Page 160 of Death is Familiar

It was a man’s voice. Professional. Familiar. Yet, not familiar enough for me to place.

“What do you mean she’s not in there?” The second voice was Jack. “One of us was on the door at all times. Where would she have gone?”

“The sheets are missing, maybe she Rapunzelled out.”

Despite how tired I’d been, and how much my body yearned for sleep, it didn’t come. I’d tossed and turned all night. My passenger pressed on my bladder. The room felt too large, the bed so wide I felt exposed, and my hopes of sleeping in a real bed were dashed as I’d ended up in a nest of blankets on the floor between the mattress and the wall on the side opposite the door.

I popped my frizzled bedhead up to find Jack standing next to Jerome. “Who’s not in where?”

“Jesus, Delilah.” Jack clutched his chest, his brow relaxed then knit together. “Why were you sleeping on the floor?”

“Why did you randomly barge in at—” I looked at the clock, blinking the blur away from my vision. “One?”

“In the afternoon, if you’re wondering.” Jerome, toting a bag of rattling equipment, made his way matter-of-factly across the room. “Now, let’s get you up onto the bed and so we can give you a checkup.”

Still wrapped in blankets, I had no intention of leaving the comfort of my blankety nest to get subjected to more tests. “Yeah, I’ll pass.”

“I wasn’t asking.” Jerome patted the bed. “Up.”

Not moving, I watched Jack hover by the doorway, wondering if he’d called Jerome before or after my declaration of rejoining the vamp case.

“Jack, out,” Jerome ordered. There was a brief stare down between the two, before Jack relented, closing the door over behind him. “Okay, now, up.”

“I appreciate the effort you made for whatever this is, but I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you.”

“Delilah, you were checked out of the hospital against medical advice. Now, I cancelled all of my appointments and drove five hours at Jack’s behest to make sure you were okay, so if you won’t do this for me, or for you, think of someone else and do it for them.”

“You just dropped everything and came because Jack asked you to?” I wasn’t jealous. Jack and I might have had feelings for each other, and acted on those feelings once, almost twice, but Jack could do what he wanted with whoever he wanted. My hesitancy came from what I knew of Jack and Jerome’s relationship, and that it had been tumultuous.

Jerome sighed. “He’s a bad habit. I can’t bring myself to say no when he asks. Even if we are better off apart.”

“He can be kind of convincing,” I offered.

“And hard-headed.”

“And over-bearing.”

“And fixated.”

“And overconfident.”

“And now, I’m going to need you to get up on the bed for me so we can get you checked out.” He got me there.

Shuffling in my sheets, I slowly got to my feet. “I think you’ll find there’s more of me than you’re expecting.” I dropped the bedspread before sitting next to Jerome.

“Jack usually brings me his friends when they are missing pieces. Not the other way round.” Jerome pulled a stethoscope out of his bag and wrapped it around his neck, not looking the least bit surprised. “How are you feeling?”

“That depends… Did Jack bring you here to convince me not to go back in the field?”

“What do you think?” Jerome warmed up his hands then donned some gloves. “Bad habits aside, what Jack wants won’t sway my medical opinion.”

That was good enough for me. So, I told him the truth, as he did a quick series of tests, expressing concern over the scarring on my stomach and any pain I may have been experiencing due to my passenger.

I must have passed the exam satisfactorily because he abruptly handed me a prescription bottle and said, “Take these for the next week, they’re perfectly safe in your condition, and it will keep the infection at bay. I don’t see any reason to keep you out of the field, so long as the right protections are in place.”

Jerome carefully packed the equipment into his bag, hemming and hawing before making to leave. “I warned you to be careful, Delilah. Jack has a way of getting people into trouble.”

“Is this your way of saying I told you so?”