* * *
I’m lost in a trance, looking out of the window. Wondering how we went from being happy and having a good morning to this. The atmosphere in the car is tense and completely silent.
Leo’s on his phone, his teeth might start crumbling if he doesn’t stop grinding them.
Meanwhile, the silence is suffocating me, and like he can tell, Wayne puts the radio on. Smiling at me when Fauré’s Three Melodies fills the car, he turns up the volume.
The melancholy melody always makes my heart weep and has my insides so cold that I feel empty. I like that. I prefer empty to hate, it feels so wrong to hate Leo. Even if he has just shredded me to pieces for reasons I’m not even sure I understand.
He wants to protect me, but right now he’s the one hurting me.
Why are you hurting me? I ask silently as we keep driving, once in a while I swear I can hear Leo hum to the music. But when I look up at him, his jaw is set and the shadowed consternation on his face is like a vapid mask.
A few minutes later we slow down to a crawl, turning into a ramp that leads to a double gated, underground garage. When the first gate slides into the concrete wall, a tall uniformed guy approaches the car. His bulletproof vest states he is POLICE, there are weapons strapped to his thighs and around his vest.
Unease fills me when two more officers join him, both bearing weapons that look as big and mean as their arms and stance.
Shrinking into my seat while Leo opens his window, I try to make out what they’re saying, but my ears are ringing with my rampaging heartbeat. Leo hands him his and Wayne’s IDs, passing them to one of his colleagues he bends lower to look at me.
“Miss Sinclair is with us.” Wayne says sternly.
With a nod, he takes another look into the car and then at me before rounding the vehicle and looking through all the open windows.
I don’t recall ever seeing this much security and it’s strange because of what my father does.
It takes a handful of minutes for them to hand back the IDs and once they’ve finished their checks they let us through the second gate.
Wayne follows another officer to a parking spot and before getting out, Leo passes him the gun he was carrying.
Opening my door, Leo reaches in, takes one of my hands and tugs me to him before setting me on the concrete ground in front of the officer that escorted us.
“Come on…” he orders as the officer starts for a large tinted glass door on the other side of the garage.
The place is all concrete, iron and glass. Cold and detached from the world outside. Walking us all the way through, our escort hands us off to another officer and a nurse.
Looking to Leo for any inkling of what’s going on, he just nods, indicating for me to follow her.
“Mr. Fairfax, we weren’t expecting you this afternoon.” She says, smiling broadly at him.
It irritates me that she looks between us, trying to figure out what we are to one another.
“How is he?”
“No change.” Her reply carries an undertone of pity and sadness much like the hall we’re walking down.
The place smells like bleach and it has that hazy smell that sterile environments have. Like that time, I had to be put to sleep because I needed to have pins on my wrist after I fell off my horse mid gallop.
The security is endless as we have to go through x-ray machines to get into the ward the nurse takes us to, and then we have to sign in again as she hands us sterile clothing, some gloves, shoe covers and nets for our hair.
“The scan
s tomorrow will let us know more.” Watching us put on the garbs, she continues with a soft smile before walking us down another corridor to a triple width glass door.
The workout leggings and oversized sweatshirt Arabella had one of Wayne’s guys drop at Leo’s this morning, together with the gown are making me feel so hot that I’m drying out with how anxious I’m feeling. There’s this sense of foreboding in my chest that I can’t shake off.
“Come on,” Leo murmurs, nodding for me to follow him into the room.
When I do, he moves to stand by the foot of the hospital bed. There are machines everywhere. Beeping, whirring and whooshing, making all sorts of sounds that overwhelm me together with all the medical paraphernalia covering every inch of the place. There are screens of all sizes with every stat imaginable. Body temperature. Heart rate. Blood pressure. O2 levels. Blood flow. Brain function…