Chapter 20: The Waiting Room

Wyatt Garrison had waited in a lot of hallways, and this one was the worst.

It was a county hospital on the edge of the mountains.

A vending machine hummed, and the wall clock ran four minutes slow.

Rodney was in surgery.

Nobody knew yet whether his lung would hold.

Wyatt sat on a plastic chair with his elbows on his knees and his cracked rib complaining under his shirt.

He had counted the ceiling tiles twice.

Across from him, Nash lay stretched over three chairs.

He had fourteen new stitches in his scalp and a nurse's lollipop in his mouth.

He had refused the painkillers.

"I'm fine," he kept saying.

"You're a mess," Dean said.

"I'm a handsome mess."

"You're the only man I know who'd pick a fight with six riders, lose, and ask the doctor for a mirror."

Boone sat at the end of the row, huge and silent, with his big hands hanging between his knees.

There was blood dried on his sleeve, and it wasn't his.

Nobody had mentioned that it was Rodney's.

Wyatt looked at the glass doors at the end of the hall for the tenth time.

Mara had gone to the church for her father.

Then she had gone to find a car.

She had told them not to follow, and for once in his life, Wyatt had done as he was told.

Rule one.

He thought about the pass, and the night in the rented house, and her mouth under his.

He thought about the bridge.

Six years he had carried it.

Now there was nothing left to blame, and he did not know what to do with his hands.

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