We All Sleep Alone (Finley Creek #11) - Calle J. Brookes Page 0,9

bruise on her temple.

Izzie had a lot of questions.

Izzie settled into the chair between the beds.

So her friends didn’t have to wake alone.

9

When next Wallace popped into room 403, just to check if Nikkie Jean had come out of the sedative yet, it was to see the head of the trauma department—his supervisor, Allen Jacobson—in the room, arguing with a smaller dark-haired woman. She was in a patient gown, but when Wallace looked closer, he realized it was Nikkie Jean’s close friend. The one who had always reminded him of his wife, the way she’d been thirty-five years ago.

So pixyish in appearance, but with a will of iron—and a wit sharper than a knife.

With her that close to Jacobson, from a distance, the two of them mimicked him and Jennifer all those years ago. Wallace and his wife had probably looked just like that. He and Jacobson were the same height, had similar coloring. Jenny…his Jennifer had been a lot like that girl.

Every time he ever saw that nurse, he would remember the early years with his Jennifer.

Izzie, he thought she was called. A pretty girl, but she was very caustic when a physician made a mistake near her. Bright. Bright enough to be a physician herself. She didn’t like him much, and Wallace knew that.

Concern for her had him doing a quick check of her chart as well. She hadn’t appeared injured earlier; but he thought the girl was an asthmatic.

A quick visual inspection didn’t tell him a thing, though.

Until he listened to what Allen was telling her.

“Dr. Jacobson,” Wallace said. He had been going to examine Nikkie Jean one more time, but with Allen in the room and that nurse shooting daggers at everyone—even as she was coughing and rasping more than any asthmatic he’d ever seen still standing—that wasn’t going to happen. He couldn’t risk giving himself away. Instead, he looked at the third woman in the room, so still in the bed. It surprised him when he realized who it was.

“I heard we had some of our people in here with Nikkie Jean. I wanted to stop by, check on them before I head out. I’m going to do a shift at County now. They need every one of us they can get.”

Jacobson nodded. “I’m checking on them myself. They’ll recover, Henedy. Annie took the worst of it, but she’s holding her own. It’s just going to take time.”

Wallace nodded. Annie—one of the swing-shift nurses, if he recalled correctly. She was often found around Nikkie Jean and Izzie. “Of course.”

Someone stepped into the room. Rafael Holden-Deane. “Wallace, I need to speak with you a moment.”

Sweat beaded on Wallace’s neck. It was possible the man knew. Rafe somehow seemed to know everything that happened on FCGH property. The other man was as damned overprotective of Nikkie Jean as he was that wife of his, or Lacy Deane, his sister-in-law. “Of course.”

They stepped out into the hallway.

“Wallace…I’m sorry to tell you this,” Rafe started. Wallace tensed. “I didn’t realize Ray was your nephew.”

Wallace started a bit. “Ray? What’s happened?”

Ray had a habit of finding trouble at the worst times.

Wallace knew the instant his eyes met Rafe’s.

“Wallace, I’m sorry. He’s gone. He was caught in the parking garage and was hit in the head by falling concrete. He died an hour ago. I didn’t realize he was your nephew, or I would have found you sooner.”

Wallace’s breath backed up in his chest at the other man’s words.

No. Not his nephew. Not his boy.

“No…not my boy. No…”

Rafe’s hand came to Wallace’s shoulder as Allen stepped closer. From the look in his eyes, Allen had heard, too.

Nurse Izzie peeked around the man’s left shoulder.

There was compassion in her big dark eyes. Pain for him.

Dark eyes like Jennifer’s. Dark eyes like Elizabeth would have had.

Jennifer. He was going to have to tell her, tell his son. “I need…I need my wife. She needs to know. I need Jennifer.”

“We’ll send Vincent to get her,” Rafe said. “We’ll find one of the chaplains. You don’t have to tell your wife alone.”

Wallace barely heard him.

All he could think was that maybe this was the punishment he’d earned by what he’d done to little Nikkie Jean. By leaving her out there in the storm to die.

For her, for Connie, and Miranda. For Elizabeth.

It had to be.

Nothing short of what he deserved.

10

The dark-eyed nurse he was holding hostage was sitting next to her friends’ beds when Allen walked into room 403 again, close to four that morning.