They let go of each other and Darien twisted around so that he could sit on the edge of her bed and look at her. Her face was bruised, especially around the nose and her right eye. There were several small cuts on her arms and cheeks as well, but he didn’t see any signs of further injury. She reached out with a hand and brushed his bangs out of his face.
“You look like crap.”
Darien laughed hard enough to feel where his ribs were bruised. He grabbed her hand and drew it around so the he could kiss it.
“Hi, pot. Nice to meet you. I’m kettle.”
Susan grinned and leaned forward so that she could wrap her arms around Darien once again. She pulled him close and he just held her, enjoying the sensation of feeling her breathe. Her shoulders shuddered once and he felt a small streak of wetness against the side of his face. It matched the pools forming in his own eyes. She whispered so that he had to strain to hear her.
“I’m glad you’re okay. With the accident…”
She didn’t need to finish the thought. Darien felt the same way. Words seemed pointless, so he responded by squeezing her tighter until she sucked in a bit of breath. They let go of each other and Susan reached up to rub at her cheek.
“Did you talk to Agent Clements yet?” Susan asked.
“I did. She came by and told me what happened. I take it you already got the speech?” When Susan nodded, Darien stole a quick glance over his shoulder. The nurse was still in the room, so he bit back his concerns about what this would mean. He didn’t know if Susan saw the gesture, but she placed her hand on his leg.
“We’ll figure it all out later. Right now I’m just glad we’re both alive and not broken.”
He just hoped they figured it out before it was too late.
Chapter 9
For three days Darien saw little more than the hospital room, the cafeteria, Susan’s room, and the hallways between them. The doctor told him that he was healing incredibly quickly, and Darien was glad for that. The only injury that felt like it was holding him back was his shoulder. He could lift his arm, but if he went past his head, the pain would flare and force him to drop it. Carrying things with his left arm was also an impossibility. At least the pain in his neck and back had subsided.
As it turned out, Susan fared better than him during the crash. While she could match him in lacerations and bruising, she didn’t have any injuries that required any more care than pain meds and stitches. By the third day, she was pacing around Darien’s room when a physical therapist came in to work on manipulating his shoulder. Her hand strayed up to her mouth and she chewed on her thumb as she made another lap.
They still had not had a chance to talk in private. Whenever either one left their rooms, a nurse came along to act as an escort. Their pretense was to make sure that someone was around if either of them needed anything while they were away from the relative safety of their beds. Given that the doctor had admitted they were both well past the point of danger, Darien was confident the nurse’s primary function was actually to keep an eye on them for their own purposes.
Neither of them had tried to sneak out of their rooms as of yet. Darien thought it was a moot point. On the occasions where he left his room, he noted that the hallways were decorated with multiple indiscrete cameras. There was always a camera in every corner, and multiple hallways had another camera or two hanging on the wall. If they even tried to leave, he was sure they’d be noticed within a matter of seconds.
When the doctor came in for his daily checkup that day, Darien couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice.
“How long are you going to keep us here? Other than the shoulder, I’m as good as I’m going to get, and Susan’s doing just fine. We need to get out. Are we prisoners or something?”
The doctor gave a brief nod of acknowledgment and then proceeded to continue with his exam. As he spoke, he picked up Darien’s left arm and manipulated it, checking the range of motion and seeing how far it could move before Darien would wince or suck in air.
“As I’m sure you can appreciate, that’s not something that I can answer. You’ll need to speak with Agent Clements or one of the others on her team about that. I’ve submitted my medical report and as long as you keep regular physical therapy appointments, I’m convinced there’s no more reason to keep you here. I have other patients who could use these beds more than you at the moment. Unfortunately, we’re both at the will of my superiors.”
“Don’t you run the hospital? If you say we’re good to go, can’t you release us into the care of some MPs or something?”
“The department that Agent Clements reports to follows a different set of rules and has a different command structure, I’m afraid. If you were part of the military, or even under their purview, I could do something like that. However, her department is granted certain exceptions to standard operating procedure.”
Now that the doctor had released his arm, Darien rolled it a few times forward and backward, loosening it up. It was getting better, but still felt like it wasn’t moving quite right. As he stretched it, he looked at the doctor. The other man was jotting a few notes down on his ever-present clipboard in a scribble that Darien couldn’t make out. When he finished, he looked up and met Darien’s waiting gaze.
“Is there anything else?”
“What do you know about that department?”
The doctor swallowed, a motion that Darien couldn’t help but notice. He also shifted his weight back on his heels and rocked a bit from one foot to the other. But throughout it all, his face remained impassive. The indicators were so slight that Darien would have missed them completely if he hadn’t been specifically watching for a reaction.
“I’m sure you can understand that I’m not at liberty to discuss such things with a civilian. Not that there is much to share. I can tell you that Agent Clements and Agent Rose are both staying on site in the barracks. I’m sure it won’t take long for one of them to respond to my report. Is that all?”
Darien nodded and the doctor walked out, leaving him alone in the unadorned room. There was nothing else to do, but wait. Of course, if he wanted to go exploring, he could always shift. It didn’t seem like the doctors or nurses here were aware of his abilities. Even with the cameras, that was something he could probably get away with. It would give him a chance to see what was going on without the burden of an escort. He would just have to make sure that he didn’t shift in front of a camera. True, it was a risk, but so was staying here without getting any information. And the latter option was driving both him and Susan insane with cabin fever.
His decision made, Darien walked over to the door. He put his ear against it, trying to hear what was going on in the hallway. True to form, Doctor Hughes went next door to check on Susan next. His visit with her was brief and it wasn’t long before Darien heard the door open again. The doctor was talking in the hallway but Darien couldn’t tell if it was to a nurse or to Susan. It didn’t matter. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes.
Darien expected the shift to be difficult, like it was when he first learned. Given the lack of practice lately, he expected it to take several breaths before he could change his shape. That was not the case. Even before he finished his first exhale, he felt the tingling throughout his body that was an indicator of his new skin. Darien opened his eyes and saw that it looked like the room had grown hundreds of times larger. To a flea, the world was made of enormous proportions. The most important change was the gap between the door and the floor that he could easily crawl through.
Once he was in the hallway, he saw Doctor Hughes standing in Susan’s doorway talking to her with his hand on the handle. One of their nurses stood behind him, waiting for him to finish. Darien jumped, landing on the pants leg of the doctor and grabbing onto the fabric with his legs. His front left leg burned in response, so he let it hang limp and held on with his other five.
“As I explained to Mister Yost, I have already submitted my medical report and anticipate your release as soon as
possible. I have no intention of keeping you here any longer than necessary. In the meantime, I will make sure that you are given free access to the physical therapy ward. At the least, the exercise should help with the healing and release some of your anxiousness. Have a good day, Miss Price.”
The doctor closed the door and the heavy latch clicked into place with a thud. With the first few steps that the doctor took, Darien tensed and held on tight as the world blurred by at what felt like near impossible speeds. He had forgotten how different things could look from another creature’s perspective. He relished the moment, chuckling as some part of his brain expected gale force winds based on what his eyes saw, but only a simple breeze brushed over his body. Darien crawled up the leg, settling in near the doctor’s hip where the speed and motion were less noticeable.
As they walked down the hallway, Darien looked around them, but had trouble seeing anything noteworthy. It looked just like any other hospital, and at first they were only in hallways that he had already seen. Doctor Hughes made a quick stop at the nurse’s desk just around the corner from Darien’s room. He picked up a few folders from one of the hangers on the wall, tucking them under his clipboard. Then they were on the move again, this time heading in a direction Darien had never been.
They passed through a few doors, the doctor unaware of his unexpected companion, until they came to an office. There was a large mahogany desk near one wall, with two large windows behind it looking out over a large parking lot. Sunlight streamed in through the blinds, making this room just a bit warmer than the hall outside. A laptop rested in the center of the desk, connected to a docking station. Bookcases lined the walls, shelves bowing a bit from the sheer weight of so many medical texts.
Doctor Hughes dropped the pile of documents on the edge of his desk and dropped into the leather chair. He leaned back and closed his eyes with his face pointed at the ceiling. Reaching up, he pinched his nose and let out a long sigh. After a few seconds, he leaned forward and turned on his computer. While it was booting up, he sifted through the files, pulling one out and opening it up next to his workstation.
Now that he had gotten out of his room, Darien wasn’t sure what he should do. It wasn’t like he could shift back into his human form in front of Doctor Hughes. He wasn’t even sure if the doctor knew about shifters and what they could do. Not to mention there’d be ramifications for sneaking out unescorted. On the other hand, he had no interest in watching the doctor type up his medical notes. He could almost hear Susan chastising him for a half-baked plan that was liable to just cause more trouble than good.
Climbing up the doctor’s coat and around to the back, Darien was able to get a good view of the window. He jumped, soaring through the air and passing through two of the blinds. He slid across the smooth surface, kicking up dust that even he had trouble seeing. Then he was falling and hit the ground on his back. The impact surprised him, but didn’t hurt. Darien righted himself and crawled up over the bottom frame of the window to get a better peek through the glass.
The large parking lot outside ended after ten rows. About half of the spots were filled with regular vehicles, but he did see a military style transport truck parked across two spaces. Just past the parking lot was a road that ran out of his field of vision in either direction. On the other side of the road was a large garage. It was easily three stories tall and wide enough to house an entire football field, maybe more than one. The only reason he knew it wasn’t a hangar was because the doors were open and he saw people working on trucks, jeeps, and a single tank. If he had any reason to doubt Agent Clements, this provided pretty good evidence to support her claim.
Off to one side, almost out of his field of vision, Darien saw the start of a collection of office buildings of some sort. Beyond that, he saw trees. Lots of thick trees that made it impossible to tell how deep they ran. There was probably a fence out there somewhere, but who knew how far away it was. It would be good to have that information, just in case he and Susan needed to make a quick exit.
A high-pitched buzzing ring caught his attention, so Darien whipped around and climbed across one of the blinds. Doctor Hughes reached into his coat pocket and picked up his cell phone. He put it on the desk and tapped the screen to turn on the speaker while he continued to transcribe his scribbles.
“Hello?”
“Doctor Hughes? Agents Amber Rose and Callie Clements are here to see you. They have a release form for two of your patients.”
“Wonderful. Tell them I’ll be right out.”
Chapter 10
Darien’s pulse spiked as Doctor Hughes put his cell phone back in his pocket. He needed to get back to his room, and before either of the agents entered. There was no way he could race them back and arrive before them, not in his current form. He wasn’t even sure he knew the path to take to get back. And if he shifted into something capable of making the trip fast enough, he’d be caught on camera.
His mind tumbled over the possibilities as the doctor finished up the report he was writing and latched the cover of his laptop shut. Darien jumped onto the doctor to hitch a ride once again. It was better than being left behind. Once again the halls traveled by in a blur of color as they navigated a route that he couldn’t possibly remember. Darien tried to look around at signs on the edges of halls or beside doorways, but they were a blur as they navigated the hospital.
When they pulled to a stop, Darien saw the two agents in the waiting room. Callie sat in a chair and had her hands clasped in front of her as she rested there. Her eyes were drawn to the doctor as soon as he entered. Amber walked around with a bounce in her step, pausing only to kneel on one of the chairs and look out the window. The momentary pause didn’t last long as she soon grabbed the arms of the chair and rocked back and forth, causing the metal rods of the chair to thud against the solid floor, the thin carpet doing little to dull the sound.
“Good morning, Doctor Hughes. We received your report earlier today. Just to verify, you believe that both Miss Price and Mister Yost are cleared for release? They are important assets, so we want to make sure.”
When Callie spoke, Amber whipped around and jumped off the chair she was rocking in. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and offered a playful smile to the doctor. He didn’t even glance in her direction, which after a few moments caused her to give up the attempt and pout. It didn’t last long before she returned to her normal playful nature.
“Yes. Between the two of them, there was only one major injury and that was Mister Yost’s left shoulder. He suffered a large amount of concussive force to that area, but it has been healing well and the swelling has gone down over the last couple of days. Given how fast he has regained mobility, I feel comfortable with releasing him under a prescription level of anti-inflammatories and regular physical therapy sessions.”
“Sounds great. Then let’s take the two of them out of here. I bet they’re going stir crazy as it is.”
Amber walked past the doctor and started making her way down the hall without waiting for either of the others to follow. Callie offered a mixture of a growl and a sigh then held out her hand and gestured down the hall. The doctor nodded and turned around to catch up to and eventually pass Amber, leading the way to Darien’s room.
During the walk, they chatted, but Darien couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying. He was trying to figure out how he was going to get back into his room before they noticed he was missing. Maybe he’d get lucky and they’d decide to check on Susan first. Of course, given that they were primarily interested in him because he was a Sheynan, that seemed unlikely. She was important to them primarily because of her connection with him.
Just as they were turning down a hall that Darien recognized, the one leading to his room, an idea took root in his brain. When the doctor paused in front of the door, Darien jumped off and scurried underneath the door jam. The door swung open over his head as he took a hard turn to the right and headed in the direction of the bathroom. It felt
like a marathon as he sprinted across the few feet in his tiny body, trying to cover the distance as fast as possible.
“Mister Yost?”
“Where is he?”
“I thought you had him watched!”
Darien scurried underneath the door to the bathroom and shifted as soon as he was clear of the metal plate lining the bottom of the portal. His breath came in ragged gasps, but he reached out and flushed the toilet right away, struggling to get his breathing under control before he dared to respond. Then he turned on the water in the sink, let it run for a few seconds and then splashed some on his face and wiped his hands. Grabbing some paper towels he patted his face dry and looked in the mirror before turning around.
Most of the flush had gone from his face and his breathing was once again under control. Darien turned off the water and walked out of the bathroom, using the paper towels to wipe the back of his neck as he entered the treatment room.
“Sorry, but when Mother Nature calls, there’s really not much you can do but answer. I also thought it might be a bit inappropriate to have a conversation while I was otherwise indisposed.”
He offered up a grin which Amber readily returned. Callie offered a smile, but it felt weak and forced. Doctor Hughes held out his hand to indicate the two agents.
“Agent Rose and Agent Clements will be escorting you out of the facility. I’m glad to say that you’re being released from our care. You’ll need to return for some prescribed therapy sessions, but otherwise you’re clear to go.”
“Thank God. I can’t wait. Let’s get Suz and get out of here. I’m looking forward to talking to you about these job possibilities you mentioned.”
The Torn Soul (The Sheynan Trilogy Book 3) Page 7
