Damian turned. “This is your floor, right?”
After everything she’d seen tonight, she wasn’t sure anymore. “It was,” she answered.
He gave her a suggestive look. “Can I borrow some bath wipes?”
Andi blinked. Was he being serious? After all that?
“I mean, if you didn’t use them all up on your doctor friends,” he went on.
She inhaled, thought about hitting his arm hard, and then settled on saying, “You know there’s something wrong with you, right?”
“It’s called being incorrigible,” he said. “Come on, where’s your locker?”
Chapter 20
They stepped out into the ICU together, and everything was normal. Doors were open, beds were where they belonged, and staff and patients were carrying on like nothing had happened.
“Can they hear us?” she whispered while directing him to the locker room.
“No.”
“Will they see if I open the door?” It was nightshift. If things were back to normal, she could guarantee that someone was sleeping in the dark on break.
“Not if they want to see darkness.”
“Okay, that’s so confusing, but anyway.” She gave up and went inside. He followed her and sure enough, three of her coworkers were stretched out on couches or chains of chairs, snoozing. She opened her locker to rummage through her bag and gave him the first handful.
“Thanks,” he said, wiping himself down, starting with his hair. She looked him up and down, telling herself she was being professional, merely trying to assess if he had suffered any injuries that hadn’t healed and needed to be cared for. But the bottom of his shirt had been torn off, revealing those insane rippling abs. “Are you going to?” he asked her, gesturing with his hand at her. “I mean, I can help if you want,” he said with a leer.
Andi swallowed and hopped back. “I’m good. It’s just…silk and bath wipes…don’t mix, I think.”
“Of course,” he said sarcastically.
She wasn’t the one covered in monster blood—just her coat was. If only she’d known that this was going to happen before she’d dropped that hundred-dollar bill for dry cleaning on the ground at Belissima’s. She snorted and turned to look at her coworkers in an effort not to look at him. How had they missed all the excitement outside? Nightshift’s abilities to sleep on breaks were legendary, but come the fuck on. Then realization hit her. “Wait, was that Forgetting Fire in the lantern? Like you wanted to show me?”
He slowly nodded. “Yes.”
“And it did…all this?” She gestured at her coworkers, who were all sleeping like serfs at Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
“Yes,” he agreed.
It was like it had undone time! “Oh, thank God!” Andi leaned against her locker and heard it click. “Jessica’s back, right?”
Damian frowned, shaking his head as he finished rubbing a hand across his stomach. “No.”
“What do you mean, no? Can’t you…bring her back?”
His countenance changed when his eyes met hers, and it was like he was made out of steel again. “I can’t. That’s not how it works.”
“But…she was here. People will remember—”
“Yes. And they’ll find her car in the parking lot. I assume they track your badges, so they’ll know that she got in, but they won’t have a record of her dying, nor will anyone have much of a memory of her working here tonight. That’s what happens when you die for Unearthly reasons. Most human minds can’t handle it.” He finished wiping off his forearms and shoved the stained wipes in his pocket.
“But…there are cameras!” Andi protested. The woman had kids, for Christ’s sake!
“The fire will have gotten to them, too. And in a week, it’ll be another unsolved mystery.” He raked his eyes over her, taking in her surprise and pain with a sympathetic frown. “Death is death, Andi. Not even I can change it.”
“But—” she whispered, and he cut her off.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he said, then pressed on. “Are you all right?”
“No.” She was not all right. Not in a global sense, knowing all the shit she now knew about his world, and definitely not in the here and now. Andi stared past him for a moment. “But I’m really good at compartmentalizing, so I figure I’ve got three or so hours before everything sinks in and I lose it.”
Damian appraised her and seemed to take her statement at face value. “Fair enough. Let me get you home.”
They rode the elevator down in silence, but Damian held the ‘closed’ button down before it landed. “Pocket your sphere.”
“Why?” she asked, as she did as she was told.
“Because I want to make sure the cameras down here see us leaving,” Damian said, letting the button go and zipping up his coat to hide everything that’d happened to his T-shirt.
She dropped the metal ball into her coat pocket and put on a brave smile as they approached the security kiosk.
“Leaving so soon, Miss Ngo?” Omar asked.
“Turns out my friend’s not feeling well, and the ICU has more staff than they can handle. That’s what happens when you offer double time!” She forced herself to laugh and shrug playfully as Omar let them out the door.
Andi followed Damian back to his car and got in without talking. It was her turn to be tired of words and think.
She had just seen the literal definition of too much. Up until now, she’d have thought it was that time she’d had a Steven Johnson’s patient’s colon slide right out of their body, semi-intact, before popping open and spilling shit everywhere. She’d called in sick for three nights after that, but tonight had that night beat—hands down.
And Damian had understood that. It was why he’d been cruel to her at the restaurant and why he was driving her back home in silence now.
“I get why you push people away,” she said aloud. This…was his life. What had happened today was his actual, normal Saturday.
He kept driving like he didn’t hear her until he downshifted like mad, surprising her by pulling over underneath an overpass in the dark, with only the dim light of the dashboard for illumination. Andi could hear each of the cars passing overhead and feel the vibration of the bridge as it shook from them.
Damian looked over at her, his face framed in the dark. “Do you?”
He did what he did, although clearly it tormented him, and stopped him from ever letting himself relax. The only doctor she’d ever trusted had told her a wise thing once—that every person who practices war or medicine has a little graveyard somewhere inside of them they visit, full of all the ghosts of their what-ifs. She knew she visited one inside of her from time to time, when she was feeling broken, like nothing she did at work mattered.
But she had a feeling that Damian was trapped in his, with gates he’d locked himself—for the world’s protection.
“People around me don’t tend to live long lives,” he told her. He was in three-quarters light, and it was like she could see his own pain casting him in shadow. “I should’ve never picked you up. Even at the bus stop, I knew you’d be trouble. But I have a habit of playing with fire.”