J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [482]
The night was out of the cool zip code and into chill city, the air smelling blue to her, if the color did indeed have a scent: There was just something so fresh and icy and clear as she breathed deep and exhaled in soft clouds. With each inhale, she felt as if she were taking the sapphire sprawl of the heavens above into her lungs and that the stars were sparks skipping through her body.
As the last of the nurses departed, dematerializing or driving off, depending on what they had planned, she said good-bye to the stragglers. Then Catya came and went.
Ehlena stamped her feet and checked her watch. The male was ten minutes late. No big deal.
Leaning back against the aluminum siding, she felt her blood sing in her veins, an odd freedom swelling in her chest as she thought about going out somewhere with a male on her own—
Blood. Veins.
Rehvenge hadn’t had his arm treated.
The thought slammed into her head and lingered like the echo of a big noise. He hadn’t dealt with that arm. There had been nothing in the record about the infection, and Havers was as scrupulous about his notes as he was about the staff uniforms and the cleanliness of the patient rooms and the organization of the supply closets.
When she’d come back from the pharmacy with the drugs, Rehvenge had had his shirt on and done up at the cuffs, but she’d assumed that was because the examination had been finished. Now she was willing to bet he’d put it on right after she’d finished taking the blood.
Except…it was none of her business, was it. Rehvenge was an adult male well within his rights to make poor decisions about his health. Just like that drug overdose who had barely survived the night, and just like the any number of patients who nodded a lot when the doctor was in front of them, but who went home and were noncompliant about their prescriptions or their aftercare.
There was nothing she could do to save someone who didn’t want to be rescued. Nothing. And that was among the biggest tragedies in her work. All she could do was present options and consequences and hope the patient chose wisely.
A breeze rolled in, shooting right up her skirt and making her envy Rehvenge’s fur coat. Leaning out from the side of the clinic, she tried to see down the drive, looking for headlights.
Ten minutes later, she checked her watch again.
And ten minutes after that, she lifted her wrist once more.
She’d been stood up.
It wasn’t a surprise. The date had been so hastily thrown together, and they didn’t really know each other, did they.
As another cold breeze tackled her, she took out her cell phone and texted: Hi, Stephan—sorry to have missed you tonight. Maybe some other time. E.
She put her phone back in her pocket and dematerialized home. Instead of going right in, she burrowed into her cloth coat and paced up and back on the cracked sidewalk that ran down the side of the house to the rear door. As the frigid wind kicked up again, a blast hit her face.
Her eyes stung.
Turning her back to the gust, wisps of her hair feathered forward as if they were trying to flee the chill, and she shivered.
Great. Now when her vision got watery, she didn’t have the excuse of the stiff breeze.
God, was she crying? Over what could just be some misunderstanding? With a guy she barely knew? Why did it matter so much to her?
Ah, but it wasn’t him at all. The problem was her. She hated that she was where she had been when she’d left the house: alone.
Trying to get a grip, literally, she reached out for the handle of the back door, but couldn’t bring herself to go in. The image of that crappy, too-ordered kitchen, and the remembered sound of those creaky stairs going to the cellar, and the dusty, papery smell of her father’s room were as familiar as her reflection in any mirror. Tonight it was all too clear, a brilliant flashlight nailing her in both eyes, a roaring