Chapter 17: Visiting Hours

Hallie's POV

He woke at four in the afternoon with a tube in his arm and his hair flat on one side.

I had been in the plastic chair beside his bed for twenty hours.

My shirt was stiff with his blood.

A nurse had given me a hospital sweatshirt, and I had not put it on.

"Hallie," Declan said.

His voice was a rasp.

I stood up and put my hand flat on his chest, over the band on its chain.

"No."

"I haven't said anything."

"You were about to."

"I was going to tell you..."

"Not lying down." I pressed lightly. "You're flat on your back with a hole in you, and you are full of morphine, and I won't hear it."

"You won't hear what?"

"Whatever it is. You say it on your feet, in clothes, with a clear head."

He turned his face on the pillow and laughed, which hurt him, and which he did anyway.

"That's a rule?"

"It's a new one. Number six."

"What happens if I break it?"

"I go home and sleep for ten hours, and you wake up to a stranger."

"That's cruel."

"It's the only leverage I've got."

He caught my hand against his chest and held it there.

He did not say anything.

His eyes were wet, and I looked away to give him the room.

A knock on the open door.

Linscott stood on the threshold with a grey face and a manila folder.

Behind him, a florist's boy carried in an arrangement so big he needed both arms.

It was white lilies and roses, with a card on a plastic stick.

"Don't," Declan said, and tried to sit up. "Don't take it in her hands."

"I'm not touching it," I said.

I read the card from three feet away.