Saige’s [POV]

“Bradley, would it kill you to eat something other than hotdogs for lunch and dinner?”

I’ve just set down the white plastic cover for my dinner on the bedside table when the familiar voice makes me freeze.

The cops.Shit.

My gaze darts to the tray in my lap placed there moments before by Nurse Amy.

Earlier in the morning, she helped me up so I could use the bathroom and the second my legs gave way under me, I realized running wasn’t going to be in my near future. If she hadn’t been there, I’d have been face down on the floor with no idea how to get back up again.

So, while I have no leg injuries, not moving for a week has made me feel as if I do.

Not only did she help me into the bathroom, she also got rid of the beeping machine. I still have the morphine drip needle stuck in the back of my hand, which isn’t a problem, but the cops are going to notice the beeping machine is no longer here, and they’ll know my condition has changed enough for them to stick around.

“They have ketchup on them, and everyone knows ketchup is a fruit.”

The footsteps move closer, and panic grips my heart. No one at the hospital has pushed to know my name or what happened on the bridge yet, but those are questions I can’t dodge from the cops.

“One squirt of ketchup does not—”

“Officers,” Dr. Trevor’s calm voice interrupts. “Back again, I see. Is there anything I can help you with?”

The footsteps stop and I breathe again. I start eyeing the distance between me and the window. My ribs still hurt, I’m almost positive I’m on at least the fifth floor since my only view is of tall buildings in the distance, and I still have the needle attached to the back of my hand that I’m going to have to yank out.

Still, none of that stops me from moving the tray to the side table as quietly as I can.

The steps move closer. “Doctor, just stopping by on the off chance she’s awake.”

I freeze. Shit, they’re just outside. What do I do? Throw the tray? Hide under the bed?

“I’m sorry, who?”

What?

“The Jane Doe from the Bridge.”

A long pause. “Um… give me a second…” Paper rustles and I hold my breath as it does.

Surely doctors don’t just forget their patients like that. And especially not this one who's already stopped by to increase my pain meds after the nurse left a message about me not eating because I was in too much pain.

“Oh, yes. The Jane Doe from the Bridge. Sorry, it’s been a long day. These twelve-hour shifts are a killer,” he says.

One cop chuckles. “Yeah, being a cop is no easy ride, either. So, the girl…” When a heavy tread moves in my direction, I remember the tray in my hand and resume getting rid of it.

“We’ve sent her to the neurologist for a brain scan.”

I forget about my tray and stare at my closed door.

He was just in here, and he said nothing about a neurologist.

Why is he lying to the cops for me?

“A neurologist. Sounds serious.”

“It can be. But a crash like that can do damage only a scan can reveal.”

“Any idea when you’ll know more?”

They believe him.

Of course, they believe him, Saige. He’s a doctor. What cop is going to think a doctor would lie to them?

“In a couple of days. You’re welcome to stop by again. Or if you have a card that I…”

Footsteps move away. “Oh, we’ll be back. A couple of days, you said?”

“A couple of days,” Dr. Trevor echoes. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about hotdogs. You must be talking about the Geller stand on Fifth, right? They have the best in town.”

“See, Ferdinand, I told you Gellers was the best. I’ve been trying to tell him that…” The voices move away from my room and I stare at the door, confused about what the hell just happened.

When I can’t hear them anymore, I still don’t move. I should make a run for it now, but Dr. Trevor has just bought me two days of recovery time, time I desperately need.

He’ll be back once he’s gotten rid of the cops, and I have a question for him, one that will eat me alive if I don’t ask it.

“You didn’t tell them I was awake,” I speak with my gaze on the plastic tray in front of me, much as I have since Dr. Trevor knocked on my door and entered my room minutes before.

The bread roll, the soup, and the small container of yogurt are easy enough to identify. The brown stew-like substance on the plate is less so.

“I grew up in New Jersey. Did my internship at a hospital in Atlantic City.”

I dart a surprised glance at him because I don’t see how where he grew up is in any way relevant to this conversation.

With his back against the wall beside the window and his arms folded over his chest, he looks relaxed. At ease. “In New Jersey, you have the Atlantic City Marina District. Have you ever been?”

I shake my head no.

He continues in that same casual tone. “Do you know how many people were pulled from it and brought to our hospital in an average week?”

Again, I shake my head no.

“Ten. Sometimes twenty, if it was a holiday.” He shakes his head with a wry smile. “Give people booze and time off work, suddenly they think they can swim even if they’ve never swum a day in their lives. I’ve been a resident here for five years. Do you know how many people paramedics bring in after they drive off the Lancaster Bridge in an average week?”

I understand where he’s going with this. I shake my head again.

“One. And it’s never by accident.”

My gaze returns to my plate. I pick at the brown stew and try to figure out whether it’s chicken, fish, pork, or something else.

“The malnutrition, and scars on your back, neck, and wrists tell me that you had a hard life.”

I tuck my left wrist under the sheet. The scar is mostly covered by a bandage that goes up almost to my forearm, but the need to hide it is automatic. I don’t think. I just do.

“The scar on your right wrist… that’s a little harder to identify. But I’d guess it was from a handcuff or some kind of restraint rubbing against bone over an extended period. Am I close?”

I don’t say a word.

After a moment, he continues in that same calm, unflappable tone. “So you might have a good reason to want to drive into the river, maybe a better one than I’ve seen from anyone who’s come in before. Especially if you were with someone who wasn’t a friend. But that doesn’t mean I agree with it. There are always other options. We have a great social worker here—a psychiatrist too. Maria. She’s also a friend who, I know from personal experience, is a great listener. I can send her up anytime you want.”

I’d love to know what he thought about those options if I told him there were wolf shifters in the world and once they’ve made up their mind to keep you, there’s only one way to escape them. And the therapist? She’d take one look at the wolf in Rylan’s eyes and run.

“You asked me why I didn’t tell the officers you were awake,” he says.

My head rises because I want to know why. He should be on their side, not mine.

His expression is impossible to read, but I’m almost positive there’s a hint of old pain creeping into his eyes. “Not all people in this world are good people. Regardless of what their jobs are or their title. You can find bad ones everywhere.”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying?

“Even cops?” I hold my breath as I wait for his response.

He straightens from his lean.

I flinch back into my bed, just holding onto my fork before it can go the way my remote went the night before.

He stops moving. “Even cops. Doctors aren’t immune, either,” he says, his voice soft. “Salisbury steak.”

I blink. “What?”

He nods at my plate. “No one ever knows what it is because the chef always cooks it too long. But it’s Salisbury steak, and you’ll find mashed potatoes buried beneath it if you feel like going hunting for it. Looks terrible, but it’s not bad.”

And with that, he turns and heads for the door. At the entryway, he pauses his back to me. “But there are some good ones, too.”

He isn’t talking about the meal.

As he steps out, pulling the door closed behind him I stare after him, and try to work out which one this doctor is. The good kind or the bad.

I worry at the question until my stomach grumbles, reminding me I’ve gone far too long without a decent meal in my belly, and then I lower my head.

As he said, there’s a small pile of mashed potatoes buried under the gravy. I spoon up some of the meat and gravy and slip it into my mouth.

The steak is so soft I don’t even have to chew, and the gravy is a little salty, but it’s not bad, so I scoop another mouthful and then another, not stopping until my plate is empty.

Saige's [POV]

Something about the drugs kept the nightmares at bay the night before, but as I lay trapped in the sheets from Nurse Amy's cocoon-like way of tucking me in, the memories swarmed me.

Sunlight from a new day bleeds through the thin tissue-like blinds covering my window as I stare up at the slowly brightening ceiling.

I haven't dreamt about Dad for a long time now. Months, probably. But maybe the fact I'm dreaming about him means that's where I should go. Or maybe I'm being as naïve as I was to take a strange man's hand and hope he'd lead me to a better life.

A flicker of the last seconds of the dream hovers at the edge of my mind. In it, a fierce sun beats down on us, making our sunkissed skin glow. Dad lifts me on his shoulders as I squeal at him to put me down. Mom laughs at us both when he threatens to toss me in the lake beside our cabin. The last summer vacation before Mom's cough turned out not to be a winter cough at all.

My lips curve in a smile at the memory that feels like it was a lifetime ago. No, of a past life that feels so hazy and faded, it's like it happened to someone else.

I'll be volunteering for more of the same bottle-dodging, belt-whipping future I was so desperate to escape from before, but once I tell him what my life has been like, maybe he'll remember when he was a Dad worth having.

My smile fades.

No, Saige. That man is gone. Probably forever. You walked away once for a reason.

More light streams in, making my dry eyes itch.

The door creaks open. I snap my gaze toward it, my body tensing beneath the scratchy covers and a mattress so thin that I struggle to believe anyone could have a decent night's sleep unless they had nice strong drugs to knock them out.

A bright-eyed woman in her early twenties, wearing pink scrubs and her honey-blonde hair in a braid, smiles at me from the doorway. "Good morning. I'm Nurse Olivia. I'm just starting my shift, so I wanted to do a quick check on my patients. Sorry if I woke you."

I twist my lips into something I hope resembles a smile. "You didn't wake me."

She edges in the doorway, her brow furrowed in concern. "You don't look like you slept at all."

"Oh, my ribs..." Once again I let my voice trail off and let her fill in the rest.

Her frown deepens. "Let me go find a doctor and—"

And have my pain meds increased so I'm too out of it to focus? No.

I shake my head. "It isn't that bad. I think I just rolled onto it at night. I'm okay."

She doesn't believe me. At least not completely. But she backs out of the room. "Well, try to sleep a little more, and I'll be back to check on you later, okay?"

I nod. "Okay."

But I don't sleep once she's left. I spend the next several minutes planning out all the things I'm going to need to do to get out of this hospital.

My ribs scream at me as I ease myself off the edge of the bed. My toes make the barest contact with the floor, but I don't go further than that. I can't bring myself to do that just yet.

I'm taking a breath when the sensation of being watched makes me jerk my head toward my doorway.

Olivia left my door open when she checked on me after breakfast, something I was desperate to tell her not to do. But if I'd told her that, she'd want to know why, and there are some questions I never intend to answer.

A dark-haired man with blue-green eyes and a scruffy, careless sort of sexiness gazes back at me. Not shifter. He doesn't have that feral look in his eye I've learned shifters have. If a girl was interested in falling into bed with a guy who looked like the hot European doctor you'd find on some TV show, they wouldn't say no to this guy.

I'm not that girl.

But that doesn't stop me from wondering for the first time since I opened my eyes what a girl must look like after being dragged from the river and lying unconscious in a hospital bed for a week.

He must be a doctor or a surgeon going by the navy scrubs he's wearing. There's something a little too commanding in his gaze for him to be a nurse.

"Hi," he says, his accent all American with a drawl to go along with the lazy smile in his eyes. Probably a surfer when he was in college. Or a stoner.

Not knowing what to say in case he takes it as an invitation to come closer, I say nothing.

His lips quirked into a wider smile. "Shy, huh?"

I frown. "I'd like you to leave." It's rude, I know. But if he's a doctor or a surgeon whatever he is I'm a patient here, so he has to leave if I tell him to. Or I can scream.

But he doesn't leave. His gaze sweeps me from head to toe. "Simon said you were in pretty bad shape, but back on your feet already?" His gaze lingers on my throat. "Impressive."

I don't like the attention he's paying to the bites on my neck. To a human, they would look like an out-of-control dog or a coyote had savaged me if you even find coyotes in big cities. A shifter would know they were looking at multiple failed attempts to turn me. The way this guy's looking at my throat is as if he knows what they mean.

But he's human.

I'm sure of it.

"I'm Harley. Yes, like the motor—"

"I want you to leave.Now." I dart a glance at my only two avenues of escape: the bathroom which is closer to him than me, and the window which leads to a drop so high that my panic about who this guy is and what he wants from me means I'm seriously considering it. I angle my body an inch to the window, ready to run for it.

The amusement in his eyes fades as he takes a step toward me. "You don't have to—"

"Hey, Harley." Olivia appears behind him, a grin on her face. "Were you looking for me?"

He glances over at her. "Hey, beautiful. Simon, actually, but since I was on this floor, I thought I'd check in on his mysterious Jane Doe." The grin he shoots me is playful.

I don't smile back.

"He's on later. Do you want me to tell him you were looking for him?" Olivia asks, her gaze moving from Harley to me and back again as if she can feel the tension radiating between us.

"No need. I'll catch him later." The man—Harley—steps back and turns to leave, but before he does, he angles his head toward me. "Get well soon, Jane."

Again, I don't respond, just wait for him to leave.

Once he's gone, Olivia crosses over to me. "Are you okay? He didn't scare you, did he? Harley's a bit of a flirt, but he's harmless."

Something about her gaze makes me think she knows I have a less-than-pleasant history with men, and she's right. "Is he a doctor?"

"Surgeon. Cardiothoracic."

I blink up at her in confusion.

"Uh, sorry. When you're around doctors all day... heart and lung surgeon. Chest too, but his specialty is the heart."

"A guy called Harley is a heart surgeon?"

So definitely not a stoner then. Maybe not even a surfer.

He looked young enough to play a TV doctor, not an actual heart surgeon. He couldn't have been older than thirty-five. And that's a push.

She barks out a laugh. "I know, right? They must have tortured him in med school, but he's one of the best. Surgeon and decent guy." Her expression softens. "So you have nothing to be afraid of around him."

I lower my head. "I guess."

Olivia clears her throat. "You look like you're ready to get some exercise."

My gaze returns to hers. "I feel like my muscles are wasting away the longer I lie here. A walk would be nice."

Her smile widens. "Well, I can help with that. Let me grab some slippers for your feet and a walker and we can do a lap of the floor. Build up a big appetite for lunch."

"A lap sounds good." It'll help me figure out the best way I can leave, and where I can grab some clothes before I make my escape. "Maybe two."

I don't manage two laps. As it is, I barely manage one before the combination of the pain in my ribs, my throbbing fractured wrist from holding onto the walker, and a weakness that comes from going for too long without moving defeats me.

After Olivia helps me use the bathroom and I slip back into bed, I sleep again, so exhausted I feel like I've run a marathon instead of having walked for five minutes.

When I flutter my eyes open, the light outside is less sharp.

Must be afternoon.

"Oh good, you're awake," a warm voice calls from the door. Olivia. "I didn't want to wake you, but lunch is about to be served."

"Okay." I just hope this meal will be one I can recognize. "How long?"

She glances down the hallway. "Maybe thirty minutes. If you're hungry now, I could—"

Already shaking my head, I take my time sitting up, face passive so I don't reveal how much it hurts to do it. "No. I was hoping it would be okay if I went on another walk?"

Surprise flashes in her eyes. "Twice in one day? Are you sure you're not pushing yourself too hard?"

I probably am, but I don't have time to sit around in bed and wait until I'm fully recovered. At some point tomorrow, those cops will be back with questions for me. Questions that I can't answer. "No. I can do it."

She doesn't look convinced.