“I’m glad you are.” Road noise sounded at Embry’s end. “Let me know when he’s out?”
“Of course.”
There wasn’t much else to say. We hung up before I realised I hadn’t asked about Liliana. Hope was young enough that this crisis would pass her by, but Liliana had already lived through so much that it killed me all over again to imagine how she felt right now.
I really wanted to smoke. I settled for a plastic cup of bad tea and paced the spot I’d last made contact with a nurse, anxiety keeping me battle-ready when the truth was I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept. Mateo had driven most of the day, but watching him get sicker and sicker had kept me sharp, and that barbed energy still spiked my blood.
My phone buzzed.
I glanced at it.
Rubi:What the fuck is going on?
I filled him in, praying he wouldn’t call, or get too agitated before he and Ranger got back on the road.
He did neither.
Rubi:All right, Deeky. It’s gonna be fine. Mats will boss this. Keep me posted xxx
The calm my giant friend had lacked all week sank into me. The longing for Folk still cut deep, but I believed Rubi. Mateo was tough, and he was going to be okay.
A nurse came to find me five minutes later. “He’s out. Everything’s fine. They had a blip with the anaesthetic and it took a while to bring him round, but he’s doing better now. If you wait upstairs, they’ll let you see him when he’s out of recovery.”
I gave Embry the news, leaving out the part about the anaesthetic, and settled into the longest half hour of my life. One of them, anyway. But the stress faded when I saw Mateo. Though dazed and groggy, he was grouchy enough to let me know he’d survived with his personality intact.
“That was fucking horrible.” He was already sitting up and glaring around the room with eyeballs that seemed to point in different directions. “And I lost my phone.”
“No, you didn’t.” I handed over his dead phone and the clear bag his clothes had been stuffed into when they’d put him in a surgical gown. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Mateo rubbed his mouth with a shaky hand. “I’m going home.”
“That’s not happening anytime soon.”
Mateo turned his bloodshot glower on me, but I was innocent. The comment came from a new nurse—the kind who took no shit. She made him lie down and be still, and eventually his ordeal caught up with him again.
He threw up, then fell asleep, his arm over his eyes like a drunk person with the spins.
I sat beside him, a hand on his shoulder so he knew I was there, tracking that red dot on my phone as it drew ever closer and finally came to a halt somewhere outside.
Mateo woke with a jump, and I swear to God, I heard Embry’s footsteps. I rose to meet him, slipping into the corridor, but he was a blur as he passed and I found myself with Cam instead, his dark gaze a swirling dervish of anxious calm. “All right?”
“Uh...” In the context he was asking, of course I was. It wasn’t me who’d spent the night in pain and then topped it off with surgery. But... I didn’t feel okay and I couldn’t find the energy to lie. “It’s been a long night,” I said instead.
I barely got the words out before Cam had me in a hug, and I leaned into him, grateful for his affection. Even in our darkest moments, I’d always found comfort in Cam.
He held me as long as I needed him to. Then pulled back with a searching gaze. “You should go home.”
“Like the sound of that, but I should get back to the road.”
“No fucking chance.” Cam held my shoulders in his strong grip. “Rubes has it covered, and you being there isn’t going to get those drops done any quicker. Forget about it and go home to your people.”