Leo’s sister. This has to be Eva.
I know it without ever seeing a picture, because she looks just like him. Same eyes. Same dark hair. Same don’t-test-me glare. Her eyes are red from crying, but her chin is up and she’s definitely not weeping now. More men come in behind her. She’s like a president, or a queen. My soul shrinks. Out of anyone, she could make me leave. She could order me out.
She’s family. Family only.
The nurse behind the counter rushes out to meet her, this queen in a black wool coat. Eva’s hair shines in an elegant, perfect twist. She folds a leather portfolio against her chest like armor. “I want an immediate update on my brother’s status.”
Complete confidence. That’s how she says this. As if everyone here will know who her brother is. They might. They probably do. The nurse falters.
“I’m afraid we can’t release any information about patients here without—”
With a flick of her wrist, Eva turns the folio and pushes it, point first, into the woman’s chest. “I’m Eva Morelli, and you have my brother in surgery right now. The first thing you’re going to do is open the folder in your hands and see that I have power of attorney. The second thing you’re going to do is listen very carefully to everything I’m about to say.”
She pauses and folds her hands in front of her, absolutely regal. The nurse’s hands shake as she opens the leather cover and scans over the documents inside.
“The one on the right,” Eva prompts. The nurse’s eyes slide over to the other side of the folder. “Take it.”
Eva uses silence like Leo. The waiting room is crowded with her black-suited men. A woman across from me babbles demands for answers, her husband squawking too. But around Eva there’s nothing but icy quiet.
The nurse closes the folio and hands it back. Eva waits until the other woman looks her in the eye before she speaks again.
“When I’m finished, you’ll go back to your desk and change all of your records to correspond to this information. You won’t speak to anyone else about what you have read, or about my brother.”
“No. No, of course not.”
“Before you change your records, you’ll transfer every other patient to another floor.”
“Ma’am.” The nurse swallows. “We can’t do that.”
“You will do that. Do you know why?”
The doors leading into the wing swing open on a gust of hospital air and two men come out at high speed. One of them wears a surgical gown decorated with blood. My heart leaves my body. Flies away, like a little bird. The other’s crisp scrubs look brand new. The one in scrubs puts a big palm on the nurse’s shoulder. “Back to your desk.”
She goes, and the next second—furious typing.
“Ms. Morelli. I’m estimating we’re about halfway through the procedure to—”
I can’t hear what he says. Or I hear it, but I can’t understand it. The individual words, yes. But they’re too horrifying to string together. No exit wound and collapsed lung and blood transfusions and what they boil down to is that Leo put his body between me and a bullet and there’s no telling how much it hurt him.
Eva absorbs all this impassively. “Is he going to live?”
“The prognosis is good.”
The tension goes out of my spine and I become a stringless puppet sagging in my chair. No one would tell me anything.
They wouldn’t tell me if he was alive. Or if he was dead.
A crisp nod from Eva. “I’m locking down the floor. Move all your patients to other departments.”
The doctor barks a laugh. “That won’t be possible. The personnel involved—”
“Call in extra personnel. Do it now.”
“Ms. Morelli.” He’s condescending. Pretending to take her seriously. “We cannot move all the patients from this floor. We have nine requiring specialized post-surgery care—”
“I would hate for anything to happen.” Eva cuts smoothly into his explanation.
“To whom?”
“To your daughter at Northwestern.” She looks him in the eye. She does not flinch. “Madison. Or your other daughter, Christine, who’s in her last year at Brown.”
Now the quiet expands. The doctor’s eyes go from her face to the men flanking her. To the men at the corners of the waiting room. To three others, who have moved behind him to the doors leading into the wing.
His jaw tics. “We’ll have them transferred within the hour.”
“No one comes in or out unless my people approve it. One word to anyone about my brother, and I will personally see to it that—”
Both of the doctor’s hands come up. “Understood.”
Eva waits.
“Understood, Ms. Morelli.”
The doctor and the surgeon back away from her like they’re leaving a royal audience.
And then she turns her head.
Dark eyes that remind me forcefully of Leo scan the disaster I am at this moment. “Haley. Yes?”
I manage a nod and push myself upright in the chair. Eva lets out a breath. “Come with me.”
What else am I supposed to do? I get to my feet, my clothes stiff with the blood, and go to her side. Eva pushes through the swinging double doors that have kept me from the wing all these hours. They’re nothing to her.
On the other side of the doors is a sea of white, broken up by abstract art. They should put Daphne’s paintings in here instead. I’d rather look at the ocean. Every step we take makes my heart beat harder. The thing I’m imagining—it’s not going to happen. We’re not going to round a corner and find Leo bleeding out on the floor.
It’s not going to happen.
Eva goes to the end of the hall, looks both ways, and turns left. The hall dead-ends in a smaller waiting room with the same modern tones as the one I was sitting in, only this one has two soft couches and a table circled by four wooden chairs.
A family waiting room.
She stops inside the door. In a blink, I’m aware of them. The men who have surrounded us. Four of them, all in black suits. “Get Haley some clean clothes,” Eva says to the one in the lead. “Is everyone in position?”
“The advance team is still on the perimeter, but they’ll rotate in an hour. Snipers are on the roof.”
Eva dismisses him with a few more quiet instructions, and then we’re alone in the family waiting room. One of the men in suits walks ten paces down the hall and stands, his back to us.
“Okay.” Eva’s shoulders let down, and while she’s shrugging off her coat, she transforms into a flesh-and-blood human. She puts the wool coat over the back of one of the chairs and drops into the sofa. Eva leans her head back in a way that Leo couldn’t. She rubs a hand over her eyes. “Come sit, Haley. Daphne told me your name, but she didn’t tell me you were a Constantine, so that’s a bit of a surprise.”
My mouth goes dry. “I’m sorry.” Sorry I was born with this last name, sorrier than I’ve ever been. “I can leave, if—”
“You,” Eva points out, “are covered in my brother’s blood. I understand you came here in the ambulance with him.”
My throat still hurts from screaming at his house and shouting at the paramedics on the way here and the hundred other mortifying things I’ve done. “Yeah. I did.”