Delilah paged through the journal dispassionately. The entries began several years ago, seemingly just after his pride had been killed. She wondered if it had been a form of therapy for him. There were some large gaps in time between some entries but Sam kept checking in to his journal every once in a while. He wrote about his grief, his life as a guardian of the city, his childhood, his interests, his frustration dealing with humans or even other shifters. There were also photos and postcards and various mementos placed and taped or clipped to pages throughout the book. The journal was like a hard copy of Sam Foster’s heart.
If you wanted to truly get to know him, reading his diary would be the way.
“Well, Sam,” Delilah muttered under her breath. “I hope you don’t mind deep invasions of privacy. Because I don’t see any other way.”
Yep. There was no way around it. She needed Gwen to read the diary. She had no idea if Gwen was the type to do such a thing. But regardless, it had to be done. That would be the next day’s goal, perhaps once the butler left after his visit.
“Okay, Sam,” Delilah said, getting to her feet. “This has been fun. I’ll leave you to it. See you later. And remember, I was never here.”
4
Gwen
Gwen woke up like she usually did. In the morning, her phone alarm chimed, stirring her. She groaned, crawling out of the cozy realm of sleep and then all at once she was wide awake and rolled over in her blankets, thinking of all the things she had to do that day. Immediately, patients she had scheduled came to mind. She thought of each of them while rubbing her eyes, grunting and whimpering slightly before climbing out of bed. She stopped on the way to the bathroom when she remembered Sam Foster. Her cat, Bucky, rubbed against her legs. He was a mostly all-white cat except for one gray arm and raccoon eyes. She picked him up and kissed his head, scritching him under his chin as she made her way to the bathroom and thought of Sam Foster. She could visit him again, she thought. She could go there on her lunch - in fact, that could be her new lunch spot. It was a pleasant room anyway and Sam’s window had a lovely view of Hollywood and the downtown skyline beyond it. On a very clear day, you could probably see the line of the ocean.
Gwen lived close to the hospital, in a small apartment complex on Los Feliz in East Hollywood. As far as she knew, every single person who lived in her building was either a struggling actor or a struggling screenwriter or had some kind of tie to the industry. When Gwen met new people in her neighborhood and they asked her what she did and she told them she was a physical therapist, they always blinked for a second as if the thought that she might not be in the movie business had never once occurred to them. Sometimes Gwen wondered where the other regular people were. They didn’t seem to live on her street anyway. It was a strange thought since she was a mountain lion shifter and that was hardly a “regular” thing to be. But that had never seemed as strange as being in the movie business. There was a woman who lived next door who was a professional witch, Gwen knew. She had pegged Gwen as a shifter right away and they’d hung out a few times. Gwen liked her but the two of them always seemed to be too busy to hang out much. Making friends with neighbors, as far as Gwen had always known, wasn’t common in Los Angeles. She’d grown up there. All her family’s close friends had been other shifters.
Gwen showered and dressed and fed Bucky before filling up her thermos with a decent French brew. She sang softly to herself, her mind preoccupied with thoughts of Sam Foster and what had happened to him to put him in his mysterious comatose state.
Gwen knew all about how mountain lion shifters were guardians. Typically they guarded particular regions against dark forces. Or they had a long time ago. Gwen had always known it and thought it mostly an interesting factoid about her heritage. She hadn’t known any lions herself who were guardians. It seemed a little like a human suddenly meeting a real-life knight.
She smiled to herself, imagining Sam as a real-life knight. That was what he was really. A relic of a bygone age. Or maybe there were many more shifters like him than she knew, still working at defending their lands from the powers of darkness. It wasn’t strange that Gwen wouldn’t have run into them, as assimilated as she was.
So many questions about this Sam character…
She thought again of that leather-bound book on Sam’s nightstand. It was obviously some kind of diary. If anything was going to shed some light on Sam, it was that book. Unless she happened to run into the butler on his visit.
But she couldn’t possibly read Sam’s diary. It would be way too much an invasion of privacy… Wouldn’t it?
“Or it could be the only way to find out how to wake him up,” Gwen muttered to herself. She was driving to work, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in time to Cardi B. She hummed unhappily. Was it worth such blatant snooping? Then again, who was Gwen to Sam? Just another medical professional who worked in the hospital.
That was it. Her interest was merely professional.
“Hmm…” Gwen whined and hummed, tugging on her ponytail unhappily as she considered the moral ramifications of reading the diary as she pulled into a parking spot near Phys. Rehab. She grabbed her hospital badge on its lanyard and threw it around her neck, sighing as she got out and locked her car, making her way to work.
There did not seem to be any easy answer.
Gwen went about her day. Her break didn’t align with Annie’s this time and they texted each other instead about how busy they were and how they needed a happy hour soon. On her third appointment, a twelve-year-old recovering from a car accident injury accidentally kicked Gwen in the face and then cried out of guilt and it took an extra half hour just to comfort them before she could head off for lunch, holding an ice pack to her face as she hurried to the cafeteria to get some packaged food she could take to Sam’s room.
Gwen picked out a giant chicken Caesar salad and a Coke and jogged all the way back to the ICU, wanting to take full advantage of her lunch break. She plopped down in the plastic seat beside Sam’s chair, out of breath. She noticed that the journal was now on the bed, right beside Sam, almost as if he’d just been reading it, which was impossible.
But there was a Post-It on the journal that said: READ ME
Gwen picked up the journal and frowned at Sam. “Hey, Sam. So you are comatose, right? Like you didn’t put this here because…that would be crazy.”
Sam said nothing and did not move.
“What the hell,” Gwen muttered. She set the journal aside and opened up her salad, mixing the dressing in as she sat there, still catching her breath. “I’m going to text Annie about that. I bet she did it. Although it’s a little pushier than Annie is normally but she would definitely read a patient’s diary if it was sitting there. Like that’s not even a value judgment, it’s just true. Nurses are a different breed. Anyway, hello, Sam. Good morning. Or afternoon, I guess.” She took a big bite of salad and frowned again at the journal, grabbing her phone from her pocket to text Annie.
Did u put a Post-It on Sam’s diary that says: READ ME?
Gwen put on some music, opting for some early 90s alternative this time, and went about eating her salad as she stared at Sam. It usually took Annie a few minutes at least to answer texts and she didn’t expect an instant response. Her gaze drifted over to the journal, sitting there innocently. She grabbed it and set it on the bed, looking at it as if it might suddenly sprout wings and start flying or something similar. She ate her entire salad quickly, with the speed of somebody used to ten-minute lunches, then set her salad container aside and watched her own hand reach out and open the journal. A photograph of Sam and three other men was taped to the first page. Sam looked a little younger, and he was grinning from ear to ear. He was also gorgeous. The other three men weren’t bad to look at either and they were all very fit. They looked like firemen, Gwen thought.
Under the picture was written: My Pride 1998-2014
Gwen stared at the picture a long time, wondering exactly what it meant. She knew, of course, wha
t a pride was. But she wondered at the span of time written there. Had the pride split up? Had one of them died? She chewed her lip and sipped her Coke. The urge to read the journal was intense.
“Hey, Sam,” Gwen said. “Do you care if I read your diary? I mean you don’t know me, so really…what harm can it do? Wake up right now if you do mind?” She smiled impishly. Sam did not move. “Yeah, that’s probably not fair.”
Her phone buzzed and the reply from Annie read: No! But you should read it!
Annie’s reply was about what she had expected.
“The butler!” Gwen said suddenly.
Suddenly it all made sense. Clearly, the butler had figured out that Sam had a new visitor. Maybe another nurse had mentioned seeing Gwen around since Annie hadn’t said anything about it. They must have mentioned it to the butler who perhaps wanted his charge to have a good friend in his life. Sam must have trusted him implicitly too to have some plan in place allowing for him to make medical decisions. Gwen didn’t like to think about that though, it had to mean that Sam had no family at all and perhaps no other close friends. It was too sad a thought.
So the butler intended for Gwen to read the diary, she reasoned.
And Annie thought she should read it too.
Yet she couldn’t read it and talk to Sam at the same time, which was the other entire point. For now, she set it aside and took a deep breath and started talking.
“Yeah, what is my favorite movie?” Gwen said later. She had been rambling for some time, apparently now easily able to have a one-sided conversation for a long period. She had stumbled onto the subject of movies and had hazarded guesses as to Sam’s favorites (Commando, The Fast and the Furious, perhaps Die Hard) and now she was trying to think of her own. “I like horror myself. Fantasy things. And I like terrible comedies; you should know that about me…”
She glanced at the journal again and checked the time on her phone. She was cutting it close but if she stopped talking now, she could still get a little reading in. She bit her lip and grabbed the journal.
“Alright, look, I’m going to read your diary,” Gwen said. “Because I think I’m supposed to. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t know how you couldn’t mind but I’m just going to trust in the Post-It.”
Gwen was just about to start reading and when a text came in from the receptionist in the Phys. Rehab. ward that her next appointment had suddenly canceled she found herself grinning from ear to ear. She had much more time to read now. More than an hour at least. She could get comfy now and she set the diary aside and jogged over to the courtyard to treat herself to a small caramel macchiato so she could really enjoy it. In her seat by the bed, she turned some more soothing music onto her phone and sat back, stretching out her legs and hooking her ankles, and began to read.
Sam Foster, she discovered, was born to a lion family in Los Angeles whose people had taken on the mantle of guardian against dark forces for centuries. She gleaned that quickly. The diary wasn’t a biography, but he did mention little things here and there about his childhood. He had idolized his father, who had died fighting a vampire when Sam was twelve. At seventeen, he’d joined up with a pride of guardian mountain lion shifters who he had loved like brothers. She’d figured that out from some reference to how Sam had been in the pride before…
Before they’d all been killed.
It’s still as fresh in my mind as it was the day after they were killed, Sam wrote. I still miss them just as much.
Sam wrote about small things too. He wrote about not understanding why zombie shows were popular, how he enjoyed going to the movies by himself, eavesdropping on strangers, the adrenaline rush during a fight, the satisfaction of running in the hills at sunset, his love of the city… He wrote down things he’d noticed about Arthur, his butler and trusted friend. He complained about how Arthur was always nagging him to take better care of himself. But he also talked about how lonely he was. He talked about his deep grief for his friends and his parents who had birthed him at a pretty old age and had already died too.
Sam had no one. Only Arthur. He mentioned hard-fought battles and casually wrote about the kind of feats that sounded nearly impossible and definitely terrifying. Sam, Gwen surmised, was strong and brave and wonderful. And he was as lonely as some little orphaned kid. She got the sense that he never talked about that, though. He only tried to assure Arthur he was just fine, thank you, when Arthur worried.
Gwen found herself stopping to stare at the photos of Sam and his pride mates that were pasted to some pages and stuck between others.
“You need a pal, Sam Foster,” Gwen said, and then, feeling tears well up her eyes, she said, “I am so sorry that your best friends died, Sam.” She flicked back to the beginning and read about how he and his mates had been so close, they could tell each other anything and trust each other with their lives.
I would have happily died for them, Sam had written just a year ago. I sometimes wish I’d died with them. It’s hard not to think I was supposed to. It would have been less painful than this.
“Oh my God, I’m crying,” Gwen muttered. She hadn’t even realized that tears were streaming down her face as she read about Sam’s grief and now she wiped them away and took a deep breath. “You happy now, Sam? Now I’m crying. I’m just kidding, you’re fine. Man…” She took a breath and reached for a tissue from Sam’s nightstand, blowing her nose. “I know it’s not the same but…I get lonely too sometimes. Maybe more than I let myself admit. And I haven’t saved the world a million times like you have. But…I do get attached to patients. It’s funny, I actually get attached to patients more than they get attached to me. I just get so involved in their lives and emotionally invested in their milestones and then one day, they’re done…” She laughed softly to herself and stared down at her hands. “I miss them sometimes. I know it’s nothing like what you’ve gone through but…I thought you’d like to know.”
She checked her phone again and seeing that it was nearly time to be getting back to her ward, she set the book back on the nightstand.
She crossed her arms and regarded Sam, silent and still in his bed. “I’ve run into a few mountain lion shifters here at the hospital before but never…” She frowned, studying his sharp jawline and his thick eyelashes. His eyes in photographs were a brilliant green. She’d bet they were startling in real life. She wished she could see them again. “I don’t know. It’s probably silly but I feel like…I have some kind of connection with you. I…” She slapped a hand to her forehead and laughed. “Wow, listen to me. I have a crush on the coma guy. Brilliant move, Gwen. You know what, I’m gonna go before I manage to embarrass myself further. So-”
“Hello?” An older man, thin as a reed and with a long chin and big blue eyes stared at her from the doorway. He wore a gray three-piece suit and carried a tote bag. “Do I know you, miss?”
Gwen was startled and blinked at him and said, “No.” And then realizing who it must be, she clapped her hands and got to her feet. “Oh! You must be Arthur!”
The man reeled slightly as if she had just bodily threatened him and timidly said, “Y-yes?”
“Yes,” Gwen said, nodding. “Sam’s butler. I’m so glad to meet you.”
“Are you…?” Finally, the man walked into the room and rested his tote bag on the nightstand before regarding her again. He stood up unusually straight, as if there might be a wooden pole keeping him upright. She wondered if all butlers did that. “Are you a friend of Sam’s? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, miss?”
He blinked at her owlishly and she found herself smiling at his complete lack of guile. She stepped around the bed then and held out her hand to shake his. “Well, yes. Or I mean, I’m a new friend of his, I guess. My name is Gwen. He really hasn’t had a say in the matter. My friend is a nurse here in the ICU? Annie? You’ve probably met her? She uh, sort of introduced me to Sam? I saw that he seemed to need some company? So I’ve just been um...visiting. I hope that’s alright?”
He
was a coyote shifter. She sniffed that out right away, and seeing what a contrast his human nature was to his inner coyote, she nodded, amused. Now the man smiled softly and nodded. “Oh, I see. That’s very kind of you, miss. I believe Samuel needs all the friends he can get. Most especially now. I am Arthur. I’m Samuel’s butler and his, um…his caretaker while he is unwell.”
“Right. Of course. Well, it’s nothing,” Gwen said, blushing a little. “I work here in the hospital. I’m a physical therapist. Though I could…come by and…” She cleared her throat, suddenly feeling as if she had to cover for something. “Can I ask you something, Arthur?” She held up the journal again, still sporting a little Post-It entreating somebody to read it. “Did you put this Post-It here?”
Arthur looked at it in surprise. “Why, no. How odd. I did bring his diary here with his other books. Considering the eh…nature of his status, I thought it just as likely he might suddenly wake up and he would want it close by.”
“The nature of his status,” Gwen said, nodding. “Magic, you mean?”
“Yes.” Arthur relaxed a little. “We are both shifters. I suppose we may speak freely.”
“That’s right.” She wanted to ask him so many questions. But they had only just met, and she needed to be getting back to work. She sighed and replaced the journal.
“And did you read it then?” Arthur asked, smirking just a little bit.
“Oh…um…” She cleared her throat, turning very red. “I…I…”
“Miss Gwen-”
She snorted a laugh and said, “Please just call me Gwen.”
“Gwen,” he said seriously. “I have a good feeling about you. I’m good that way. About people. Samuel has always said so, anyhow. I have been close to Samuel for a long time through his greatest heartbreaks and… Perhaps there is a reason that note is there. Perhaps it is not wrong that you should read the diary. I do know that Samuel is the greatest of men. I can’t imagine there is anything he has written in that book that he would be too embarrassed for someone to read.” Samuel looked sad then and said, “Or he shouldn’t be, anyhow.”
Awakened Alpha Page 3
