Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [75]
Summoning all her strength, she focused her rage and maneuvered her arms so that her palms were back flat to the floor. After a tremendous inhale, she shoved hard, pushing herself up and flipping herself on her back—
Her rope of hair fell in and among the railing’s supports and locked in tight, the thick length keeping her in place, whilst wrenching her neck to her shoulder. Trapped and going nowhere, she could see only her legs from her vantage point, her long, slender legs that she had never before given any particular thought to.
As the blood gradually pooled into her torso, she watched the skin on her calves get paper white.
Fists curling, she willed her toes to move.
“Damn you . . . move. . . .” She would have closed her eyes to concentrate, but she didn’t want to miss the miracle if it happened.
It did not.
It had not.
And she was coming to realize . . . it would not.
As the pads of her toenails went from pink to gray, she knew she had to come to terms with where she was. And was not there a fine analogy to her current physical position.
Broken. Useless. Deadweight.
The breakdown that finally ensued carried with it no tears or sobs. Instead, the snap was demarcated by a grim resolve.
“Payne!”
At the sound of Jane’s voice, she closed her eyes. This was not the savior she wanted. Her twin . . . she needed her twin to do right by her.
“Please get Vishous,” she said hoarsely. “Please.”
Jane’s voice got very close. “Let’s get you up off the floor.”
“Vishous.”
There was a click and she knew that the alarm she had not been able to reach had been sounded.
“Please,” she groaned. “Get Vishous.”
“Let’s get you—”
“Vishous.”
Silence. Until the door was thrown open.
“Help me, Ehlena,” she heard Jane say.
Payne was aware that her own mouth was moving, but she went deaf as the two females hefted her back upon the bed and resettled her legs, lining them up parallel to each other before covering them with white sheeting.
Whilst various and sundry cleaning endeavors occurred both upon the bed and the floor, she focused across the room at the white wall she had stared at for the eternity since she had been moved into this space.
“Payne?”
When she didn’t reply, Jane repeated, “Payne. Look at me.”
She shifted her eyes over and felt nothing as she stared into the worried face of her twin’s shellan. “I need my brother.”
“Of course I’ll get him. He’s in a meeting right now, but I’ll have him come down before he leaves for the night.” Long pause. “Can I ask you why you want him?”
The even, level words told her clearly that the good healer was no imbecile.
“Payne?”
Payne shut her eyes and heard herself say, “He made me a promise when this all started. And I need him to keep it.”
In spite of the fact that she was a ghost, Jane’s heart was still capable of stopping in her chest.
And as she eased down onto the edge of the hospital bed, there was nothing moving behind her sternum. “What promise was that,” she said to her patient.
“It is a matter betwixt the pair of us.”
The hell it was, Jane thought. Assuming that she was guessing right.
“Payne, there might be something else we can do.”
Although what that was, she hadn’t a clue. The X-rays were showing that the bones had been aligned properly, Manny’s skills having fixed them perfectly. That spinal cord, though—that was the wild card. She’d had a hope that some regeneration of nerves might be possible—she was still learning about the vampire body’s capabilities, many of which seemed like pure magic compared to what humans could do in terms of healing.
But no luck. Not in this case.
And it didn’t take an Einstein extrapolation to figure out what Payne was looking for.
“Be honest with me, shellan of my twin.” Payne’s crystal eyes locked on hers. “Be honest with yourself.”
If there was one thing that Jane hated about being a doctor, it was the judgment call. There were a lot of incidents