As if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, the hospital staff provided their version of nesting materials for me, but they usually were left in a heap at the end of my bed. I had no energy or desire to nest and make my hospital room cozier.
I felt like a prisoner, no matter how many scratchy, scentless blankets they gave me.
Then there was my heats.
I’d never been able to have one, but they told me that if I survived that I might not ever have a heat at all as they were directly tied to my fertility.
Heats were what made an omega an omega. If I didn’t have that, what was even the point of the little omega symbol on my driver’s license or my membership to the county omega center?
I kept telling myself that it wouldn’t matter if I never had a heat. My designation had never been solely mine to have in the first place. As soon as I awakened, my father used it as a bargaining tool to win himself more political clout. The promise of an omega had lots of donors perking up and paying attention, and if I hadn’t gotten sick, then I’d probably already be on my way to the altar to marry the highest bidder.
As I circled back around to the silver lining of my predicament, I let my increasingly morose mood spur me on through the quiet halls of the hospital.
It always amazed me how quiet things got in the middle of the night. All of the hospital dramas I loved watching never prepared me for what life as a near-permanent resident would feel like. I always thought there would be much more, I don’t know, drama. You know, stumbling into an empty room to find doctors in the throes of passion or medical interns causing a ruckus.
But no. It was all pretty boring and the most exciting thing I ever saw was when one of the nurses broke up with her doctor boyfriend and he cried in the hallway. I was scolded by Dr. Stedmeyer about it whenever I brought it up because he was friends with the doctor.
My thoughts about the friendly doctor seemed to conjure his voice out of thin air, because as soon as I turned the corner and stepped into the long corridor where the offices were, I could hear him arguing with someone.
“Edison, I can’t just keep treating you like this. There are rules and regulations. I could lose my license,” I heard him say, sounding completely exasperated.
“You used to help me all the time, Eli, and you know I can’t go to the hospital the normal way,” a deep growling voice said in return. Just the sound of it made something in my stomach flutter as I crept in closer.
Dr. Stedmeyer’s office was the only one with a light on and the door was cracked open. I know I shouldn’t have, but I peeked inside, careful to stay out of the line of sight of the three people within.
“Yeah, I did help you… when we were in college when treating your bullet wounds was exciting and I lived life on the edge. There isn’t anything exciting about this,” Dr. Stedmeyer told the shirtless man in front of him. Despite his protests, it was clear he was, in fact, treating the man because he was wearing a pair of blood covered latex gloves.
“To be fair, you treated me more than him,” I heard another man joke. He was the only one I could see clearly and he cut an imposing figure as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
Dangerous, a voice in my mind whispered as I peered through the crack in the door at him. He was tall and lean with high cheekbones and neatly trimmed facial hair. The light brown hair on his head looked a bit wild, sticking up on its ends like he’d been running his fingers through it. He was handsome in the way that a knife was beautiful. Perfect to look at, but I somehow knew that he could slice me to smithereens if he really wanted to.
I watched as he shifted from one foot to the other and caught a flash of something silver underneath his brown leather jacket.
Dr. Stedmeyer scoffed at the man’s words with a shake of his head. “I remember, Rhodes, you were like a slice of Swiss cheese by graduation. The things you two do on behalf of the Keane family boggles my mind.”
Keane. I knew that name and it spelled out trouble. My father had been trying to get into their good graces for years… but everything that I’d heard about them pointed to a life of crime and danger.
“You know what they say about blood being thicker than water and all that, Eli,” the first man—Dr. Stedmeyer had called him Edison—snorted.
“Yeah, try saying that once a stray bullet knicks an artery and suddenly all that thick blood is on the floor in front of you,” Dr. Stedmeyer scolded as he dropped something metallic sounding in the metal tray on his desk, making me jump. “Seriously, I can’t keep doing this for you. I’m an oncologist for crying out loud, someone is going to find out eventually.”
“We appreciate all that you do for us, Eli, and if you wanted, the Keane family would hire you outright,” Edison’s words were low and rough, tinged by the tightness of pain from having something pulled from his body.
Dr. Stedmeyer just shook his head. “No, I like working here with the kids. Much more satisfying than patching up mobsters.”
“As one of those mobsters, I have to say that I’m offended,” Edison joked, his words harsh, but even I could tell there was no malice behind it.
I was just about to back away, my instincts telling me that this wasn’t a conversation that I should be eavesdropping on, when the door to Dr. Stedmeyer’s office was yanked open and the man who had been previously leaning against the wall was now standing in front of me and glaring at me with dark eyes.
I’d been too focused on the conversation between my doctor and the shirtless man that I hadn’t even seen him move.
“Perrie!” Dr. Stedmeyer gasped and stood up from his stool, starting to head in my direction with a frown. “What are you doing out of bed?”
I wanted to answer him, but my eyes were too busy zigzagging between the two men who were currently glaring at me.
The man in front of me was even more handsome up close, his dark brown eyes taking in my face like he was trying to decide if the skinny bald teenager in front of him was a threat.
The one behind him had a pair of the most unique gold eyes I’d ever seen. They were practically molten as he stood with a grunt and pressed a hand to what was clearly a half-bandaged gunshot wound in his chest.
“Who the hell are you and why were you spying on us?” the dark eyed man asked as he stepped in close. Even with my limited sense of smell, there was the ghost of chocolate on my tongue as he advanced towards me.
Then Dr. Stedmeyer was stepping in between us and all I could see was the back of his white coat. “Back off, Rhodes, this is one of my patients.”
Turning, Dr. Stedmeyer hustled me out of sight and back into the hall, shutting the door to his office firmly behind him.
“Who were those two?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me despite the alarm bells ringing in my head to just leave it.
“None of your business, young lady, and what have I told you about leaving your room?” he scolded, redirecting me away from the mysterious men still in his office.
“Wait a second, Eli,” the same gruff voice from before said and we both turned to find the man who’d been shirtless heading in our direction as he shrugged a dark suit jacket on.
His gold eyes found my face and seemed to measure me up. “How do I know she’s not going to say anything about us being here tonight?”
Now that he was closer, I got a better look at him. Where the other man seemed to ooze danger, this one seemed much colder, and more calculated. It was like he could look at me and see any number of outcomes from our little interaction, like he could calculate the chances of me selling him out with just a glance.
“Edison, come on,” Dr. Stedmeyer said, his expression shifting as he nervously stepped in between us again. “She’s a cancer patient. Cut her some slack.”
I wanted to reassure the strange man that even if I wanted to say something—which I didn’t—no one would ever believe me. That is, if they even came to visit in the first place.
