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Smugly, she tucked the box into his hand, carefully wrapping his fingers around it without forcing them. When his vision wavered, Janice busied herself lowering the top half of the bed to a lesser angle, fussing around him. "The doctor's orders are to rest. I'll ask one of the doctors to call in and check on you in a couple of hours when you've woken. Until then..." She had the gall to beam at him, a happy smile that guided him down the tunnelaway from reality. "Sleep well, Mr. Fairfax."
Goddamn it.
*
Archie hopped from foot to foot, sandwiched between Atticus and Connie in the elevator. One or both of them had their eagle eye on her all the damn time, so she couldn't dart off to find Jasper by herself. She counted off the floors as the elevator ascended, unsure which part of the hospital they were in this time. Parts of it looked familiar, but otherwise she was lost.
That didn't stop her from bolting as soon as the doors pinged open—only for Atticus's hand to clamp on the back of her neck gently and pull her back in. "Not yet, little bit. Unless you want to run up the last few sets of stairs to burn some of this energy off."
Energy be damned. For short stretches of time, she was learning to push the mantra out of her head. A few seconds here, a minute there. Blessed silence instead of that rhythmic chant of What the fuck. Oh fuck. Scream. Thinking of Jasper helped, and the anticipation of seeing him was like a balm on that incredibly raw and open wound in her soul.
Atticus hadn't been pleased she'd only choked down half her soup, but he hadn't pushed it. Apparently eating half and keeping it where it belonged was more desirable than eating it all and losing it twenty minutes later. He'd kept her on a semi-normal track after that—pushing her to brush her teeth and wash her face, then sitting her on the edge of his knees and combing her hair out while she rested.
A man in a trim black suit stepped onto the elevator, gave the three of them a nod, then turned his attention to his phone, scrolling through something on the screen.
Anarchy wriggled in Atticus's grasp. He'd been forced to hold her in a similar position in the parking lot at Avalon when they'd gone to get into his truck to come here, because the wave of terror had been so crippling, all she'd wanted to do was run. Not toward anyone, but away.
In the end, Atticus had physically picked her up and deposited her in the back seat, with Connie as chaperone. The Mistress had kept Archie close, humming along with the radio as snapshots of last night slapped at her. When Atticus had hit a pothole with an ominous bump-bump, Archie had damn near clawed herself out of the truck.
Connie was definitely stronger than she looked.
The elevator doors slid shut and the floor lurched, signaling their next rise to the levels above. Bouncing on her toes, she asked Atticus, "Is it this floor?" every time the next number popped up on the display, only to sag in disappointment when they kept going up.
"Okay, Archie, this is where we need to be." Atticus nudged her forward as the elevator slowed, stopped, and the doors hissed quietly open. A pair of scrubs-clad surgeons walked past, deep in conversation over a chart the taller one held in his hands. "We go left and go down a corridor to the ward."
After all the excitement of seeing Jasper, her legs suddenly didn't work. She stumbled forward with Atticus's hand on her lower back, turned when he directed her, but she was inexplicably numb. What if Jasper didn't want her to see him in whatever condition he was in? A Dominant would be weird about that, right? Big strong men didn't like being seeing as anything but big strong men.
Pffft. Jasper wouldn't care. She'd made him cry, seen him at his weakest, and it hadn't changed her opinion about him in the slightest. He was still her sadist, her Master, her lover. No one had given her a complete rundown of his injuries, so she couldn't prepare for anything gruesome, but she was sure Atticus wouldn't let her walk into Jasper's room without some warning if he'd been catastrophically wounded.
The air smelled sterile, the scent wrinkling her nose. Disinfectant was a vital part of hospital care, but it was starting to make her nervous belly churn. It helped that she had to jog along beside Atticus, his long strides eating up the vinyl floor with the confidence of a man who had his path mapped out. Connie's heels tapped out a rhythm from behind them.
The massive Master paused in front of a set of double doors, gesturing Archie and Connie ahead of him. Connie gripped Archie's hand as they walked quietly past rows of doors, following Atticus's murmured directions, but when Archie saw Liam stepping from a room, she didn't need anything else. Breaking loose of Connie's hand, she ran down the hall toward a surprised Liam, then skidded on the turn into Jasper's room.
Panting, she stared at the bed.
The blinds over the windows were down, allowing little slivers of light into the room, but otherwise it was dim. Monitors beeped quietly, and the man beneath the covers was still as death. Face pale and slack, eyes closed, Archie couldn't be sure he wasn't actually dead—only the monitors gave her any reassurance.
Hands curled over her shoulders lightly from behind. "It's okay, Archie. He's okay. He was having some pain, so the nurse gave him a shot of morphine." Liam's voice didn't rise over a murmur. "He could be sleeping for a while yet, but you can sit with him. We'll give you some time alone."
"W-What's wrong with him?" she whispered, studying the form in the bed. She couldn't see any casts that suggested broken bones, he was breathing normally without an oxygen mask, and she couldn't find anything to say what his injuries were. The only main thing she could pick up on was the IV line running under the covers.
"Has no one told you? Probably didn't want to worry you," he answered his own question immediately. "Okay, there's nothing broken. He's covered in a lot of bruises and there's some swelling here and there, but he's kind of in one piece. He has a wound on his upper thigh, which has been cleaned and stitched. The doctors aren't worried about that, so you shouldn't be either."
Anarchy pressed her lips together. She was entitled to worry, and worry she would.
"Jasper landed badly on his back, which resulted in a knock to his spine that disrupted the nerves for a while. He'll be fine, but he needs to stay here and rest for a few days. There's also the small matter of a blow to the head when he fell, giving him a concussion. Something else for the doctors to watch, but they seem really happy with his progress. I think they're taking him for a CT scan later, but that sounds like it's more of a cover their asses procedure."
They shouldn't be covering theirasses, she thought furiously, inching toward the bed. They should be at the top of their game, taking every precaution to make sure Jasper came home to her the same man he'd been. She could handle scars, she could deal with just about anything...anything but him not coming home at all.
"Can I touch him?"
"Yeah. Yeah, sweetie, of course you can. You're not going to hurt him, just mind that tube leading to his elbow."
Archie's lips twisted into a vague semblance of a smile. "He's going to be mad if they messed up his ink."
Liam rubbed his hand over her tense shoulder. "His ink is perfect, Archie. All he needs is peace and quiet, with his sub by his side. As far as I know, his prognosis is good. Our resident sadist will be back to swinging his sjambok in no time."
Her borrowed sneakers squeaked on the floor as she approached the bed. She'd had to ask Braun if she could loan some of Bodie's clothes despite the slight size difference between them. All she'd had at her disposal were the clothes she'd worn last night and, although they weren't soiled physically, she never wanted to lay eyes on them again.
