Page 17 of Wicked Player

“Over the next couple of weeks, I ask you to keep that in mind. I haven’t dedicated the last several years of my life wanting and fighting and raising money and planning and sleepless nights for this new children’s wing out of a sense of duty. It’s out of a sense of realism. I wanted to give the kids in this hospital something I never had…time to play, to be a kid, time to throw a ball around with my brother when he was too ill to leave. This addition at the hospital isn’t a duty to volunteer hours or because I have too much money I don’t know what to do with.” A small round of laughter burst and silenced quickly. “It’s because I’ve lived this. Harrison would have loved this. I’ve donated my time and money not to a cause to have my name look good in the press.” He flashed a smirk. “Not that you guys would do that of course.” Another round of laughter. This time a little bit louder. “I do this because this was my life and the kids that are fighting all manner of diseases and cancers and viruses that fill the halls in the building…well, they deserve something. They’re not weak even when ravaged. They’re not sad, even when they know the end is coming before the rest of us. These kids, the sick ones, they’re the strongest humans on the planet and they deserve to have a little bit of joy and peace and fun to continue to give them strength.”

He pulled to an abrupt stop and stepped back. His speech wasn’t over. His jaw was open like he had more to say but his gaze went to something and I caught movement. A young woman dressed in teal scrubs hurried down the aisle.

Murmurs erupted as she grabbed all of our attention. She hurried to Gage and before she reached him, he was back, leaning into the microphone. “Excuse me. I need to go.”

The woman’s face look panicked.

Gage’s looked destroyed. Cameras flashed as he hopped off the stage, practically hurdling the podium, and hurried back down the aisle.

He ran out the door at the back, not even saying a single word to the nurse, but whatever it happened was bad and he knew it.

I had no idea what possessed me to do it, what drove me, but I was on my feet, following as quickly as possible before I could stop myself.

* * *

I followedhim to the fifth floor, the benefit of lighted floors above elevators telling me where he’d disappeared to.

I stepped off the elevator, assaulted immediately with a painted mural showing underwater sea creatures. It was beautiful with its bright vivid colors. Humpback whale and bright coral at the bottom, bubbles coming up from sea anemone plants, the bright orange tail of a fish peeking out behind. It was incredibly well done, with dozens of fish and whale and a few sharks and stretched at least thirty-five feet. It went from floor to ceiling, the perfect bright art a kid could stare at for hours and always find something new to admire.

I shook my head and turned toward the hallway. The nurse’s station was empty and thank goodness.

What story did I have to give them to get past other than, “Um, hi, I’m stalking Gage Bryant and I’m not supposed to be here, but let me through anyway?”

Right. That’d go over as well as my mom trying to get me to believe asparagus tasted just like green beans. Please.

I slowed my steps in the hallway even though my heart raced at terrifying speeds. I forced myself to look like I belonged. Rearranged the features of my face, I tried for stoic, even though my gaze bounced back and forth, into the windows at the sides of the doors to rooms. I didn’t gawk. I didn’t stare. Yet with each room I passed, an unknown emotion rippled through me.

These werekids. Of course they were. I was in a children’s hospital for crying out loud. But the reality of what Gage had actually done, who he was doing it for, hadn’t hit me until I passed almost a dozen rooms, filled with children too young to have to face such opposition in their little lives. And babies. Hooked to tubes and monitors, and one with so many you could barely see the tiny infant beneath the tape.

God. Help them.

I chanted the prayer in my head, my jaw aching from clenching my teeth. Gage Bryant hadlivedthis. It was all so unbelievably horrible that I almost didn’t notice when I found him.

His back was to me, but I’d just spent a good twenty minutes staring at his hair, his clothes, his enormous size, that my feet pulled short when I caught a glimpse of him through a narrow window.

He was seated in a chair so small it looked like it could buckle under the weight of him. His head was bowed, turned slightly to the left, his jaw moving, speaking. And on the bed, a little boy. Bald. Bright blue eyes. Sickly in color and in his bony frame.

And yet heglowed. His smile was so big, his age young enough to show he was still too small for all of his teeth to fit properly into his mouth. Cracked, dry lips stretched into the largest grin I’d ever seen in my life.

Why had Gage left for this? I felt like I was intruding. I shouldn’t have followed him in the first place and whatever brought me there wasn’t for a story. Not this kind anyway. My phone was in my pocket, but it’d stay there. No way was I taking a picture of Gage Bryant in such a private moment even if it would help the story.

“Can I help you?”

I jerked back, stunned I hadn’t been paying attention and when I turned, I saw the prettiest woman, sad, such sad eyes, head tilted to the left, dried tears had ruined what little makeup she’d had on.

“I’m sorry,” I said, I shook my head, feeling ten thousands kinds of crappy for whatever I was doing. “I just…Gage had been at the press conference and took off—”

I sounded like an asshole. A gossip columnist. An ambulance chaser of a lawyer doing anything for a story. And worse, it wasn’t me. Shame chilled my brain. I had nothing good to say.

“You’re a reporter,” the woman said. She glanced in the window and back to me.

“I am. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here.”

One shoulder of her rose and dropped slowly. “I don’t know. Seems to me y’all should be meeting some of the families Gage wants to help, right?”

She spoke of Gage so personally. Then again, he was bent over the bed of who I assumed now was her son. But how long had she known him? And why did the thought it could have been for awhilehurt?How long had her son been sick?

“It’s okay,” I mumbled. “I should really go.”

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