Taken by the Alien Next Door (Aliens Among Us #1) - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,133
was writing Mathews with two T’s. We do have a Tabitha Mathews who was checked in this morning.”
Zevris’s fingers flexed around the phone, and his body went utterly still for a few moments. It took that amount of time, brief but precious, to convince himself that he hadn’t misheard her, that he wasn’t imagining anything.
“Is she all right?” he asked. “Why is she there, what happened?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose any information about her specific condition, sir, but she is listed as stable.”
He already had his vehicle keys in hand, was already racing to the front door. The woman on the phone said something more, but he didn’t hear her; he wasn’t even sure if he ended the call before he slammed the phone into his back pocket. None of that mattered. He knew where Tabitha was.
In all his time on Earth, Zevris had never driven as fast as he did to reach OHSU. He was hyperalert, leaning forward with both hands clutching the steering wheel in a death grip, eyes scanning ceaselessly for law enforcement. He passed other vehicles as though they weren’t moving at all. On any other day, he would have had a few choice words had he seen someone else driving like he was now. But he didn’t care.
His racing heart made his vehicle seem slow in comparison, and it refused to ease. Stable condition was good. It was also a vague term that didn’t mean anything—and such classifications were malleable. They could change at a moment’s notice.
Zevris arrived at the hospital in half the time the GPS navigation had initially estimated. He maintained just enough rationality to keep himself from screeching to a stop in front of the emergency room entrance, leaping out of his vehicle, and darting into the hospital. Finding a parking spot in a parking garage had never been as nerve-wracking an experience as it was now.
She’s fine. She’s in stable condition, and my Nykasha is fine.
He could barely keep himself from running as he entered the building and went to the front desk. Despite years of training to notice every detail, to be alert and aware of everything, he didn’t register a single aspect of the lobby or the human male who told him Tabitha’s room number and how to find it.
The elevator felt more like the coffins he’d seen in the western movie he’d watched with Tabitha—like A Fistful of Dollars. Tight and oppressive, built just large enough to contain him, to suffocate him. The emotions that had been tearing him apart had reached their peak now, and none of them could quite win out. He couldn’t be relieved, not until he knew Tabitha’s true condition, but he couldn’t be devastated because she was here, she was alive…
When the elevator finally stopped and the doors began to open, he slipped his hands into the gap and shoved them apart hard, pulling himself through. He strode down the hallway, eyes dead ahead save to periodically flick up toward the signs noting the room numbers.
He reached Tabitha’s room just as the door opened and a nurse in blue scrubs stepped out. She started when she looked up to see Zevris, her eyes widening.
“Tabitha Mathews,” he rasped. “This her room?”
The nurse nodded. “Are you family?”
The word mate very nearly came from his lips; he only just stopped it to instead say, “Her fiancé.”
“Has anyone notified you of her condition or what happened?”
Zevris shook his head. His muscles burned, protesting the fact that he was standing still; everything in him urged him to forget this female and enter the room to see the only one who mattered.
The nurse frowned. “She was in a car accident. As far as I know, she was driving through an intersection when another driver ran a red light. Her leg was pinned in the wreck and broken. Her wrist is sprained, and she’s got a lot of bruises and cuts and some shiny new stitches.”
Zevris pressed his lips together, his breaths coming quick and heavy through his nostrils, none of them seemingly providing him with enough air. “Is she all right?”
“She was in a lot of pain, but she’s asleep right now. She’s going to have some recovering to do, and she’s going to be off her feet for a while, but Tabitha and the baby are going to be fine.”
Eyes narrowing and brows falling low, Zevris glanced at the door before looking back at the nurse. “Baby?”
“Oh, no,” the nurse said, wincing. “I’m so sorry. I thought