Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
“You don’t look fine,” Damon growled, then snapped his gaze to Nurse Hadley. “He doesn’t look fine.”
“He won’t get any better if you agitate him,” Hadley bit off, then flicked her fingers at Rian. “We’ll talk in the hall. Let him rest.” She touched Chris’s arm gently, then, her voice softening. “Try to get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll check on you in a little bit, and bring you something to eat.”
Chris offered her a warm, grateful smile. “Thanks, Miss Hadley.”
“That’s Nurse Hadley,” she answered with mock sternness, her lips curving reassuringly.
Only to go flat as she pinned Rian and Damon both with sharp looks, before turning to walk pointedly from the infirmary room.
But not before pulling the suspended curtain around Chris’s bed, rather firmly cutting Chris off from them.
Rian came straggling after Nurse Hadley, and Damon stepped back from the doorway to make room, watching them both helplessly as Rian turned a forlorn look over his shoulder before the nurse pulled the door to behind them.
Damon slumped against the wall, dragging a hand over his face. “So want to fill me in?”
Nurse Hadley adjusted her uniform. “He’s exhausted,” she said crisply. “Fatigued—looks like sleep deprivation, but also dehydration.”
“And those bruises?” Damon snapped—only to earn a look that made him wince, shrinking back like one of the students from Nurse Hadley’s penetrating gray stare.
“I thought you could answer that,” she said. “Considering the most likely answer.”
“Hasn’t been happening in practice,” Damon said. “I don’t push my boys like that—not to mention he hasn’t been to practice in over a week now.”
“Then your guess is as good as mine,” she answered.
“What do we do?” Rian interjected softly, hugging his arms to himself; he looked pale with worry, his eyes shadowed, haunted. “I tried asking him, but he was just coming out of it at the time and I’m not even sure he heard me.” He swallowed, rough and rasping, and pressed his fingertips to his trembling lips. “It was bad enough when he collapsed, but when Nurse Hadley stripped him and I saw those bruises...” Stark eyes pleaded with Damon, an unspoken ache that Damon felt echoed below his ribs. “They’re on his chest and legs too, Damon. He’s been hiding it under his uniform.”
“It’s possible he’s being bullied,” Nurse Hadley said. “Several of those contusions are consistent with punches, kicks, perhaps knees or elbows.”
“Fuck.” Damon ground his teeth, glancing toward the closed door. “Why is he not in the hospital?”
Nurse Hadley clucked her tongue. “It’s nothing I’m not qualified to treat here. A few days of rest and he’ll be almost as good as new.”
Rian’s brows drew together. “But—”
“Don’t start, young man,” she interjected, giving him a flat look. “It’s not about my ego. It’s that transporting him to a hospital out of town will only add to his fatigue and stress, and that will make him worse. He needs rest somewhere quiet, familiar, and safe. He knows us here. Leaving him with impersonal strangers may just make him less likely to open up to us about what’s happening, because he’ll feel like he’s done something wrong and been incarcerated.”
Damon sighed, scrubbing his hand restlessly through his hair. “So we really don’t have the first clue what the hell happened to him.”
Nurse Hadley shook her head. “Not yet. He’s not been very forthcoming.”
“Have you called his parents yet?” Damon asked.
“It’s on the list, but I haven’t gotten to it,” she answered. “They’ll want to know why their son looks like he got jumped in a back alley, and I have no answers for them.”
Rian plucked at the sleeves of his deep blue caftan, the drifting fabric ballooning against his chest where he clutched his arms to himself. He gave Damon another of those entreating looks. “Can we try to talk to him? See if he’ll let us in?”
Even if Damon hadn’t already been thinking the same thing...that needy, worried look in Rian’s eyes would have pushed him over. As ragged as Damon felt, seeing Rian with his heart laid so raw, his fear and worry for Chris overflowing his edges to spill everywhere...it made Damon ache to reach out, to comfort him, to try to give at least one of them some kind of solace and stability when they were caught in this horribly helpless position.
And he couldn’t help curling his hand against Rian’s shoulder, squeezing gently. He’d been—fuck, he couldn’t help that he’d been trying to keep his distance from Rian for a thousand reasons over the last week, but right now the idea of distance hurt and it took everything in him not to pull Rian into his arms right in front of Nurse Hadley.
“We should,” Damon said, and Rian smiled wanly, lifting one pale hand to touch the back of Damon’s wrist. Damon forced himself to let go, and glanced at the nurse. “Please. Ten minutes. We’re not gonna upset him too much. If he’s beat up that bad, this is serious—and it’s better if we try to get to the bottom of it before school administration gets involved.”