I check it again because I've been checking it every few minutes and I can't stop.
No calls since the one that said he got him and was coming home.
Bex was with me when it came through.
She listened to my side of the conversation, didn't speak, and pressed her forehead against the side of my arm.
She's already been to see Banshee a couple of times, but keeps coming back to check on me.
She's down the hall again now because his nurse paged her when he started coming around from the anesthesia.
I'm alone in the room. I turn my left hand on the blanket and look at the ring on my finger.
A gold band, two small dark green emeralds, the two-carat diamond Rogue's mother put in her son's palm.
There's blood under the band that the nurses couldn't get to without taking the ring off.
I wouldn't let them take it off.
I told the charge nurse that the ring stays on this hand until the man who put it there sees me.
She didn't argue with me. She washed around it.
* * *
The door of the room opens suddenly, and Bex comes through with her hand on her belly.
She's still in the bloody t-shirt that's been on her since the kitchen this morning.
Marlena's blood across the front of the cotton.
Thunder's blood on the side where her belly rested against his thigh when she was holding pressure.
Some of Banshee's blood from when she went to him in the surgical waiting room and they let her sit with him for the few minutes he was conscious before they wheeled him in.
She sits down in the chair next to my bed and her hand stays on her belly.
I turn my head on the pillow toward her. "He awake?"
Her eyes find mine. "He was for a minute," she says. "He saw me. Said my name. Asked about the baby. I told him the baby was fine. Then his eyes went again."
She pulls her hand off her belly and reaches for mine across the blanket.
I take it.
Her fingers are cold. Her hand is one of the strongest hands I know.
"He's gonna sleep a while," she says, her thumb moving across my knuckles. "His nurse said he's stable. The shot went through clean. The surgeon said he was lucky."
I squeeze her hand. "You don't have to be in here with me, Bex."
She looks at me steady, her jaw setting the way it does. "I'm in here with you until your man comes through that door, Hadley. Don't say that again."
I don't say it again.
We sit and hold hands across the bed.
The IV ticks above me.