Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard #1)(83)

“‘Lo?” I croaked, my voice hoarse with disuse.

“Scar?” I turned my head left and recognized Eli, his face worried and pleased at the same time. “Are you really awake?”

“God, I hope not.”

He laughed, much more than was warranted, and reached over to take my hand. “Oh, man, you had us worried.”

“Why?”

“It’s Wednesday afternoon, Scarlett. You’ve been asleep for three days.”

“I have?” I tried to sit up in bed, then immediately regretted it. “What happened? Where’s Corry? Is Beatrice okay?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on, there. They said you had some kind of seizure or something at Dashiell’s and passed out while a bunch of vampires were fighting. Dashiell dragged you away from Beatrice, and she turned vampire again and healed from her wounds.

“Is Dashiell still gonna kill me?”

He frowned. “I don’t think so, or he wouldn’t have gotten you to the hospital.”

“Dashiell brought me to the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“Corry?”

“The girl? I talked to your friend the cop—he’ll be here after his shift, by the way; we’ve been trading off—and he said she was fine. She had to get a cast on her arm, but her family was okay. When that guy went to the hotel for them, Corry ran out to meet him so he wouldn’t mess with her mom and brother. Pretty ballsy move for a fifteen-year-old, if you ask me.” He smiled. “She’s a really nice kid, Scar. I can see why you wanted to protect her. Oh”—his brow furrowed a little—“if I talked to you first, Cruz wanted me to tell you that he took care of Corry’s tape. He said you would know what that meant.”

It took me a second, but I figured it out: Jesse had destroyed the tape that Jared Hess had used to blackmail Corry. Thank God.

“S’wrong with me?”

His eyes flickered with worry. “I’m not sure. The doctors aren’t, either, it sounds like. I’ll call them in a second, but there’s something else you should know first.” He took a deep breath, and his face looked...almost nervous.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Uh...What do you feel?”

“What do you—Oh. Oh, wow,” I said as I finally noticed that I couldn’t feel him in my radius. I closed my eyes and concentrated. My eyelids flew open. “I can’t feel anything. You’re still a were. Did I...Am I broken?”

He shrugged. “Dashiell says no. He told Will it’ll kind of...grow back. I think he’s telling the truth—you still don’t smell.” He smiled, a little shyly. “But without it, you’re vulnerable, which is why Cruz and I have been taking turns being here. He fixed his schedule to work days this week, so he’s in at night and I’m here now.” Eli’s face darkened a little. “Dashiell stopped to check on you a couple of times, but Jesse didn’t leave him alone with you.” He grinned then, remembering something. “He pulled some cop language on the nurses, got them to let him stick around after visiting hours. They were kind of fawning over him.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, trying to take all that in. What the hell had happened to me?

“Here”—Eli reached over the arm guard and pushed the little red button to call the nurse—“we better tell them that you’re awake.”

The nurse came in to check on me, and a few minutes later, a balding, fiftyish man in a white coat strode into the room, too. An embroidered patch on his coat read, Dr. Lipowitz. I glanced at Eli to make sure we were comfortable with this guy, and he gave me a little nod and slid back in his chair to give the doctor room. Vetted.

“How are we feeling?” Lipowitz asked me, pulling out a little flashlight. He shone it into my eyes while I squinted.

I hate it when doctors use the word we. “Hate to speak for you, but I’m doing better.”

Eli made a tiny sound like a snort, but Lipowitz frowned. Not a joker. “Any headaches?”

“Just a little one. What happened to me?”

He sat back in the chair, tucking the flashlight back in his coat pocket. “To be honest, Ms. Bernard, we’re not really sure. You appear to have had a concussion, but there’s no trauma to your head.”

“A coma?” I asked, still working on arranging words properly.

He shook his head. “No, not technically. According to your MRI, your brain was simply overwhelmed.” I must have looked confused, or maybe he just really liked lecturing. “Think of the brain as sort of an electrical outlet,” he went on. “Yours just sort of...shorted out. We’d like to have you sign some forms allowing us to study your MRI further, and possibly even publish our findings.”

I thought about that. It would be kind of interesting to know if there was something physically different about my brain, something that caused my nullness. Could I have it removed, like a tumor? But then it occurred to me that if there was something really different about my brain, then that could create a lot of fuss and attention that I didn’t need.

I shook my head, rather weakly. I felt very tired. “No, thank you,” I said.

I’d thought that was pretty polite, but the doctor got a little huffy about it. When his attempts to persuade me failed, and after Eli had started to get upset and suggested where the doc could put his studies, Lipowitz finally left. Which worked out well, because my eyelids were closing anyway. The last thing I was aware of as I drifted off was Eli squeezing my hand.