Page 147 of Priest

Eventually the nurse won and cleared the room by sheer persistence and threat of hospital authority.

That left me back where I wanted to be anyway.

At Blue’s side. Our son in her arms. The door closed against the rest of the world for one more hour.

And even with grief still waiting outside it, the room held.

45

Blue

Coming home with a newborn was beautiful, but it was not the soft-focus miracle people made it out to be.

It was holy in the strange, ordinary way only new life could be, this tiny furious person who rooted and cried and slept in uneven stretches that turned the whole apartment into a clock no one had wound right. It was also exhaustion laid over healing. Fear tucked under every quiet minute. My body hurt in places that felt impossible, and my emotions lived so close to the surface that a commercial with a dog in it nearly took me out before breakfast.

Every time Little Jax made one of his sharp noises in his sleep, my heart kicked hard against my ribs before I could remind myself he was safe.

Safe still felt like a fragile word.

Priest had been at my apartment more than anywhere else since we got home from the hospital. I had invited him back into my space before everything went sideways and had already started making room for him there again, but even now, he never forced himself into more than I offered. He didn’t push. He didn’t assume. He showed up with groceries and coffee, made bottles when I needed both hands free, changed diapers with the solemn focus of a man defusing explosives, and watched the door like danger might still be stupid enough to try it again.

That morning, Little Jax slept against my chest in a swaddle the color of storm clouds, his little mouth slack and his fists finally unclenched. I sat curled into the corner of the couch with a blanket over my legs and my hair piled somewhere on top of my head in a knot that had surrendered hours ago. Priest was in the kitchen making coffee when Lila let herself in with Evan right behind her.

One look at their faces shifted the room.

Evan still managed bright better than most people, but this morning it looked held together by stubbornness instead of instinct. Lila looked angry in the way women often do when hurt is sitting too close to the bone and they refuse to let it spill on anyone else.

“What happened?” I asked before either of them could pretend they were only stopping by.

Lila dropped her bag by the door and blew out a breath. “We got written up.”

“Written up?” Priest echoed from the kitchen.

Evan shut the door behind him and gave me a humorless smile. “That is the polite version. The less polite version is that apparently abandoning your post during a hospital lockdown is frowned upon.”

I stared at him. “You got in trouble because you went to Deacon? Because you were trying to tell him I’d been taken?”

“Among other things,” Lila muttered.

Priest came into the living room with two mugs in hand, took one look at their faces, and set both down untouched on the coffee table. “Start from the top.”

Evan glanced at Lila, who looked like she wanted to set something on fire, then answered first. “When that panicked woman ran into the ER saying she’d seen a pregnant doctor get taken outside the entrance, I was at the charge desk. I heard pregnant doctor, and there was exactly one of those I cared about. So I grabbed Lila and went upstairs.”

“To Deacon,” I said quietly.

Lila nodded. “He already knew something was wrong by the time we got there. One of the prospects with him had just gotten word from the club. Deacon was sending them to find us when we showed up.”

Priest’s jaw tightened, but he stayed quiet.

“The hospital went code purple about two minutes later,” Evan said. “Security locked the place down. The prospects planted themselves outside Deacon’s room like they owned the building, and security did not adore the aesthetic.”

“They were close to calling the cops on them,” Lila said, dropping into the armchair like standing had suddenly become too much work. “Administration was also not charmed to find out two ER staff members had left their assigned posts during a lockdown.”

I shifted Little Jax more securely against me. “Did they fire you?”

Evan gave me a look. “Blue, darling, when someone from administration asks whether you are still emotionally capable of practicing after a traumatic incident, that is not usually the prelude to a promotion.”

Lila rubbed a hand over her forehead. “They put both of us on administrative leave while they review the incident. Which means probably, yes.”