I didn’t try to explain that I hadn’t been born Zaniel. “I think Hazel might have been worse for a boy.”
She laughed and agreed with me. I was beginning to see where the smile lines came from, and realized she had almost no frown lines, as if she didn’t do it often enough for it to leave a mark. I liked that thought a lot.
She let the shared moment of laughter fade, and then said, “Kate wants to see you.”
“Is she okay?”
Prescott made a face I couldn’t interpret; I just didn’t know her that well, it wasn’t a happy face. “We’re trying to get her to agree to a rape kit, or at least an exam.”
“He didn’t . . .” I started to say.
“Not full on, but the doctor wants to make sure that one of those claws didn’t do more damage than we can see without an exam.”
Something must have shown on my face, because she gripped my arm and said, “You did everything you could to save her, Zaniel, everything.”
“Not enough.”
She frowned at me and got that look that my great-aunt Matilda used to get. The one just before she gave me a talking-to, which made me put Prescott toward the older side of near fifty, just from attitude.
“We won today, Zaniel; don’t steal the victory from yourself. There are too many days in our line of work that are losses; you’ve got to treasure the wins, or you’ll burn out and you won’t still be saving lives when you’re my age.”
“I honestly don’t know how old you are, but if that comment puts you over what I’d guessed, then tell me your secret to staying young, because I’m going to need it.”
She laughed outright then, and it was such a good laugh that it gave me a moment of regret that she was twenty years older than me. “That’s the nicest thing a man has said to me in a long time.”
“Let me apologize for the rest of my sex, then, because they’re idiots.” I realized I was flirting, which was weird since I usually had trouble doing it, or at least Reggie told me I was bad at it.
“I have a son about your age,” she said, giving me that cynical look again.
“I honestly wouldn’t have guessed that.” I meant it.
She raised an eyebrow at me, as if she didn’t believe me. I gave her the Boy Scout salute. She rolled her eyes. “Well, if anything will remind me that you’re too young for me, that did it. I was troop mom one year.”
“You brought up your son first, mine’s three.”
“Congratulations, that’s a great age.”
I nodded. “It is.” And then I heard Kate’s voice cutting through all the other noise. She wasn’t screaming, but she wasn’t happy either. I knew her voice that well already; not a good sign. What the Heaven was wrong with me, flirting with the nurse and already attuned to Kate’s voice? It was like I was looking for it. I wasn’t. Reggie and I were in couples therapy, though we’d gotten to the point of divorce papers just needing a signature before we decided to try counseling for our son’s sake. I’d lived alone so long that she felt like an ex, almost as much as my first wife. We’d been stuck in limbo for over six months. I missed having a woman in my life who didn’t make me feel sick to my stomach to be with her. No one does disdain like a beautiful woman, and Reggie was still that. It just wasn’t enough to make up for the pain and loneliness anymore. She’d even said I could date while we were separated, but she was throwing every past relationship up in my face; I wasn’t going to give her more ammunition, so I was celibate for the first time since I was fifteen. It was like suffocating surrounded by air that I wasn’t allowed to breathe.
“What do you want me to tell Kate?” I asked, all laughter and happiness gone from my face, my voice; even my shoulders slumped like something was pushing down on me. It made me straighten up, pull my shoulders back, and I could hear Sergeant Macintosh, my drill, barking, “Don’t slump, Havoc, we can see how fucking tall you are, own every damn inch of yourself because it won’t help you survive what we’re about to do to you, but at least you’ll look like a soldier, you’ll just never be one.” Macintosh had talked like that and worse to all the newbies; it was nothing personal, just his job. His training had kept me alive more than once. I wondered if I’d ever stop hearing him barking in my head. How old did you have to be to stop hearing your drill sergeant in your head?
“Just hold her hand and tell her she’s safe, but be careful, Detective, she sees you as her white knight, and she’s traumatized enough to want you to take the job up permanently.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said.
“Just sharing hard-won wisdom. I met my first husband when he was a patient in the ER. I saved his life, too.”
“How’d that turn out, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I got my son out of it, but eventually you get tired of saving people off the job when it’s your job-job.”
“Kate seemed brave and capable,” I said.
She gave me that cynical look again, her eyes almost perfectly green now as if the gray had gotten swallowed up. “Maybe she is, but unless you want a damsel in distress on your arm, I’d tone down any white-knight urges you’re feeling right now.”
I frowned at her, fought to stop, and then sighed heavily. “I’ll do my best.”
She scowled at my stomach. “You’re hurt.”
I looked down to see the blood that was finally starting to flow through my shirt. “The angel magic kept it from bleeding,” I said, as if everyone knew that.
“Men,” she said, rolling her eyes. She grabbed my arm, and it was all nurse or Great-Aunt Matilda, no flirting involved. “Let’s get you patched up before you go see your damsel.”
Charleston called, “Havoc, I need your opinion in here.”
I actually turned toward the broken doorway, but Prescott yelled, “Your detective needs a doctor before he does any more detecting, just like you have to have a doctor look at you before you leave the hospital.”
Charleston stuck his head back out. “I told you I’m fine.”
“You were unconscious for nearly twenty minutes, so you don’t get to leave without a doctor checking you over, or you signing a waiver releasing the hospital of responsibility when you lose consciousness driving home and kill yourself.”
“I thought nurses were supposed to be comforting,” I said.
She gave me that been-there-done-it-all look again. “I keep you alive and help you heal; I leave comfort to the new nurses who haven’t lost their youthful optimism.”
Lila Bridges snorted from the doorway beside Charleston. “Did you ever have youthful optimism? Because I sure as hell didn’t.”
Hazel smiled and shook her head. “Come on, white knight, I need to stop the bleeding long enough for you to reassure your damsel so we can treat her.”
“Come back as soon as you can, Havoc,” Charleston said.
“Roger that, Lieutenant.”
“We can’t find Mark Cookson’s body.”
That made me turn back toward him. “The demon should have abandoned the body and left him to die.”
“Shoulda, coulda, but didn’t,” Bridges said.