School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,126

go see Ellery.

JACKSON MANAGED to retrieve Ellery’s phone and forward the information to Mira and her bosses before the same EMTs who treated Ellery’s arm with a pressure bandage and helped him into the stretcher for the ride to the ambulance focused their attention on Jackson.

“All right, all right,” he muttered. “I’m riding with Ellery. Let me get in, and you can do whatever.”

Whatever proved to be a lot, and Jackson was in a foul mood when they arrived at the hospital and the two EMTs—strangers this time, which was unusual—insisted on admitting both of them for treatment.

“I don’t do hospitals,” he muttered.

“Yes, Jackson, but you weren’t going to leave me in there alone anyway,” Ellery told him, looking less woozy but still in some pain. “You might as well come in, get it over with, and deal.”

“I’m so pissed,” Jackson said, his voice sounding peevish to his own ears. “I was so going to stay out of them this go-round. That was, like, my driving goal! I was going to visit other people in the hospital if I had to, but I wasn’t going to need to go myself.” Some of his peevishness bled away under the roar of the ambulance, and some of his exhaustion seeped in.

“And by ‘other people,’ I didn’t mean you,” he added miserably.

Ellery’s chuckle had an edge of hysteria in it.

R.O.R.

X-RAYS AND CT scans and painkillers, oh my! Jackson kicked up a fuss about not leaving Ellery’s side, so he sat, shirtless, in the hallway while a pretty physician assistant, with tawny skin and wild curls pulled back in a ponytail, irrigated and stitched his arm and his head wound and then had him shuck his pants so she could apply more glue to the stitches in his backside.

Ellery remained in the stretcher, blissed out on painkillers, with temporary splints on his forearm, wrist, and knee, listening to Jackson shamelessly flirt with the PA in order to hide the shaking in his voice and the frantic fear of the hospital that had not stopped dogging him just because he hadn’t been incarcerated in one for the last two months.

“You’ve had a busy couple of days,” the PA muttered, prepping more gauze and another needle. “Were you trying collect as many small injuries as possible so you could win a free week in ICU?”

Next to him on the stretcher, Ellery snorted. “I’ll remind him you said that the next time he gets stitches in his ass.”

She glanced up at Ellery, taking in his recent stitches and the temporary splints on his arm and leg. “You appear to have no room to nag,” she said bluntly. “Is this your first trip to the ER?”

Ellery paused to think about that, because the painkillers were good, but Jackson answered for him. “No. Would you like to hear how he kicked bad-guy ass with a broken wrist and a dislocated knee?”

Ellery regarded him with true horror. “No. No. That is not how we’re telling that story. I refuse!”

The PA gave Jackson a wicked smile. “Is that really how it happened?”

“Oh yeah.” Jackson nodded. “Totally badass. I left him in the car because… well, look at him. Sad, right?”

Ellery glared at them both, wishing he could just pass out and wake up at home, while the PA gave him another once-over.

“Like a sad little kitten in the rain,” she confirmed.

“See? And I’m talking to some total badasses—like blowing shit up and motorcycle assassin badasses—and suddenly, a bad guy shows up!”

Ellery heard the thread of hysteria in Jackson’s voice and let him go. If he could flirt a little, tell a good story, pretend to be someone else who was somewhere else, he might get out of the hospital without having another heart attack.

“How do you know he was a bad guy?” she asked. “And speaking of badasses, I need to see more of yours so I can get these stitches under the thigh.”

Jackson obliged her, turning a little more, while Ellery answered.

“He was the bad guy because he shot Jackson in the arm. You just stitched that.”

She snorted. “You guys are a laugh riot. It’s like Abbott and Costello in here. Okay, so, bad guy shoots and….”

“And one of the badasses throws a knife. Into his chest—well, a little north and west, so his shoulder, but I swear, it was a thirty-yard throw and he missed the heart by that much. And bad guy can’t aim the gun anymore, so he turns to run away, and one badass chases him