Page 85 of When the Smoke Clears

Something is wrong. Terribly, terrifyingly wrong.

CHAPTER 20

LUKE

My limbs are lead weights, pinning me to the bed. The room flickers into focus, then fuzzes out again, like a bad signal.

I’m speaking to Isla—at least I think I am—and it makes sense in my head, but the words tumbling from my mouth slur and tangle. Exhaustion drags at me. Shadows creep in from the edges until everything folds into black.

Sound survives. The rhythm of a monitor. Shoes squeaking. Voices cut into strips I can’t line up into meaning. My body refuses to answer any summons. Sleep is the only thing it understands.

Then I’m yanked up from the dark.

“I don’t care!” My father’s voice bullets down the hall. “He’s going home with round-the-clock nursing care. He’s not staying in this place. It’s a joke. I should sue you for everything you have.”

I want to roll back into the black and let his voice bounce off the walls without me, but I blink instead. Light stings. When the glare resolves, Isla’s face is there, steady and close.

“You’re here?” I croak. My throat feels like it swallowed sand.

“I am.” Her eyes search mine like she’s checking pupils and souls at once. “That’s what happens when you lose consciousness while on the phone with a nurse.”

A floating memory clicks. I was talking to her. I was…flying? Then nothing.

“I remember your voice,” I mutter, dragging a hand to my forehead. “And then I don’t.”

“That would be the part where you passed out,” she says, mouth curving. Even now, she finds a small smile for me.

“Why?”

“You had a post-op arterial bleeder near the repair.” Her voice is calm, almost clinical, but I feel the tremor underneath it.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It wasn’t. They fixed it. You got a transfusion. You’re okay.” She edges closer, as if distance could undo the assurance she just gave.

From across the room, Sav’s voice floats, dry as kindling. “He says he’s okay. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Wild is out there terrorizing elderly hospital volunteers. I think he made one cry.”

“I brought you a cookie!” Eden appears like a sunbeam with a dessert the size of a hubcap. Oatmeal raisin. She holds it under my nose with reverence. “It’s therapeutic.”

I lean back, the smell of cinnamon and sugar teasing. My stomach votes yes; the rest of me isn’t ready. “You sure did. Thanks, Sunshine. I’ll…save it.”

“Okay,” she says, a crooked smile softening, like saving it might be the same as eating it in front of her.

The door swings open and my father strides in, chest puffed, suit immaculate, a pink compression band peeking at his elbow like a joke the universe played on him.

“Luke,” he declares, “you’re coming home with me. This place can’t care for you.”

“I’m not going to your house,” I say, flat and steady. “I’m going home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You need nursing care.”

“Isla will take care of me,” I blurt before I can calculate the fallout.

Her eyebrows go up. Mine would, too, if they weren’t busy holding my face together.

“It’s aggressive to come home right after your transfusion, Luke,” she explains.

My father cuts his gaze toward her, measuring. “You’re a nurse?”