Page 10 of Reacher
My stomach clenched, as I realised what was going on. She left. The bitch left. Right in the middle of a fucking crisis.She left me.
“Fucking hell.” My voice was barely a growl. “That bitch.”
Ryder glanced at the nurse.
“Don’t let her hear you cursing, Pres. Look, I can go look for her, but I don’t know where to start. Let me call Tori, and see if she’s back there at the clubhouse, okay?”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Had enough time even elapsed that she could have made it back there yet? Jesus. Nearly forty five minutes had passed since I was with her. How the fuck did I lose that much time? She could be anywhere by now. I nodded sharply at Ryder, and watched him leave again, his phone already in hand. There were signs everywhere in ICU insisting phones should be switched off.
“Mr Anderson? I can take you in now.”
It took me a moment to realise the nurse was talking to me. Probably because it’d been a while since anyone had called me by anything other than Reacher, or Pres.
“Thank you.”
I turned to Torch on my way to see Ice.
“Make sure Ryder updates you on whatever he finds out. If he has to go find Ally and bring her back, I want to know about it.”
Torch nodded. “Tell Ice we’re all with him, Pres.”
I turned and followed the nurse through the ICU, to a bed which held a man I barely recognised. He looked so pale, and… well, I’d never seen him at rest, but he actually looked peaceful, and painfully young. I could mostly only see his head and shoulders, and his arms, which were laid on top of the blankets, with tubes going into both.
“Jesus, brother. What the hell happened?”
“I know it looks bad with all of these tubes and machines, so I just want to explain a little about his condition, since you’re his next of kin. He’s breathing on his own, so that’s a very good sign. The blood loss was the biggest problem, so he’s being transfused. He had several stab wounds to his stomach, and one in his chest. As I said before, they missed the vital organs, and any internal bleeding has been fixed in surgery.”
I leaned over the bed and kissed his forehead, which probably seemed like a strange thing for a man to do, but Ice was my brother, and he needed to know we were here. That I was.
“Brother, I’m here. We’re all here. You gotta come back to us.”
The nurse sighed. “If he does well overnight, we’ll look at waking him tomorrow. It’s easier for the transfusion process if he’s resting. It all aids his healing.”
I nodded, staring at the nurse.
“So, if he wakes up tomorrow, and nothing else is going on… how soon ‘til we can take him home?”
She shook her head at me. “He won’t be out of hospital for at least a few more days, Mr Anderson.”
“Reacher, please. I barely recognise anything else as my name these days.”
“Understood, Reacher. Does Mr Silver have an alternate name too? Something he’d prefer to be addressed as?”
I nodded, impressed that she’d even bothered to ask the question.
“He goes by Ice.”
She was frowning as she noted it on the document by his bed.
“Why Ice?”
I smirked, despite everything.
“Long story, but suffice it to say, we learned a long time ago how cold he can be.”
She looked unnerved. “Is he dangerous?” Yeah, but not to her. Not to any of them.
I shook my head. “Nah, he’s a pussy cat. Ain’t that right, brother? A realpussy… cat.” I shouldn’t have been heckling him, but it just came naturally. That was how we communicated with each other. All of us.
