J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [144]
Six o’clock in the morning. Time to go to work.
Good plan, but when she stood up, she knew without a doubt she wasn’t going into the hospital. She was light-headed, weak, exhausted. There was no way she could administer care in her condition; she was still sick as a dog.
Damn it…she had to call in. Where were her pager and her phone…?
She frowned. Her coat and the bag she’d packed to go down to Manhattan were sitting next to the front hall closet.
No cell, though. No pager.
She dragged her sorry ass upstairs and checked by her bed, but the pair weren’t there. Back down on the first floor she went through the kitchen. Nothing. And her shoulder bag, the one she always took to work, was missing, too. Could she have left the thing in the car all weekend?
She opened the door into the garage and the automatic light came on.
Weird. Her car was parked headfirst. Usually she backed it in.
Which just proved how out-of-it she’d been.
Sure enough her bag was in the front seat, and she cursed herself as she went back into the condo while dialing. How could she have gone for so long without calling in? Even though she was covered by other attendings, she was never out of touch for more than five hours.
Her service had a number of messages, but luckily none of them were urgent. The important ones concerning patient care had been turfed to whoever was on call, so the rest of it was stuff she could handle later.
She was heading out of the kitchen, making a beeline for her bedroom, when she looked at the mug of chocolate. She didn’t have to touch it to know it had gone cold, so she might as well ditch the thing. She went and picked it up, but paused over the sink. For some reason she couldn’t bear to throw it out. She left it right where it was on the counter, though she did return the milk to the refrigerator.
Upstairs in her bedroom she ditched her clothes, letting them land where they did, pulled on a T-shirt, and got in bed.
She was settling between her sheets when she realized her body was stiff, especially her inner thighs and lower back. Under different circumstances she would have said she’d had a lot of terrific sex…either that or climbed a mountain. But instead it was just the flu.
Shit. Columbia. The interview.
She’d call Ken Falcheck later this morning, apologize for what she hoped was the second time, and reschedule. They were hungry for her to come onboard, but not showing for an interview with the chairman of the department was insulting as hell. Even if you were sick.
Rearranging herself against her pillows, she couldn’t get comfortable. Her neck was tight, and she reached up to massage it, only to frown. There was a sore spot on the right side in front, a real…What the hell? She had a pattern there, some raised bumps.
Whatever. Rashes were not unheard-of with the flu. Or maybe a spider had done her in.
She closed her eyes and told herself to rest. Resting was good. Resting would get rid of this bug faster. Resting would bring her back to normal, a reboot for her body.
Just as she drifted off, an image came to mind, an image of a man with a goatee and diamond eyes. His mouth was moving as he looked at her, framing the words…I love you.
Jane struggled to hold on to what she saw, but she was sliding fast into sleep’s dark arms. She fought to stay with the image and lost the battle. The last thing she was aware of were tears flowing onto her pillow as the blackness stole her away.
Well, wasn’t this awkward.
John sat on the bench-press in the weight room and watched as Zsadist did bicep curls across the way. The huge loads of iron made a subtle clinking sound as they went up and down, and that was it for noise. There had been no talking so far; it was just like one of their walks, only without the woods.