Page 60 of Devil Inside: Green

We’re stopped by another desk, where the officer explains the situation.

“If you take a seat in the waiting room, we’ll update you as soon as we have more for you,” The nurse says, and he sounds sincere, not that he’s trying to brush us off.

But I fucking hate waiting. Reap makes the call to Vlad while I pace the floor. Another hour in that claustrophobic room passes before anyone comes to talk with us.

“Anyone here for Daniella Romero?” I’m assuming she’s a doctor as she’s wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope around her neck, asks.

I walk over to her. “She’s my partner.”

“Okay, so they’ve moved her up to a bed in the ICU. She’s stable now.” The woman brushes a chunk of curly brown hair behind her ear and keeps talking but I keep hearing the words ‘She’s stable now.’ Stablenow? Does that mean she was unstable for a while? As we spent the last hour going over everything in detail once again with the officers, they left us but said they’d be in touch. Fine. Cool. Whatever.

Reaper pinches the arm of my cut and starts to pull me from the room. I struggle, swatting him away. “The fuck are you doing?”

“You don’t want to see Danni? You blanked out, brother. She’s in the ICU.”

Yeah, I think I remember the doctor saying that. We head to the bank of elevators and thank God Reaper is here because I missed all this. He knows exactly where to go.

Once we reach the ICU, we stop at the desk and I tell them I’m here for Danni. “I’m her partner,” I say for the one-millionth time in the last two hours. Partner. She’s my woman. But if it gets me in to see her, I’ll tell them I’m her pet monkey.

“You can go in one at a time,” the nurse, this one is a tiny woman with mousey blonde hair. She looks like a slight wind could blow her over, but if she’s here doing this job, then I know there’s more to her than that.

“Thanks.” I start walking to her room.

“But sir,” she calls out after me.

“Green,” I tell her.

“Mr. Green, you’ll need to fill out the paperwork before you leave.”

“Will do. Just let me see her first.”

Danni’s room is located four rooms down from the nurse’s station. The top half of the wall facing the hallway is windows. The bottom half is wall. I take a breath before opening the door. She’s hooked up to these machines and her head is shaved. All that beautiful hair gone. The doctor on duty enters the room behind me, startling me. She probably falls between Danni’s and my height, wearing green scrubs and a white jacket. Pretty thing. Not as pretty as Danni, though.

“We had to relieve the pressure from brain swelling. She appears to have had a bad fall.”

“Spinal injuries?”

“Yes. She’s suffered a spinal contusion.”

“Spinal contusion? Isn’t that just like a bruise?”

“Unfortunately, it’s a bruise on her spinal cord, which means we have to keep an eye out. The neural pathways of the spinal cord can’t regenerate once they’re impaired—which is why a contusion can lead to paralysis.”

“So she won’t walk again?” I said I’d take her paralyzed and I meant it, but I know she won’t be okay with it. Still, she’s alive and that’s a fucking miracle.

“It’ll take time for us to see, but hopefully, we got to her in enough time to keep that from happening. With her extensive injuries, it could have been a lot worse.”

Knowing I have to ask this kills me, but I need to know so we know what kind of help to get her in her recovery. “Did he… I mean, was she… violated in any way?”

“It doesn’t appear so. She’s going to need surgery on her ankle. The bones are snapped.”

“There was an animal trap near where we found her.”

“That makes sense. We closed up her wounds and had to provide her with blood because she lost a bit. And we have her on antibiotics to hopefully counteract any infections that might arise.”

“Has she regained consciousness yet?”

“No. We had to place her in a medically induced coma to keep track of her brain injuries and make sure she doesn’t make any movement that might cause paralysis.”

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