Page 106 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“If you don’t hold still, you’ll be meeting God a lot sooner than you might be comfortable with, Mr. Beckett.” The white-haired nurse chuckled while holding out a metal container. The doctor dropped another shard into it without saying a word. She’d given up talking to me after the ninth or tenth glass splinter she’d removed from my side. At least they had moved on to my arm now. If they’d just hand me the damn tweezers, I’d dig the tiny pieces of car window out of my flesh myself - after checking on Delilah.

“Is that a threat?” I asked.

“Oh, no, I’m just informing you of the dangers of open wounds getting infected.” She snorted but didn’t hide her frown when another particularly jagged piece landed in the bowl, laced in a film of blood. “Are you sure you don’t want painkillers, honey?”

“I’m sure. How many more?”

The doctor sighed and shook her head. “Not that many,” the nurse cooed, clearly unbothered by the fact that I had somewhere else to be. She must have lived through decades of ER bullshit to stay that chipper, but I really didn’t care for it.

It had been hours since I’d seen Del. They had wheeled her off to get her patched up and scanned head-to-toe, and the only reason I wasn’t with her right now was a different doctor yelling at me that he couldn’t do his job if I was getting in his way.

The door to the exam room swung open and Isaac let out a long breath when his eyes landed on me. “Hard man to find.”

“Dr. Hunter?” The nurse furrowed her brows, giving Isaac a long once-over. He had thrown his white coat over a Pink Floyd shirt and ripped jeans, which probably wasn’t his usual attire.

“Hello Denise, looking lovely as ever.” He pasted on a bright, beaming smile and winked at the woman. “Did you get a haircut?”

The doctor next to me snorted and pulled another shard from my arm, wiping blood off my skin with a piece of gauze, while nurse Denise giggled and blushed. “Oh, Dr. Hunter, stop your nonsense.”

“Sign this.” Isaac held his clipboard out to me, still eye-fucking the woman old enough to be his own mother.

“Self-discharge?” I asked, taking the clipboard from him with my good arm.

“Don’t sign that. I’m not done yet,” the doctor grumbled without looking up.

Isaac handed me a pen and turned to me for the first time since entering the room, his charming facade dropping. “We have to go.”

We hadn’t talked since I’d sent Jonas his way, but his words left little room for protest. The back of my neck prickled, because if he didn’t elaborate in front of his colleagues on why we had to go, my chances of sitting in a chair next to Del’s bed, waiting for her to wake up, had just slimmed to zero. I signed the discharge form on the dotted line. Immediately the doctor dropped the tweezers on the medical tray and held her hands up in surrender.

“Shirt?” Isaac asked.

“Gone.”

“Take this until we get to the car.” He shrugged out of his lab coat and tossed it at me. I couldn’t suppress the grimace as the stiff fabric slid over the open wounds on my arm, but it was better than going half-naked, wherever it was we were going. I glanced down at the tattoo marking the inside of his forearm.Il ne faut pas réveiller le chat qui dort.The French version of ‘let sleeping dogs lie’. I hadn’t, and I was about to face the consequences.

“Care to tell me what’s happening?” I asked once we were out of that room and Isaac set a brisk pace down the hospital hallway.

“Cordelia Montgomery was a patient here two years ago with a burst appendix,” Isaac spoke fast and low.

“Shit.” I could see where this was going. I hadn’t thought twice about which name to give the EMTs. Cordelia. If the crash ended up in the papers, our names would be out there - and as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the woman in the passenger seat was the same one I’d been photographed with at various events the last few weeks. The rest of the world had no idea Delilah Edwards existed inmyworld.

“Cordelia needed a blood transfusion back then.”

“I’m guessing Del’s blood type didn’t match the one on record.”

He pushed through a heavy door marked ‘staff’ that led us into a blindingly white stairwell. “You know?”

“Yes,” I hissed, jolts of pain shooting through my ribcage with every downward step. “Where is she?”

“That’s the other thing.” Isaac halted on the landing and narrowed his eyes at me. “Two years ago, Cordelia gave us an emergency contact and a healthcare power of attorney. Someone who could make decisions for her if she was incapacitated. Victor Yelchin.”

“He’s here?”

“They’re both gone.”

The pain ebbed from my body, replaced by the cold instinct that the car crash had only been the first domino to fall.

Within minutes, I sat in the passenger seat of a sleek Tesla that still smelled like new leather and had nothing in common with Isaac’s usual old, red Honda with the permanent ketchup stain on the backseat. He’d thrown a plain T-shirt from his trunk at me to replace the lab coat before gunning out of the hospital’s garage. “Going somewhere?” I asked, glancing at the sleek black suitcase in the backseat.

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