32. Zane

32

ZANE

I screech to the hospital, narrowly avoiding three different accidents myself. I'm only as careful as I have to be to make sure I get there in one piece.

She needs me.

Mira is alive. I know that much. Because the second he told me she was in an accident, I grabbed the cop by the front of his shirt and demanded he tell me every fucking detail.

"You can't do a damn thing from jail," Coach hissed, dragging me away from the officer. "Calm down, son."

But there is no such thing as "calm" when Mira is hurt. When I'm still ten minutes away and she needs me.

Mira is alive , I remind myself, blowing out a deep breath.

I also learned why Evan didn't answer his phone, either. He and Mira were both in the car and they both had to be rushed to the hospital from the scene. I didn't ask about the asshole who hit them because I could really care less, but apparently, the cops are still looking for them.

"He got away?" I growled.

I don't know how someone can send Mira and Evan to the hospital, yet come out okay enough to flee the scene, but I made a silent vow to hunt them down and ensure the motherfucker gets exactly what is coming to him.

At the hospital, I slam to a stop halfway up some curb and don't bother fixing it. I'm not even sure I close my car door behind me. The only thing I can think about is getting inside.

Finding Mira.

Touching Mira.

My phone buzzes and I read it as I'm running.

DANIEL: I have Aiden. I'm taking him to Reeves's house. Jemma is there and said she'd watch him.

Aiden is safe.

Mira is alive.

I repeat those facts to myself again and again as I keep sprinting down one hall after the next.

My phone buzzes again, but it isn't Daniel—it's the security system at home.

Front Door Alarm Activated.

I can only watch the recorded footage for the front door camera, not the live feed. From the glances I steal down at the footage as I take an elevator up to the fourth floor, everything looks fine. But the rest of my life is melting down around me—why not my security system, too?

I try to see the live footage again, but the app freezes and then crashes.

"Fuck!" I roar, squeezing my phone hard enough it should shatter before I decide it might be useful over the next few hours and pocket it instead.

I barely know where I am, and the letters PACU printed on the wall in thick, black font aren't helpful.

Turns out, screaming obscenities at the top of your lungs is helpful. No less than three nurses pop out of rooms and head my way. One of them is saying something into a walkie, and I'm sure security will be here within the minute.

"Mira McNeil," I growl to anyone who will listen. "I'm looking for Mira McNeil. She was in an accident. A car accident." Saying the words out loud makes me feel nauseous. When I first got to the hospital to see Daniel, I was still coming down from all the shit I took the night before. I barely remember it.

But I'm painfully sober now.

"This is the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit," one nurse says.

I stare at her blankly, waiting for her to say something useful.

"I don't need to know where I am," I snap. "I'm looking for my—" Wife sits on the tip of my tongue, but I bite it back. "Girlfriend. I'm looking for my girlfriend."

The woman shakes her head. "The PACU is for post-surgery. If she was just in an accident, she might still be in the OR. You'll have to check with the front desk."

"You shouldn't even be here," an older woman interjects. "You don't have a visitor's badge. Who let you in?"

The stairwell at the end of the hall opens and a security guard strolls in. I don't have time to wait for this to go down. I turn back the way I came, heading down to the first floor.

Another alert from the security system buzzes in my pocket, but I can't think about that now. Not when I have no idea where Mira even is.

The elevator doors open on the main floor and Jace and Owen are standing there like they're waiting for me.

"Well?" Jace asks.

I throw up my hands. "I have no fucking idea. I can't find her. Or Evan."

"Hospitals and their fookin' useless policies," Owen mumbles as he stomps towards the front desk.

I move to follow him, but Jace grabs my shoulder. "Have you heard anything at all? Coach mentioned something, but no one knows what's going on."

"There was an accident. Mira and Evan were brought here." The weight of everything I don't know sits heavy on my chest. It's hard to breathe. "That's it. That's all I have."

"They're going to be fine." Jace has no way of knowing that, but fucking hell, I want to believe him. "It's going to be fine. Daniel dropped Aiden off with Reeves and Jemma, and then he'll be here. We're all going to be here."

It's nice of him, but it doesn't help right now. There's only one person I want to see.

"She's his lassie!" Owen barks at the stiff-backed elderly woman manning the front desk. "Who else would you tell about her condition?"

The woman presses her thin lips into a firm line. "I can only talk to her family."

"She doesn't have any family." I hurry over and place my palms on her desk. "Her parents are gone, no siblings. I'm all she has. Please."

The woman stares at me for a heavy second… then she checks her computer and writes something down on a slip of paper. She doesn't look up as she passes it to me. "I can't give you any information since you are not family. It goes against hospital policy."

On the piece of paper is a room number.

I'm so grateful I could kiss this woman, but there isn't time. I hustle down the hallway, tossing a hurried thanks over my shoulder.

Mira is alive.

She'll be okay.

She has to be okay.

Mira is not okay.

If she was okay, she wouldn't be lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

If she was okay, I wouldn't be on the phone with Rachelle's sister, who happens to be a nurse, going over the blurry photos I sent her of Mira's medical chart.

I pace up and down the narrow space at the foot of Mira's bed, my phone glued to my ear. "The nurses won't tell me shit and I haven't even seen a doctor yet."

"That's a good thing," Rachelle's sister says. I think her name is Kate or Katie or Kathleen. She said it, but I wasn't listening. "If the doctor isn't around, it means there are more serious patients to attend to. And based on her chart, it looks like she's just there for observation."

I glance back at the bed and it physically hurts. Seeing her in the bed, her cheek sliced open, her hands limp at her sides… it aches. "I'm observing her and she's fucking unconscious. Shouldn't someone be doing something about that?"

"I'm sure the first thing they did when she arrived was check her for signs of a traumatic brain injury. That's why she's still there for observation. They'll want to wait until she wakes up to make sure nothing is seriously wrong."

Someone plowed into Mira and got away, while she's unconscious in the hospital. The fuck isn't "seriously wrong" about that?

Katie, or whatever her name is, assures me she doesn't see anything alarming in Mira's chart. I try to let her confidence reassure me, but it doesn't do shit.

I move a chair to the edge of the bed and take Mira's hand in mine. Her fingers are cold, and I curl my hands around them, blowing warm air over her skin again and again.

"You're going to be fine," I whisper. "You just have to wake up."

After a few minutes, her eyelids twitch and my heart jolts. I lean forward, studying her face. "Mira?"

Nothing. No movement. Just the soft, steady sound of her breathing.

I drop back into the uncomfortable chair next to her bed just as the door flies open.

"Evan is awake." Daniel waves me towards the door, his every movement frantic. "You go talk to him. I'll stay here with Mira. Go, go."

Evan is just down the hall. I jog to his room.

There's a pretty, dark-haired nurse taking his blood pressure. The cuff is wrapped around the arm not covered in scrapes and purpling bruises. Even with all that, Evan doesn't look like he's in pain.

"You look healthy to me," she's telling him. "Most people I see in an accident like that are more banged up from the airbags, but you're so big…" Maybe I'm imagining things, but it looks like the nurse's hands linger around his arm as she removes the blood pressure cuff.

He gives her a warm smile. "I count myself lucky."

The nurse notices me and steps back guiltily from Evan's bed. "Looks like you have a visitor. I'll leave you two alone."

If Evan is sad to see his pretty nurse go, he doesn't show it. The only thing on his face is guilt. Before I can say anything, he dips his head.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry, Zane. I shouldn't have let her drive."

"The police said the accident wasn't her fault."

"It wasn't," he agrees. "The light was green and Mira was doing fine, but I would've been more alert if I was driving. Maybe I would have seen the car coming. I could have gotten us out of the way."

"No offense, Evan, but I saw a picture of the car." The mangled metal took me right back to that night four years ago. To the blood on my leather interior. The smell of oil and gas in the air. "It hit on the passenger side. If you'd been driving, it would have been Mira sitting in the passenger seat."

I don't need to explicitly say that I'm glad it was him and not Mira. I'm glad he's okay, too, but if I had to choose…

Evan thinks that over and blows out a heavy breath. "You're right. It could have been so much worse."

"Did you see who it was?" I ask. "The other driver?"

He shakes his head. "I didn't see a fucking thing. We were driving and then—lights out. I was telling Mira—" Evan's eyes go wide. "Shit, I was telling Mira about Dante. It was Dante ."

I stiffen. "In the other car?"

"No. Or, maybe. I don't know." He waves his hands like he's scattering a swarm of gnats around his head. "But it was Dante at the gym. I'd just gotten the call from the security guy at the gym that Dante was on camera. He was inside the gym. Inside the women's locker room."

I knew that was the most likely possibility, but I still didn't want to believe it. I wanted to cling to what little hope there was that Dante would move on and leave Mira alone.

Before I can come up with anything more profound to say, my phone buzzes. It's the damn security system again. Front Door Alarm Activated.

I'm about to swipe away the notification for the third time when I realize…

"What is it?" Evan asks, on high alert even from his hospital bed.

Maybe none of this is an accident.

"Nothing. Rest up," I tell him, hurrying out of his room.

Owen catches me just outside the door. "Whoa there. Moving quick for someone with no place to go. Your lady is still asleep."

"The alarm at the house keeps going off. Mira's brother is in town and I have to—" I look from my phone to Mira's hospital room down the hall. I can't be in two places at once, but fuck, do I want to be.

"You want it checked out?" Owen asks. Before I can nod, he grabs his keys from his pocket. "I'll go take a look."

"Owen, no. It should be me."

If only so I can be the one to wring Dante's neck and end this for Mira. I want it to be me.

"Don't argue with me, son. You should be in there with your heart." He jabs a finger at Mira's room. His scowl doesn't match his uncharacteristically soft words. "You need to be the face she sees when she wakes up."

I want to argue, but I can't. I know he's right. Already, I'm inching towards Mira's door, drawn towards her.

"If you notice anything weird at all, call the police," I tell him. "Don't go in there alone, O. It isn't worth it."

Owen looks me over slowly from head to toe. His lip curls as he ambles past me and remarks with his trademark brand of withering, scornful love, "Oh, fuck off, Zane. Don't tell me what to do."