“We have a couple of new people. I’ll go over the specifics as we go to their rooms. We lost Edna, unfortunately. She had surgery yesterday and the trauma was just too much for her. That sucked last night. Other than that, everyone is settled in and relatively quiet.”
No mention of my mom. I wanted to ask so badly, but I couldn’t. But that meant she hadn’t mentioned me to anyone, either. My heart sank. She would never keep her mouth shut on my behalf.
The fact she hadn’t said anything stabbed me right in the heart. Yeah, it was contradictory, but that little light that flickered deep inside of me still insisted she’d be so proud she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. Instead, she did everything she could to snuff that flame.
Two more rooms until we made it to hers. Stephanie gave me the specifics on our new guests, but I only heard every other word. It was hard to focus on our regular tasks. I just wanted to get back to my mom.
All was quiet in her room. She was down for the count for the night.
Hi, Joanna,” Stephanie leaned in close to her ear. “Can you hear me? It’s Stephanie and Kyndra. We’re just going to check your stats and clean you up, okay?”
“Is she getting better?” Now I could ask without drawing any weird attention to myself.
“No better, no worse.” Stephanie’s lip curled up in what looked like disappointment.
“But she woke up the other night.”
“She did?” Stephanie looked down at the computer screen in front of her, squinting and scrolling through notes. “I don’t think so.”
“I talked to her.” Oh my God, Kyndra. Shut up. You’re going to get yourself in trouble.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Stephanie looked pissed. Shit. “That’s really important.”
“I didn’t know that it was a new thing.” That sounded good. I hoped, anyway. I went back to cleaning my mother’s backside. Who knew shit could be so ironically poetic?
“Next time you notice anything unusual about any of our patients, you’ve got to tell me.” Stephanie’s tone had evened out. “It could be really important for the doctors to know.”
“I’m sorry.” I really, really was. “I guess I just didn’t think.”
“It’s all right. I don’t see any significant changes in her condition. Are you ready to roll her over to your side?”
“Yeah.” I studied my mother’s lifeless face as we rolled her toward me.
“I’m just going to put some lotion on your back and check your abrasions.” Stephanie spoke loudly. We always told the patients what we were doing; if they could hear us, we had no idea.
I held my mom on her side, still watching to see if she had any reaction. She opened her eyes again, and turned her head slightly toward Stephanie’s side of the room.
I gasped. “Did you see that? Her head moved. Her eyes are open.” It took everything I had to hold on to her.
“No, I was busy, but that’s great!” Stephanie responded, and I’m pretty sure she kept talking, but I didn’t hear anything, because I swear I saw Memere, floating behind her.
I didn’t know if I wanted to scream, cry, or rush over to her. She was more like a cloud, and I knew if I tried to touch her, my hand would go right through my vision. But no matter what her form was, I saw her.
“Kyndra, hold on to her!” Stephanie cried. “If she’s conscious, she might be in a lot of pain.”
I tore my eyes away from the vision of Memere, back to my mother. I held on to her shoulder for dear life, close to passing out. Her eyes were fixed on me, in a strange way, not quite lifeless, but close. She smiled as they rolled back in her head.
The machines all went haywire.
“Fuck!” Stephanie exclaimed. “Sorry. Kyndra, get the residents.”
I couldn’t move.
“Now!”
I ran out to the desk, everyone was alarmed to see the look on my face. “My mother needs you.” I could barely get the words out.
“What?” Mikhail wrinkled his nose in confusion.
Shit. What did I just say? “Joanna. Something’s really wrong. Get in there, now!”
Everyone’s eyes widened at me ordering around the bosses, but no one said anything about it as they all hurried to my mom’s room. One of the nurses wheeled over a defibrillator. Shit, her heart again.
“One, two, three,” I heard Mikhail count before the sickening thump against her chest. There was no room for me to watch what happened. I wasn’t the only one standing helplessly outside of the room. But I was the only one who could be losing her mom.
Thirty-Four
Time moved in a way that made me motion sick while the rest of the team worked. Faster than I could comprehend, then not at all. I leaned against the wall, useless. Helpless. As much as I wanted to peek in around the corner, to see what was going on, my body wouldn’t let me. Every so often, a countdown, a thump, and then disappointment.
How much more time did they have? If they were still trying to get her heart to beat, it meant that it wasn’t beating. Which meant…
I couldn’t think about that. If I let myself think that word right now, I gave it power. I needed to keep positive. But death, I knew it well, and it had one hand over my mom’s mouth and one hand around my throat.
More people filed in, men wearing ties and white coats. The crowd in the hallway, waiting for someone to make them useful, moved out of the way to let them by. Doctors, not residents or interns. Shit. They’d called in the big guns.
The noise level rose in the room, and I looked at some of the other CNAs, trying to get a sense for what was going on. No one was looking back at me, they were looking into the room. The machines added to the cacophony until they drowned everyone out in a nauseating squeal.
Someone put their hand on my shoulder, but when I turned, no one was there. No one behind me in the hallway at all.
“Call it.” Did I really hear those words? No. “Time of death. Two twenty-eight AM.”
Everyone who came out of that room looked gray and two dimensional. I searched their faces, for one bright spot, one person who could tell me it was going to be okay, I heard them wrong, but it didn’t happen.
Once the crowd dispersed, I forced myself to go look. Stephanie and Mikhail were the only ones still in the room, unplugging the machines and not saying a word to each other.
“What are you doing?” I don’t even know how I got the words out. I stood at the side of the bed, holding on to my mother’s limp, lifeless hand.
“We lost her.” Stephanie’s eyes look glassy.
“No. This happened before, and she was all right,” I insisted. “She’ll be fine.”
Mikhail shook his head. “We didn’t have another miracle in us.”
I scanned both of their faces, still waiting for someone to tell me this was all a joke, but they didn’t.
“No.” Reality was setting in, hard and ugly. Tears ran down my face, hitting my chest. “No.”
“Kyndra,” Stephanie put her hands on my shoulders, and I looked back to make sure there actually was someone there this time. “We can’t save everyone. We just do our best.”
“She’s my mother!” I cried, falling to my knees, my arms catching on the mattress. I still held on to my mom’s hand. “She can’t be gone.”
Stephanie sank down beside me. “What did you just say, sweetie?”
Oh, God. I really said that out loud, didn’t I? There was nothing to hide anymore, she’d already been taken away from me. “Joanna’s my mom.”
Stephanie didn’t say anything, her hand just covered her mouth, and the tears she’d tried so hard to hold in while she worked with Mikhail fell freely. I didn’t see anything else she did because she pulled me against her chest. We huddled on the cold, hard floor, crying together. She composed herself, still taking deep breaths. I rested my head on her shoulder. She stroked my hair and let me cry.
“Do you want to say anything to her? Do you need a few minutes?”
There was so much to say, but none of it was g
oing to make me feel better. I stared up at the bed, then shook my head.
“Come on then, we’ve got to let them finish in here.” Stephanie pulled me to my feet. “Who do you want me to call to come get you?”
“Am I fired?” Now I couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t say anything because I wanted to help take care of her. I knew you guys wouldn’t let me if you knew.”
Stephanie shook her head. “No. You’re not fired. But you can’t stay here tonight. You need to be with your family right now.”
I didn’t have any family. I fell against her, hysterical all over again.
Somehow, my shaking hands managed to open my locker and I fished my phone out of my purse. Stephanie reached for the phone, but I shook my head. “I can do it.”
She led me into a little room, off of the waiting room, that families of patients used just for this reason. I guess I fit the bill. I stared at the phone before I could push the button to make the call go through.
“Hey.” Aidan sounded cheerful when he answered the phone, but I just sniffled. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s gone.” I wasn’t sure how loud the words were, it was so hard to make them come out of my mouth.
“Oh, man.” I couldn’t see Aidan, but I knew he was running his hands through his hair, pacing in the living room. “I’ll be there in few minutes.”
I hadn’t asked him to pick me up. “How did you know that’s why I was calling you?”
“Did you tell them yet?” he asked.
“Yes. I had to. I lost it.”
“No one could expect you to try to work tonight, especially under those circumstances. Where are you?”
“In ICU.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’ll meet you where you drop me off.”
“Hell, no. You’re not going to stand outside, by yourself, in the middle of the night. Stay with your friends. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
My legs wobbled as I walked back to the unit. A few of the nurses came up and hugged me, Mikhail rubbed my shoulder. Everyone was sorry. No one was mad that I’d kept the biggest secret ever from them.
“Do you want something to drink?” Stephanie asked me when I sat down in the locker room. I nodded, and she came back with a huge plastic cup filled with ginger ale and ice. I took a sip, it felt good on the way down. “Does Aidan know where he’s meeting you?”
“Yeah.” Aidan was coming in here. To work, my only slice of normal life, if you factored out my mother. I’d been so secretive about what I said about him, and now, they’d actually see him and maybe even talk to him. What if they figured out he wasn’t human? No, no one would believe that. I didn’t even believe it.
Stephanie had left me alone, knowing I didn’t want to talk. I sipped the ginger ale, hugged my jacket, and stared into space. The next time I saw her, she was smiling and laughing, but not in an inappropriate way. Aidan came in behind her.
He looked so out of place, in the fluorescent light of the hospital, it made him look like an angel. So tall, as I looked up at him from the low bench, and almost ethereal. He’d put on nice pants and a sweater to come here. He sat down next to me, wrapping me in his arms and kissing my hair.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, feeling weak.
“They love you here, you know that?” he whispered against my cheek. I looked at him, unsure I’d heard him right. I still expected to be told not to come back. “They couldn’t say enough good things about you when I told them who I was here for.”
I nodded. Normally, I would have been over the moon to hear that. But right now, it was like he was talking about someone else.
“Let me help you with your coat.” Aidan stood up. “Let’s get you home.”
Thirty-Five
My head felt like it was going to split in half. So many thoughts swirled painfully around my brain, but somehow, none of them seemed worth talking about. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to hold everything together, as Aidan drove home. The world passing me by, unchanged, made me even more motion sick.
Aidan carried me into his bedroom. I gave no protest as he stripped me out of my scrubs, and I covered my shivering body.
“Put your arms up,” he instructed, holding my pajama top.
“No.” Instead I put my arms around his waist, pressing his body against my skin. “I need you.”
I desperately needed to feel something right now. Something normal, and real. Something good.
Everyone in my life left me. Aidan and I would debate how alive he was, but he made me feel like I had a reason for going on. And that morning, I was begging the universe for a reminder of why I should do just that.
He ran his hand over my hair, granting it mercy and freeing it from the bun. He picked a curl out of the mess, studying it as it twisted his fingers in it. I pulled his sweater up over his shoulders, then pulled his undershirt away from his pants, making him let go of my hair so I could take it off of him. I pressed my bare skin against his chest. He radiated coolness, and it calmed my soul.
Aidan ran his fingers lightly down the length of my spine, stopping and swirling in an intimate sign language. I held on to him tighter, more urgently, my fingernails marking the skin on his shoulders.
“Drink from me,” he murmured, nodding his head against my cheek. Taking his cue, I dragged my fingernails down the outside of his biceps, he hissed as his skin split. As his blood came to the surface, I licked his arms not to waste a drop.
Warmth filled me like he’d wrapped me in an electric blanket. I hadn’t even realized how numb I was until Aidan’s blood gave me my senses back. His hands gripped my bottom, making my muscles clench and bringing me up to my tiptoes. Once I’d licked him clean, I brought my bloody mouth up to his to kiss him.
Aidan’s fangs pierced my bottom lip, and a cry threatened to strangle me, mixed with his blood in my throat. I held him close to me as his shaking hands fumbled at the button and zipper of his pants. I should have helped him, but I would have just ripped them off of him, and they’d looked like they were pretty nice pants.
Once free from the fabric, Aidan backed me up against the mattress. My feet dragged along the warn rug beside his bed, almost tripping us. I giggled, inappropriate considering the circumstances of my night and the fact that Aidan was sucking my blood from me, but feeling the tension break like that was just what I needed.
We landed on the bed hard enough that my body bounced up and hit Aidan’s, we pulled away from each other long enough to laugh, take a deep breath before we magnetized to each other again. I brought my mouth back to Aidan’s shoulders, running my tongue along the wound to catch a few escaped drops of fresh blood. His hands clasped around my waist, pinning me down. He bit my breast, and I cried out. The pain of the tender skin breaking made every nerve in my body curl and expand. His tongue swirled around my nipple as he sucked. My hands raked through his hair, pulling it, pushing his head closer to my body.
His free hand pushed my thighs apart and moved between my legs, rubbing as he sucked. My hips bucked against him, and I gasped for air as he found his way inside me. He mercifully let go of my breast, my blood trailing down my stomach as his lips trailed down my body. As his fingers thrust, he swirled with his tongue, and my heart pounded, wondering if he’d ever bite me down there.
I got my answer, when his burning fangs pierced my thigh. He didn’t drink as long this time, but my whole world clouded over like I was looking at it through broken glass. I wasn’t even sure if I was seeing anything that was real.
“More,” I moaned when he stopped, licking the wound clean, then pushing his tongue inside me.
“More what?” His voice was raspy. He looked up at me, his eyes just visible above my pubic bone.
“More blood.” It didn’t even sound like my voice. “Let me drink from you.”
He crawled up so his face met mine, and I cursed myself for making him stop. He lay on his side next to me, caressing my cheek. “Not tonight,” he whispered and I wanted to scream. “We have to be careful.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t want to be careful,” I pouted, turning away from him. “It doesn’t work for me.”
He laughed, and I gave him a dirty look. “The first word that comes to mind when I think of you is not careful.” He kissed my shoulder. “If we make a mistake, we might not be able to fix it.”
Aidan brought his hands back up over my breasts, and I winced when he touched the tender spot that he’d bitten just minutes before. I buried my head in the pillow, tears breaking free from my eyes.
“Shh,” he murmured. “It’s over.”
“She’s gone!” I cried. “How can you say that? It’s not a class that ended. My mother died.”
“Because,” he sat up, lifting me to his chest. I clung to the pillow, keeping it in my lap. “Now you’re free of the fear of what’s going to happen next, what she’s going to do, how she’s going to hurt you. I’ve dealt with a lot of death in my life, and I’ve been sorry about many of them. But this one, I refuse to see it as a bad thing.”
I struggled to free myself from him. I didn’t want to listen to this nonsense another minute. Did he have any idea of what an asshole he sounded like? It didn’t matter how awful she was; she was my mom. You don’t get another chance to have a mother. Now she was gone, I would never have a chance to be the kind of daughter that made her notice me. Made her proud. I could tell Aidan over and over again that’s what I wanted, and he could tell me over and over I was never going to get it. Now he was finally right.
He let me get up. I hugged myself, feeling ridiculous. Naked, aching with need bubbling just below the surface of my skin, my senses tap dancing under the influence his blood. Never was it more obvious I had nowhere to go.
I looked down at the floor, ashamed as usual by my behavior, pissed that on this of all nights, I felt bad. And I didn’t feel bad about what he Aidan said, I couldn’t be mad at him for being honest. I was mad because I still believed the lie. The wrong one, about my mother. I wanted to believe Aidan, and every time I asked him to prove himself to me, he wouldn’t.
So what if he drained the blood out of my veins, sucking my heart dry until it took one final, thirsty gasp. Everyone I loved left me. Aidan would follow suit eventually. Unless he could make me believe, then we’d be together forever.
Silent Night: Vampire Holiday Romance (The Night Songs Collection Book 4) Page 19