The Lost (Celestial Blues, Book 2) - By Vicki Pettersson Page 0,116

right, but Kit still felt gut-punched. Anything. She turned back around, thinking, I’m tired of competing with the past. Grif wavered where he was, she felt him on the edge of saying more, but what more was there? He loved her, yes. But he still loved Evelyn Shaw, too. Kit knew that for a fact.

The door opened, and closed. Bowing her head, Kit almost sobbed. Yet the door swung right back open, and Kit straightened immediately. It was yet another doctor. She slumped.

“Well, that looks like a good way to pass the time.” The doctor smiled, and pointed at Kit’s forgotten computer. DR. MARKHAM was embroidered on his crisp white jacket, and there was a burning bunny pin on the left lapel. Whatever that meant. “Video games are a good escape. It’s nice to disappear into another world for a bit.”

Kit didn’t bother telling him the Ms. Pac-Man ticking across her computer screen was her screensaver. Somewhere in the night she’d lost her capacity for small talk.

“So how’s our patient doing?”

Kit had been sitting in the room for almost eighteen hours, and hadn’t seen this man once. Edging away from the bed, she stood to give him room. “You tell me.”

Dr. Markham used a penlight to check Dennis’s pupils. “It’s hard to say with a GSW. It’s an open brain injury, and there’s been some hemorrhaging, but only time will tell.”

But, Kit wanted to ask, would he be able to foxtrot and drink rum from tiki mugs and flirt like James Dean . . . or not?

“Is he your brother?”

“No. I was there when he was shot,” she said, explaining why Dennis’s family, and the department, had pulled strings for her. They wouldn’t arrive until the next day, and they didn’t want him alone.

“Boyfriend?” Dr. Markham pressed.

Kit shook her head. “Just a friend.”

“That’s good,” Dr. Markham said, but before she could ask what was good about it, he bent over Dennis’s chest, talking with his back to her. “You have to understand that Mr. Carlisle has experienced one of the most severe brain traumas possible. He may never think or speak normally again. Frankly, it’d be a miracle if he even wakes.”

He was scribbling on his chart, so he missed Kit’s wince, but flipped the chart shut a moment later and tucked it under his arm. “There’s nothing more to do now but wait.”

That was the extent of his medical care.

He smiled. “Guess I’ll go grab a late dinner.”

Kit looked at him. “It’s six A.M.”

“I’m just kidding.”

Kit didn’t smile.

“I am off my shift soon, though.” He hung the clipboard on the peg at the end of the bed. “Maybe you’d like to take a little bedside break. Let me buy you a coffee?”

Kit’s fleeting instinct was to wish for Grif, but no . . . she could handle this one herself. “Are you asking me out over my friend’s sickbed?”

“He won’t know the difference.” Dr. Markham added a nonchalant shrug to his handsome smile. Behind him, Dennis’s heart monitor continued its steady beat.

“Sure, he would,” Kit said, in time to the beat.

The doctor tilted his head. “How?”

“Because every time you have a drink with an asshole, an angel loses his wings.”

The smile, the invitation, and the doctor disappeared. “Ring the nurses’ station if you need anything.”

“Imperious bastard,” Kit said, still glaring as the door clicked shut.

“Yes. That one has a serious God complex,” said a voice next to her.

Kit whirled to find Dennis’s eyes open wide, but there was no relief for Kit in the look. The blue depths swirled with liquid marble.

“No!” Kit said, leaping to her feet. The computer wobbled on the bedside stand, but she pushed it all away. “No,” she said again.

“Oh, but I think I know a God complex when I see it.” Dennis’s face lifted, but it wasn’t her friend’s lopsided, heartfelt smile.

“Get out of there,” Kit spat, grabbing Dennis by his shoulders, surprising them both. She gave him a shake. “Get out!”

“Relax, kid. Every life is improved by that which is Pure.”

Not my life, Kit thought, and the expression across from her altered, as if whatever was inside Dennis heard the thought.

She tilted her head. “Who are you?”

“I’m Saint Francis of the Cherubim tribe, the first Pure to ever experience mortality as a part of God’s divine will. But you can call me Frank.”

The familiar name calmed Kit somewhat. “You mean . . . Sarge?”

“In the flesh.”

Kit crossed her arms. “That’s not funny.”

“Admit it, Katherine. You’ve wanted to know more of the Everlast