Chapter 292 Likely
ADRIANA
I had barely slept the whole night. I was already awake and dressed, sitting at the table with coffee I hadn’t drunk, when the sound at the door made me cross the room in three steps and pull it open before the second knock landed.
A guard was standing in the corridor. He was holding something… someone.
Lana.
She was wrapped in a blanket that wasn’t hers.
Her eyes were closed.
Her lips had a blue tinge to them that made something inside me snap clean in half.
I was moving before I understood I had moved.
“Give her to me.” The words tore out of me raw and jagged.
I nearly ripped her from his arms.
The blanket slipped as I pulled her against my chest, her body frighteningly limp, her head falling against my shoulder without resistance.
She was cold.
“No.”
My hands shook violently against her face, rubbing at her cheeks, her tiny fingers, trying to force warmth back into skin that felt wrong beneath my touch.
“No, no, no, no—”
My voice broke apart.
I pressed my mouth against her forehead, then her cheek, then her hands in frantic succession.
“Baby.”
The word came out as a sob.
“Open your eyes.”
Nothing.
Panic slammed into me so hard my knees nearly gave out.
I clutched her tighter instantly, like if I loosened my grip for even a second she would disappear again.
“GET THE DOCTOR!”
The scream ripped through the room.
“GET ELIJAH! NOW!”
Hazel was in the doorway. She had heard. She took one look at Lana on the bed and her face did something I had never seen it do before and then she controlled it and came to the bed and leaned down and pressed her ear to Lana’s chest.
“She’s cold,” I said. “She’s too cold. Hazel—”
“I hear her heartbeat.” Hazel straightened. “It’s a little faint but it’s there.” She was already reaching for a warm blanket from the foot of my bed. “We need to get her to the hospital. Now.”
I gathered Lana against my chest without thinking and I ran.
I was in the corridor before I registered running. Elijah was coming from the direction of his study. He saw my face and then he saw what I was carrying and everything in him went very still for exactly one second.
“She’s breathing,” I said. “But she’s not moving and she’s cold. I don’t know how long she was out there.”
He took her from my arms and kept moving. I ran beside him. Neither of us spoke even after we got to the car.
He drove while I sat in the back with Lana held against my body trying to transfer warmth to her through contact and will and sheer refusal to accept that it wasn’t enough, and I kept my hand pressed to her chest to feel the faint beat that was there even though I already knew it was there, because I needed the reassurance of feeling it under my palm.
“Faster,” I said even though I knew he was going as far as he could.
He was out of the car before it fully stopped and I was right behind him, and I was calling for the doctor while we were still coming through the doors, my voice carrying down the corridor in a way that probably alarmed everyone in the building but I didn’t care.
The doctor came out of his office at a run and I transferred Lana to his arms in one movement.
“She’s hypothermic. She’s not responsive. I don’t know how long she was exposed or what they gave her or whether she’s been injured. Please.” The word came out stripped of everything except what it was. “Please.”
He took her and moved away fast and a nurse appeared and took my arm and guided me toward the waiting area and I let myself be guided because the alternative was following the doctor through the doors he’d taken her through and I understood I couldn’t do that.
Hazel arrived. She sat beside me and didn’t say anything and I was grateful for it because I didn’t have words right now, I just had the waiting room and the sound of Hazel’s steady breathing beside me and the feeling of the chair under me that was the only solid thing I could identify.
Elijah appeared from wherever he’d been making calls, dealing with the practical things. He sat on the other side of me and didn’t say anything either.
I woke up in the chair with a jolt that sent my heart into my throat, and the corridor was dark and the overhead lights had shifted to their evening setting. Hazel and Elijah were now standing at the far end of the corridor speaking in low voices.
I was on my feet before I was fully conscious of standing.
“Tell me she’s not dead.” The words came out before I reached them. “Please. Tell me right now she’s not dead.”
My legs gave out but Elijah caught me before I reached the floor and held me up by the arms and looked at me with an expression that was grief and relief and exhaustion all at once.
“She’s not dead,” he said. “She’s in a coma. The doctor said the prolonged cold exposure caused her body to shut down non-essential functions to preserve core temperature. They’ve warmed her up, her color is returning, her heart rate has stabilized.” He held my arms. “But she hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”
“Brain damage,” I said. “Is that what you’ve been discussing?”
Hazel and Elijah exchanged a look.
“The doctor mentioned it as a possibility they have to test for,” Elijah said. “They’re running assessments. He said he expects — he believes — there will be no permanent damage.” He looked at me steadily. “He believes she’s going to be okay.”
“I have to see her,” I said. “Right now.”
Her room was small and quiet and full of the sound of machines monitoring every small thing her body was doing. She was in a hospital crib, tubes connected to both arms, a breathing monitor clipped to her finger, color returning to her cheeks in the slow way that meant warmth was working its way back through her.
Her lips were no longer blue.
I stood at the side of the crib and looked at her and felt something in me that was too large and too complicated to name and I just let it be there.
“My poor baby.” I reached in and touched her cheek with the backs of my fingers, gentle, careful. “What did they do to you?”
The doctor came in while I was standing there and I crossed to him immediately.
“Why hasn’t she woken up?”
“My Queen, the tests we’ve run so far are encouraging. Her responses are consistent with someone who has been sedated rather than someone who has experienced neurological trauma. We won’t have complete answers until she wakes up. But I am cautiously optimistic.”
“What does cautiously mean?”
“It means I have more reason to hope than to worry.” He paused. “We’ll know more by morning.”
Elijah touched my shoulder and guided the doctor out of the room, and I heard their voices in the corridor, low and too quiet for me to catch the words. I turned back to Lana in the crib and stood there and made her every promise I had.
Leo heard from Hazel that she’d been found and he’d come immediately, and Elijah intercepted him in the corridor before he could see her.
“Dad, they said she’s back. Is she okay? I want to see her.” Leo’s voice, stripped of its usual composure.
“She’s here and she’s being looked after,” Elijah said. “But she’s not awake yet and you can’t go in right now.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Yes,” Elijah said, with the absolute conviction of a man who had decided to make that true. “She is.”
He was silent for a moment before he spoke in a quieter voice. “Is this my fault? I keep thinking if I hadn’t let her go with me to the graduation—”
“Stop.” Elijah’s voice was firm and immediate. “It is not your fault. That conversation is finished. The people responsible are the ones who planned this and executed it, and they are going to answer for every minute of it. Go home. Be with the twins and Lorain. They need a steady person right now and you are the steadiest person I know.”
I stayed in the room and let Elijah handle it because he was right and because if I’d gone out into that corridor and seen Leo’s face I would have fallen apart and that wouldn’t help anyone.
When Elijah came back in he was silent.
“What did the doctor tell you that he didn’t tell me?” I said.
“Nothing significant. He’s—”
“Elijah.”
He met my eyes. “He said if there is brain damage, it’s likely to be mild. He said ‘likely.’ He didn’t say ‘definitely’ and I am choosing to hear the space between those two words as where we’re going to live until she wakes up and proves him right.”
I nodded.
“What did the doctor tell you that you didn’t tell me?” he said.
“Nothing. I’m waiting for Roy.”
He looked at me. “Roy.”
“He’s coming. He has the fingerprint results. He said he’s on his way.” I held his gaze. “When he gets here, I want to talk to him alone first. Give me that.”
Elijah held my gaze for a long moment then he muttered. “Fine.”