Page 36 of Alpha's Embrace
“Let’s go!” Prim yelled at the group.
People ran. The gurney was pushed at a speed I had to jog to keep up with.
Once in the hospital, he was taken down a long hall to a fully equipped intensive care room. Everyone talked at once as I followed.
Once inside the room, an I.V. was strapped to Misha’s hand. I saw that his other arm also looked bruised, perhaps broken. His face was so pale. He lay still. Far too still.
I turned to the guard who’d run into my office and who’d been following us the entire way. “I want a report. Right now!”
“I only know the emergency beacon on my phone went off for the second floor. I was there, but in another corridor. I came running.”
“What happened?”
“I saw the guards breaking into the door of Misha’s room. I don’t know why they didn’t use their key. I heard sounds of yelling and rushed to the door. When I got there, I saw Misha on the floor and the guards were fighting.”
“Fighting? With whom?”
“Tory. He was half-crazed, sir. There was blood all over his throat. He kept pushing and shoving at the guards. He knocked one against the wall. Another grabbed him from behind and he slammed him to the floor nearly on top of Misha. It was like he had super strength. More guards had come before me, and managed to get the cuffs on him, but he wouldn’t stop struggling. Someone said to call the doctors. Someone else told me to run to your office and get you.”
“Where is Tory?”
“They had to sedate him. He’s being brought here, too.”
I glanced at Misha and could tell that everything that could be was being done for him, then walked to the door to look up and down the hall. Then I saw them. Another group and another gurney coming through the hospital doors. Several guards followed, limping. Another guard was being supported by a nurse.
As one limping guard passed by me, I recognized him immediately. One of Misha’s day guards. Laro.
“Laro, what happened?”
“Tory locked himself in Misha’s room. He—he went berserk. He said he had come by on a well-check authorized by you. But he—he—I don’t know what happened with him, sir.”
When I looked at Tory being rolled by, certainly he was injured. There was blood at his collar and his white shirt was torn, some of the buttons missing at the top. He looked asleep. But he was breathing.
I had an instinctive response to jump on the gurney, wrap my hands around his throat and shake him awake. Demand to know why he’d gone to Misha’s room, why he’d lied to the guards, and why my Misha was now on a respirator fighting for his life. I had the urge to claw at him, rip and tear until he submitted, until he gave way and whimpered back to whatever hovel he’d come from.
He’d worked here for ten years. There hadn’t been anything in his performance record I could see that made him unstable. I certainly hadn’t warmed to him, and he was wary of me as well, but I had brushed that off as me being the new chief of staff. It always took time to earn the trust of one’s staff at a new place.
My hands clenched to fists as I held back from wanting to pummel him into a puddle of blood and bone. Never had I felt this sort of violence in me.
I reeled from the onslaught of nearly uncontrollable emotion and forced myself to turn away and rush back to Misha’s side.
I stood at the foot of the bed. Nurses milled about his side. Doctor Prim was gently manipulating Misha’s injured arm. The remaining doctor had gone to look at Tory in the next cubicle.
“Give me an update,” I ordered.
Prim said, “His windpipe is intact. But the swelling around it means we have to keep him on the respirator. I can’t tell yet how he’ll come out of this. How long he was deprived of oxygen, and how strong his constitution is will be the deciding factors.”
“Will there be brain damage?”
“He has brain activity in the normal range, but as I said, we can’t know for certain until he wakes up.”
I came around the nurse on the other side of the bed and looked down at my beautiful Misha. Someone had covered his body with a sheet up to his waist. His arm lay at his side, a tube inserted on the outside of his hand just above the wrist. I slid my palm underneath his hand and held it.
The nurse glanced at me but said nothing. I wasn’t in protocol. Again. I wasn’t using gloves. Again. But I didn’t care. Not now. I wanted to feel his skin, his heat, his pulse. I wanted to assure myself that he was still alive.
His skin was cool, his fingers actually cold as I wove mine with his. I placed my other hand over the top of his, ignoring the I.V.
Another nurse came around my other side, nudging me. Irritated, I turned to see him fiddling with the bed straps.
