up the next screen.
Here it comes. Say it.
“And your name?”
“Cheyenne.” She unfolded her arms and stuck her hands in her pockets, but they both knew he was waiting for her to give him her full name. “Yeah, Cheyenne Summerlin. I know you’re looking at my name right now. So, can you just tell me what room she’s in?”
The receptionist cocked his head and looked from his screen to Cheyenne and back again. His mouth opened without sound before he found his voice on the third or fourth try. “Room 218.”
“Cool.” She nodded and stepped away from the front desk.
“Would you like a map, Ms. Summerlin? Or directions to—”
“You know what…” Cheyenne leaned toward the desk to read the name on the badge that hung from a lanyard around his neck. “Toby? I’m good.”
“Well…”
She made haste, not wanting to let that mess of a conversation go on any longer. My last name doesn’t make me any less capable of reading the freakin’ signs.
And the signs were everywhere, pointing with large, colorful letters down the various branching hallways. Cheyenne double-timed it toward the ICU. She passed room after room, the doors closed for privacy. Then she stopped in front of Room 218, also with a closed door, and took a heavy breath. The handle turned beneath her fingers, and she slipped into a room darkened by drawn curtains over the windows.
The bed was against the right-hand wall, just like all the monitors beside it, blinking their different-colored lights and reaching out with cords and tubes and cables like so many fingers. Just to keep her lying there like that.
Cheyenne didn’t need to look at the heart rate monitor or study the rise and fall of the green light flashing across the screen. She could hear her friend’s heartbeat, still slow but stronger than it had been the night before.
She crossed the room while staring at the thin form beneath the hospital-issue sheets. Ember looked more dead than alive, lying on her back with her head sunken into the pillow, both arms straight at her sides above the comforter. Cheyenne caught the glint of a metal contraption peeking out from beneath the covers and refused to inspect it. The oxygen tube in Ember’s nose made Cheyenne think of her mom’s next-door neighbor—if they could call twenty acres between houses next door. Ms. Master had been a smoker for forty years and did all her gardening, grocery shopping, laundry-hanging, and general existing with a tube like that strapped to her nose. She wheeled the oxygen tank around with her everywhere.
Ember looked worse.
Swallowing, Cheyenne took another few steps toward the bed. “Em?”
The door opened, spilling light from the hallway into the dim hospital room. “Oh. Hello.”
Cheyenne eyed the blond doctor, who appeared to be somewhere in his late thirties—tall, rail-thin, with huge, round lenses in thick black frames. “How’s she doing?”
“I’m Dr. Andrews.” He stepped forward, tucked a clunky laptop under one arm and extended a hand.
Cheyenne’s eyebrows flicked together. “I know she went into surgery. So how is she?”
Dr. Andrews lowered his hand and nodded. “The surgery went well. Stopped the internal bleeding, got her vitals up where we want them. She hasn’t spent a lot of time awake. And she still has a long road ahead toward recovery.”
Cheyenne wanted to yell at him to just spit it out and tell her what she suspected. She could smell his discomfort. I should’ve gone online to check their notes. This guy’s not gonna tell me anything. “Full recovery?”
“We hope so.” The doctor nodded and stepped toward the bed to check the monitors. He shot her a hesitant glance before opening the computer and clicking around. “She has everything she needs.”
“But you’re not sure about a full recovery?”
“I’m sorry. Are you related to Ms. Gaderow?”
“No.” These people and their family rules. “Just a friend who’s on her visitor’s list.”
“Sure. Well, I can’t discuss anything else about your friend’s condition without her—”
“Without her permission, I know. And she’s not waking up to sign paperwork.” Cheyenne studied the slow rise and fall of Ember’s chest beneath the thin, dark-blue comforter. “Look, she doesn’t have any family here. They’re in Chicago, and I don’t know how to get ahold of them.”
“I see.” Dr. Andrews nodded, typed a few more things into the hospital laptop, and closed it. “Are you the only person who knows she’s here?”
“I’m the only person who tried to help her.” She swallowed the thick, dry wad of frustration in her throat and considered sticking the other earbud into her ear
