On a Dark Wing

by Jordan Dane

  “If I have to remind you, I’m not tryin’ hard enough.”

  “Good point.”

  Before I said anything more, Tanner rolled toward the counter and chatted up one of the nurses before he grabbed a tissue. When the nurse turned her back, he pulled a sleight-of-hand trick with his cell that Criss Angel, Mindfreak, would’ve been proud of. After he came back, Tanner handed me the tissue.

  “You better make this last,” he said.

  “Yeah, thanks.” I snatched the tissue from his hand and leaned in, whispering, “I never saw. Where did you put it?”

  “I could tell ya, but then I’d have to snuff you.” He shifted his gaze toward the ICU desk. “Dead air isn’t the goal. We need something worth recording. Cross fingers, toes, anything that works. We could use a lucky break.”

  “Yeah, come on, Mrs. Holden. Please?” I crossed my fingers and waited.

  “By the way, I found out from the nurse that the night shift is coming on soon…and the O.R. is on the tenth floor,” he whispered. “Information is power.”

  “What?”

  I didn’t know why Tanner asked the nurse about shift changes and the operating room, but I didn’t get to ask him. Seconds later, Nate’s father rushed through the ICU doors. Having come off Denali, Mr. Holden looked windblown and his face had chafed from the harsh weather. He’d stripped out of his heavier climbing gear, down to the layers he wore underneath. His eyes searched the waiting room, looking for his wife and child.

  When he saw them come out of the restroom, I thought I’d lose it.

  Without saying a word, he rushed for his wife and buried his face in her neck. Her sobs muffled in his shoulder as he cradled the back of her head in his hand. My fingers went to my lips as I fought the lump in my throat. When everything blurred, from the tears filling my eyes, I turned to Tanner and my father. If I was any judge, we were all affected, especially when Zoey huddled next to her parents and hugged their legs with her arms.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered.

  Those words came out of my mouth, even though I tried to stay still. Without saying anything, Tanner grabbed my hand. This time, he didn’t hide it from my dad. Both of us watched as the doctor approached the Holdens. From where we were sitting, we couldn’t hear what they said, but we’d soon know word for word, thanks to Tanner’s app…and Zoey.

  If Mrs. Holden hadn’t brought Zoey, she would have been inside the ICU with Nate and her husband, and not standing at the nurses’ station talking with the doctor. Tanner’s cell-phone app would have been useless. The way I figured it, Zoey had been the real reason Tanner’s brilliance came in handy. The love she had for her big brother and the closeness of Nate’s family gave me a fighting chance at seeing him.

  When the doctor took Mrs. Holden in to see Nate, Zoey went with her dad. Mr. Holden held his daughter in his arms as they waited for the elevator, but before the doors opened, the little girl looked at me. I wasn’t sure she really saw me, but I lifted a finger to wave. As the elevator doors opened, she waved back, a sad gesture that I knew would stay with me. The tissue that Tanner had given me came in handy after all.

  But when I turned to look for my friend, he was already on retrieval mode. Tanner grabbed his cell and punched a few buttons while the nurses were busy. Without returning to where I sat, he looked over his shoulder and said, “Forgot something in my car. You wanna come?”

  Tanner said that for my dad’s benefit. He didn’t have to tell me anything. I would’ve shadowed him. He’d given us an excuse for leaving ICU to listen to the recording.

  “Yeah. I could use some fresh air,” I said before I turned to my father. “Dad, we’ll be right back, unless we stop at the gift shop. Can you call me on my cell if anything happens?”

  “Sure.” My father nodded, but I could tell his fuse burned on the short side. He didn’t like being here any more than I did and waiting around, with no end in sight, would soon wear thin. He’d push me for answers that I couldn’t afford to tell him.

  Whatever came next, I had to do it fast.

  Minutes later

  Nothing prepared Jackie Holden for seeing her son, Nate, in his glass room in the ICU. Taped to her boy’s sweet lips was a ventilator tube that hissed breath into his lungs through a machine. It’d been bad enough to see all the equipment monitoring his condition and the tubes in his arms that were keeping him alive. But every intrusion of the incessant beeping and the hum of equipment wore on her fragile nerves. Even though she knew the tubes in him delivered medicine and fluids to his body, they wouldn’t allow her to hold him the way her arms ached to do.

  “We’re monitoring your son’s condition very closely. That’s why…” The doctor’s voice faded from her mind as she stepped closer to Nate’s bed and clutched the cold bed rails.

  Before Jackie actually saw her son, the doctor described how Nate would look, so she’d know what to expect, but she only half listened. Rationally, her mind knew what she’d see, but nothing would have prepared her heart.

  She’d blocked out the doctor’s words, only wanting to see her Nathan. That’s all that mattered…until now. Standing over him, she noticed his skin looked deathly pale and the shadows under his beautiful eyes scared her. Nate looked dead. Machines kept his body alive.

  If his condition grew worse, what the doctor proposed felt like a last resort.

  After the doctor left her alone with Nate, Jackie knew that the ICU nurse had been right about the trauma to a child. It had been hard enough for her to see him this way, but Zoey wouldn’t understand. She’d be more scared for her brother and Jackie couldn’t do that to her little girl, even if it meant she wouldn’t see him before his heart stopped beating.

  “Zoey can’t see you like this, Nathan,” she whispered. “She wouldn’t understand, honey.”

  She talked to him as if he heard her and stroked his cheek as if he felt the touch of her shaking fingers.

  “But I’m here with your father…and Zoey sends you butterfly kisses.” Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears. “We all love you…so very much.”

  Jackie leaned down and kissed his forehead, breathing in the smell of her son’s skin—never feeling so helpless in her whole life.

  After I rolled Tanner into the elevator, I reached for the ground-floor button, but he stopped me and punched ten instead.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I wanna check out the O.R. before the ICU night shift comes on duty. You may not remember much after your accident, but I felt like Humpty Dumpty. I saw the operating room plenty and it got me thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Before he answered, Tanner reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell and earplugs he used for music. We’d both hear what he’d recorded from the conversation the Holdens had with Nate’s doctor, without anyone listening in.

  “ICUs always have a service elevator that bypasses the public,” he said. “They don’t bring patients through the waiting area and doctors use the back way to avoid the families’ usual questions.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “It’ll take time for the night shift to get up to speed. The way I see it, we may have a small window of opportunity to sneak into ICU during shift change.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I see you’ve given this thought.”

  “I want to help you, Abbey.” When he looked up at me, I saw an edge of hurt in his eyes. Unlike his usual way, Tanner turned stone-cold serious. “I may not know why you’re doing this, but I’m your friend. If you ever need someone to bail you out of jail and not post your booking photos on the internet, I’d be that guy.”

  I truly didn’t deserve a friend like Tanner, but since I had him alone in the elevator, I did the one thing that I’d wanted to do since he drove to Healy in his mom’s stolen car. Standing i
n front of him I leaned down, planted my hands on the armrests to his wheelchair—and I kissed him. His lips tasted yummy like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, something I could thank my dad for…if I ever lost my mind. After Tanner jerked back in surprise—guess he hadn’t expected me to go PDA on him—he totally kissed me back.

  When the elevator door opened, I pulled away and opened my eyes. Our faces were only inches apart.

  “No booking photos,” I whispered and smiled. “Check.”

  Tanner looked stunned and he didn’t say anything. He only stared at me until I got on the back of his wheels and pushed us out the elevator on the tenth floor.

  I wanted to feel like the cool flirty chick that I’d always secretly envied, but the heat rushing to my cheeks gave me away. I wasn’t cool. I’d never be that girl and I had no idea how to get a guy’s attention, but at that moment, I didn’t care. I’d kissed my best friend, Tanner Lange.

  My knees felt like Jell-O. Lime, my personal favorite.

  “Abbey?”

  After we hit the tenth floor, people noise made it hard to hear Tanner until I found a quiet spot for us to talk. I took a knee in front of him and waited for him to finish what he had to say. Seeing the blush of pink on his cheeks up close made me feel better. Both of us were rookies at this whole kissing thing.

  “Can we…do that again sometime? I mean, when I’m actually ready,” he said. “Because I…could do better.”

  I thought Tanner was kidding, but from the serious expression on his face, I realized that he wasn’t.

  “Yeah. I’d like that.” I smiled. “Now what’s on the recording, Romeo?”

  With full-on dimples and a second wave of color to his cheeks, Tanner shot me a grin as he set up his cell to play back the MP3 recording. He plugged his earbuds into his phone and handed me one so we could both listen. The recording sounded primo, especially the doctor’s voice. He came in loud and clear. I shut my eyes and listened, plugging my other ear with a finger so I wouldn’t miss a word. As the doctor told the Holdens about Nate, I gritted my teeth. It was worse than I thought.

  Nate suffered from cerebral edema. His brain was swelling. The doctor guessed that the condition must have happened after he received a blow to the head when he fell into a crevasse. Apparently he had a concussion and it had gotten worse. Something about hypothermia and the high altitude complicated things, too.

  But the doctor said it would be important to monitor and control every bodily function. That’s why he was in ICU on a ventilator with his blood pressure and other vital functions being watched. He explained the medical options to Nate’s parents, saying they could drain fluid off his brain to relieve the pressure and that surgery might also be an option. But his recommendation was to induce a coma in Nate, giving him really strong meds that would put him into a deep sleep that might allow his body to heal.

  “Oh, my God. They can’t do that, Tanner,” I whispered, putting a hand over my mouth and shaking my head.

  I wanted to ask, “What if you can’t get the swelling down?” but I knew that question was the one neither parent could ask, at least not in front of Zoey.

  I wasn’t a doctor, but after meeting Death—twice—I knew outcomes weren’t always determined by medical science. I had a bad feeling that if Nate got induced into a coma by strong drugs, that would put him out of my reach. If he was still in his body, somewhere, I wouldn’t reach him—on any level—if he were drugged. If I couldn’t pull him from the brink of where Death had him, Nate’s life would be in the hands of the collector of souls.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  “But, Abbey, they have to do something,” Tanner said. “If they can’t relieve the pressure on his brain, he could die…or worse.”

  “What’s worse than dying?”

  “He could become a vegetable. His body might function, but his brain would be useless. Or the doctor might declare him brain-dead and his parents would have to make the worst decision of their lives—to pull the plug on their son. Man, this really blows. I don’t see how you’re gonna get in to see him now.”

  I pulled the earbud out and sat back on my haunches in front of his wheelchair, feeling drained.

  “But I have to try, Tanner.” I shook my head. “This is my fault. You don’t understand.”

  “How could it be your fault, Abbey? He was on Denali, you were in Healy. That makes no sense. Yeah, this is bad, but I don’t understand why you feel responsible.”

  I made an offer to Death on the mountain—my soul for Nate’s—and the Angel of Death didn’t give me his hand. He’d refused my bargain. What would it take for me to save Nate now?

  “Help me get in to see him, before they dose him with coma juice, and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Tanner stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  Maybe I had.

  Chapter 16

  Fairbanks Memorial Hospital

  Breaking in to an Intensive Care Unit wouldn’t be easy, but with Tanner, I had a fighting chance. In a med facility, being with a guy in a wheelchair would be like having an open hall pass. People expected us to be there and didn’t gawk sideways like they did in the real world, where we usually stood out. I say “us” and “we” because when I hung out with Tanner, I saw how some people treated him.

  Most of the time, he got stares behind his back when jerks thought he wasn’t looking. Or for whatever reason, people would strike up lame conversations with him. They thought that because he sat in a wheelchair, he should know everybody in Alaska on wheels, like they all hung out together and had secret handshakes. Or sometimes they went out of their way to “help” or be “friendly” to him—even when they obviously weren’t into it—just to play nice with the handicapped guy and rack up brownie points in heaven, like God couldn’t see through their fake smiles.

  But at Fairbanks Memorial, we fit in. I think that’s why Tanner came with me. I would’ve gone down in flames—the odds totally sucked, like a gazillion to none—but my best friend gave me a sliver of hope.

  He made me a believer—in him—and in us.

  “What now, genius?” I asked.

  “Watch and learn, grasshoppa.”

  Tanner navigated the corridors of the tenth floor, acting like he knew where to go. Of course, he faked it for my benefit, but once he got on track, we were golden.

  “Here, that’s what I need,” he whispered and nudged his head to a hallway ahead. Avoiding direct eye contact with anyone, I rounded the corner as Tanner said, “These are patient changing rooms. You know, where you get naked…and everyone’s cool with it?”

  I rolled my eyes, trying to remember that he came to help.

  “We’ll find what we need here,” he said.

  I wanted to ask him what he was talking about, but he’d gotten me this far, why would I question him now? Some of the doors down the corridor were shut, but a few were wide open. He rolled up to the nearest unlocked door where the room had lights off inside, a room with a threshold wide enough for his wheelchair. With a glance down the hall, I made sure no one saw us make our move.

  “This one.” He shoved the door wider with his footrests and when we got inside, he said, “Shut the door.”

  Once we had privacy, I breathed a sigh of relief. We were finally alone and could talk without anyone watching.

  “Patients use these rooms to change into hospital gowns,” he said.

  Before I knew it, Tanner rolled closer to a tall bin that had discarded cotton hospital gowns inside. He pulled out one after another, tossing garments aside.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  When he found what he needed, Tanner grinned and tossed me something that looked like a blue cotton shower-cap thingie and a plain white gown that tied in back.

  “Oh,
no. I’m not hanging my ass out of this thing.” I shook my head.

  “You won’t have to. That’s my job.”

  “Oh, this, I’ve got to see.” I smirked.

  Without hesitating, Tanner stripped out of his jacket and yanked off his T-shirt. My face flushed with heat. I’d never seen him without a shirt on. I swallowed, hard, and I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help it. Tanner’s body was hard to ignore. His chest and abs were as muscled as I’d ever seen and his arms were perfect.

  Seeing him like this—and being in a small room that got smaller by the second—I forgot to breathe.

  “If this is gonna work,” he said, “I need you to take off my pants.”

  Wide-eyed, I gulped when I heard his zipper and froze with my mouth open. What the hell?

  “Tight quarters, Chandler. I could use your help?”

  “Oh…right.”

  When Tanner looked at me again, his soft chuckle made me smile.

  I pointed a finger and said, “You better not be laughing at me, dude. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  “Never, Abbey. Trust me.” He grinned, gifting me with his dimples. “If I’m gonna look like a patient, jeans and boots won’t cut it. I can keep my socks and boxers on, but the rest goes.”

  Okay, so I stripped off Tanner’s pants. No biggie, right? I tried not to look. I seriously did, but you know, things happen and I’m not exactly blind. I helped him stash his clothes and boots in a knapsack he always had attached to his chair for school stuff. By the time we left, Tanner looked like a real patient wearing hospital garb with his bare legs showing. He helped me get into my disguise and flipped the white gown around, making it look like a uniform. After I tucked my hair into the blue elastic cap, I took a look at myself in a mirror that hung on the wall. I looked like an orderly who took patients from the O.R. to their rooms…or to ICU.

  “What do you think?” I asked Tanner after I turned around.