“Forgive me.”
“Stop,” she said simply.
“You’re beautiful,” I croaked.
She covered our entwined hands with her other before her gaze met mine. “Stop talking, you’re not strong enough yet.”
“You, then.”
Quick inhale of breath. “He took out your number twelve rib, what’s called a floating rib, and if you have to lose one, that’s the one I’d pick.”
“Okay.”
“It’s called a floating rib, or a false rib, because it’s attached only to the vertebrae, not to the sternum or to any cartilage of the sternum.”
“So?”
“So it’s not like you snapping the ones near the top, this one is small.”
“It was the best one to lose.”
“Right.”
“And so why’d you open me up?”
“I told you already—I wanted to make sure he did it right and that you were okay, nothing punctured inside, nothing bleeding, and nothing left behind. I needed to see for myself.”
“You couldn’t just do an MRI or something?” I prodded. “You had to open me up again for fun?”
“Yes,” she said dryly. “I did it for fun. I’m a sadist, I thought you knew.”
I scoffed. “And?”
“And it looks fine and two other surgeons agreed with me.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t even guess why he needed your rib.”
“Best not to.”
“You had to have been in shock afterwards because the pain would have been unbearable.”
“He gave me lots of drugs.”
“I saw—he had quite the cocktail going.”
“But nothing that could hurt me long-term, right?”
“I think it messed with your memory a little, but other than that, no.”
“What else is wrong?”
She explained that my left ankle was broken, as were the ring finger and pinky on my left hand—that Hartley had already told me about. I was covered in scrapes and bruises; I had a concussion. I’d been stabbed in the shoulder and it had required nineteen stitches to close, but her dear friend, Gavin Booth—who was some kind of miracle-worker plastic surgeon who worked in Scottsdale—had come when she called and sewed up everything on me that needed mending.
“The scarring should be very minimal,” she informed me.
“I don’t care.”
“I do,” she retorted sharply. “It’s bad enough this animal had you. I won’t allow him to leave any marks.”
“He took a rib.”
“And no one can see that from the outside, but scars they could,” she said adamantly, and I could see how upset she was getting. I really had scared her to death, and she hated that. She liked things she could control; it was why she was a neurosurgeon. “Now it’s your story to share or not, as you see fit.”
“Okay,” I soothed her, squeezing her hand tight.
We were quiet a moment.
“So how come they let a neurosurgeon operate on me?”
“Because I’m good,” she snarled.
“Okay, okay.” I chuckled “So am I gonna live?”
“Of course,” she assured me with a glare.
“Good,” I sighed as I closed my eyes. “Tell me before you go home, okay?”
“Yes, dear.”
I felt her lips on my forehead again before I fell asleep.
SHE STAYED three days and then had to go home to her job and husband. It was for the best; she was driving my physician bonkers and annoying the crap out of Ian. Catherine had a way of getting under your skin, and even though she was really trying with him, she blamed Ian for not being with me on the op. Had he been closer, maybe I wouldn’t have been taken. It was nuts because it was no one’s fault, particularly not his, but she needed someone to blame and he was handy. But really, he blamed himself enough as it was, not missing even one opportunity to berate his own actions.
“So,” I began, because my friend was gone and we could talk freely. “Any news on Hartley?”
“He’s still at large,” he answered woodenly.
“Ah.”
“You like that? It’s how the FBI announces shit. Dr. Craig Hartley is still at large.”
“And?”
“He’s considered very dangerous though not armed.”
“I see.”
“You know how we know he’s not?”
“Not what?”
“Armed, idiot.”
I snorted. “Tell me.”
“Because your gun was recovered at the scene.”
“No shit?” I was happy for some ridiculous reason. “You have my gun?”
He nodded. “I have your gun.”
“Why is that such good news?”
“Because it’s one more thing he didn’t take.”
Exactly. “Yeah.”
He stared at me a moment and then stalked over to the window. “You know this whole thing… Phoenix—” Ian fumed as he turned and paced my room, “—was a disaster from the beginning. We should have stayed home.”
“Which would have worked if there was no big-ass scary leak the size of Cleveland in the mix,” I countered.
“This is the furthest from funny that something could be.” His voice was dark and the accompanying snarl warned that he should not be teased.
I went ahead and baited him. “You didn’t have to come.”
“This is fuckin’ serious.”
“I know.”
“You could have died!”
“I know,” I agreed, waiting for him to get closer.
“You were—I couldn’t—” he rasped, pacing closer to the bed. “You were gone. You just disappeared. It took a minute to lose you.”