Page 11 of White Rabbit
Maybe, he was worse than Rad. Maybe, I was leaping from the frying pan and into the fire.
What were my choices, though?
I picked the man whose voice I’d followed from the darkness.
My attention wrenched from him and back to the doctor. “He…” I swallowed hard. Why was it so difficult to speak? “He…s…s…s…”
Just that much fatigued me so much I felt as if I could go back to sleep for years.
“You’ve got this,Moya kokhána.What do you want?” He squeezed my hand and I realized he’d never released my fingers. My anchor. The choice I wanted.
“S-stay,” I finally got out. “Stay.”
“Well, then,” Dr. Mason said briskly. “Let’s get you squared away so we can get you sitting up and back to the next part of your recovery.”
“I’m going with her,” my dark guardian growled.
“Figured. But you can’t go into the radiology lab. Radiation. There’s a window, though.”
“Fine,” my protector growled again. He made that sound a lot, but I found I liked it since it was for me and not at me. I still wanted to know who he was and why he was here, but I supposed that could wait until after the doctor’s tests. My prince, Kloboucnik, didn’t seem as if he were going anywhere I was not.
Chapter 9
Brecklyn
You wouldn’t think I’d been asleep, so to speak, for about two months. I was exhausted. Panicked by what I’d missed, what had happened to me. Scared by the situation and all the strangers around me.
As soon as I’d told the doctor I wantedKloboucnikto stay, medical staff had converged on me, poking and prodding then sweeping me away for more tests. I clung to his hand and my eyes had remained on him through the whirlwind around us. And he’d stayed with me for every step he could.
Even with my attention pinned on him though, I’d noticed two men similar to him that fell in step as soon as I was rolled through the door to the corridor on my way to imaging. Their presence erupted even more questions, so many questions. Combined with those and the sensory explosion around me, my head pounded.
With all the bright lights, the antiseptic smells, and the cacophony of sounds from the voices, beeps, squeaking wheels and just the day to day of hospital procedures pressed around me, I could barely breathe. Fear clawed at me.
What was wrong with me? Why was I here? Who were these people? Where was Rad?
Oh God. Where was Rad? Of everything, that terrified me most. Would he suddenly jump out and demand to take me home—not to home. To his apartment. That was never really my home.
My gaze cataloguedKloboucnik’stense features as he walked beside the gurney taking me to the tests that had been ordered. I didn’t know why, but I got the feeling he wouldn’t let Rad do anything to me. I hoped not, so I took tenuous comfort in that.
“Stay…” I managed. Not as much as I wanted to say, but it must have been enough. The tension in his face relaxed slightly and his lips curved upward, just the slightest bit. He didn’t smile often. Somehow, I just knew that. But he’d smiled for me.
“Not going anywhere, my Brecklyn. I’m staying right here,” he promised.
Needless to say, he was none too happy when he was forced to stay in the hallway outside the lab where my CT scan was administered. He stayed glued to the window and watch, his jaw hard again and his arms crossed over each other. I held his gaze, taking strength from it, until I was repositioned and could no longer see him.
“Stay as still as possible,” the tech told me when I fruitlessly tried to seeKloboucnik, and I almost laughed. I could barely move. Even finger twitches were like lifting weights, and a smile seemed too much to handle.
“’Kay,” I said, more of a ‘k’ sound than a word.
“It’ll be okay,” he said gently. “You’ll be right as rain before you know it. Just be patient while your body comes online again. According to your chart you’ve been out for two months.”
I appreciated the reassurance I’d recover, but as a former nurse, I knew better. All bodies worked differently. Anxiety sliced through me when I remembered my past, the naive existence I’d had before lies and retribution had destroyed me.
Not now. I wasn’t going there now. With the steel will I’d developed over the past couple years, I locked away the memory again. There was nothing I could do about the events that had destroyed my career nor the nightmare that had come afterward. There was only now. And where I went from here. And whoever that man was waiting outside the room like a dark sentinel, a man I only knew by his last name.Kloboucnik.Hislast name and the voice that had come to me in the darkness, the voice I’d clung to.
With that surname, was he Russian? He didn’t sounds like it. But that didn’t mean anything. I had a million questions. Foremost, his name and how he’d come to be here with me. On some levels, it didn’t matter. If he protected me from Rad, he could be an alien from an unknown galaxy and I wouldn’t care.
He was here for me. Though I couldn’t see him, I felt the weight of my protector’s eyes on me even as the tech finished prepping me then walked away. Then throughout all the tests, my prince stayed nearby. He held my hand when he could and stayed within my sight when staff evicted him from my side.
