Page 32

Damien snarled, “So you’re the scoundrel,” still holding Kellen’s collar in his hands. “Do you have any idea how much she had to go through because she loved you? And to think that I didn’t know this all along,” he said, breathing heavily in anger. “Damn, I really want to kill you right now.”
Kellen sighed with discomfort. “Look, I…” but he was cut off right away.
“And you have the guts to talk!”
Damien would have definitely gotten his wish to murder by starting with another round of fists, but someone stopped his rising fist. He turned his head quickly to find that it was a man his own age.
The man said, “Leave him,” with a grim expression and then pointed to the security guys who were running by and looked quite unhappy.
“Who are you?” Damien plainly didn’t like being stopped, but he did anyway.
“Ryan.”
Damien and Ryan were occupied chatting to each other, so Kellen went back toward the wall and slid down it. He was sitting on the floor with his legs out in front of him.
Lena was still in the ICU, but she was now safe and slept again.
He wanted to see her, but Dr. Robert had told all of Lena’s guests that they couldn’t even go to the ICU waiting room, given the trouble they had caused earlier. It looked like the doctor was disciplining them as they were school students, and he had even put a couple of big guards in front of Lena’s room.
Now, they were all crammed into the hallway next to the ICU. At least Ryan and Lola were stuck together, while Kellen got third-degree glares every other minute, and Damien was joined to that glare team. Kellen couldn’t blame them, though. They had been there for Lena through thick and thin, even when he squandered time excavating a hole that could have been a grave. He might just as easily climb inside, lie down, and ask Lena’s pals to cover him with dirt. He was sure they would be happy to help.
As time went by, Kellen sat on the floor, waiting for Lena to wake up again. Another worry kept creeping into his head. The worry of having to see her again.
Would she ever let him off the hook? Would she ever consider getting back together with him?
The upsetting inquiries made his stomach drop since the responses that came back were quite bad.
The scenario was rather strange. And too much testosterone.
Lola peered at the boys sleeping in the hallway out of the corner of her eye.
Kellen was using his pants to clean the dirt off the floor of the hospital. His clothing was so dirty that you couldn’t tell what color they were anymore. There was just too much blood and grime everywhere. Even Dr. Robert gave him a look that screamed, “Zombies are real.”
Ryan and then Damien sat in the two chairs next to Kellen. Lola was the next person to sit on the chair, which finished the line of people in need.
Lola let out a loud sigh that made the three men stare at her for a second. But then they went back to being the same robots they had been before.
Strange.
She was worried about Lena, too, but she didn’t like staying quiet for so long.
She turned to the side and opened her mouth to say something to Damien, but then she closed it quickly when she saw him glaring at the floor. She was going to go back to how she was before, but then she saw Ryan. And he was staring at her with a raised eyebrow.
Lola hurriedly glanced aside after clearing her throat. Ryan made her anxious. He had previously told her what happened at Kellen’s engagement party that went bad. She concluded that Ryan was a touch terrifying because he was so adept at formulating plans like that.
She could still picture the first time they met. Oh, how badly he damaged her knuckles that day. She did hit him, but nevertheless…
She sighed again, and it shook the ground. There was a lot of bad energy behind the faux calm face. Another fight was coming up soon. Lola didn’t want to see that happen again. Kellen didn’t even try to fight back when Damien tried to hit him. It was just as bad as Lena not calling for aid on purpose when she was bleeding to death in her apartment.
“These guys are all crazy. Thank f**k, I don’t have a boyfriend!” she said to herself.
She jerked her head up as someone cleared their throat. Ryan lifted both of his eyebrows and gave her a look of disbelief. He must have heard her talking to herself and thought she was crazy.
She snapped, “What am I supposed to do?”  “You guys would rather kill each other than talk.”
“So you decided to talk to yourself?”
Damien sat between them and dragged a hand down his face. Kellen moves his feet around while sitting on the floor.
“Yes!” She lifted her chin.
Lola didn’t care what other people thought. She simply wanted Lena to be like that. She was going to train the girl who was lying half-dead in the ICU to be just like that when she woke up.
There is a limit to how long you can grieve over things that can’t be altered.
Ryan had a glimmer of a smirk on his lips as he said, “Are you always like this?”
Lola squinted her eyes. He was laughing at her, the fucker. A nurse immediately ran out of the ICU section and yelled for the doctor before she could say something really rude. Dr. Robert, his assistant, and a number of nurses quickly came racing.
 
Everyone in line for their sadness got up.
Lola tried to advance to see what was going on, but three frantic guys shoved her back and made it impossible for her to move further. “What the hell!”
Dr. Robert came out alone with a smile on his face and said, “She’s awake.”
Lola felt like a big stone had been taken off her chest as she heard the news. She walked to the side just in time to see Kellen’s relief countenance. Ryan and Damien also looked the same.
But as soon as Dr. Robert left and told them they could meet Lena immediately, but only one at a time, the scenario altered.
Ryan and Damien stopped Kellen from going inside just as he was about to. “Hey, hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
Lola stopped herself from groaning. There they go again! “Uh, guys, excuse me, let the girl go by?” But they didn’t.
Kellen shut his eyes for a second before letting out a sigh. “Let me in.”
Ryan laughed. “No way in hell.”
Lola tried again, this time stepping back and strolling around Kellen to see if she could get in from the other side. “Guys, while you think about who can go in or not, let me just…”
At this moment, Kellen was in a lot of trouble. “Hey, I need to talk to her.”
“Not over my dead body,” Damien said fiercely.
Kellen looked annoyed and tried to push past the two men, but they pushed him back hard.
Lola, on the other hand, practically fell on her b**t as the boys locked their horns.
“Everyone back off!” she suddenly yelled, striking Ryan’s shoulder with her fist. She winced back; that guy was all lead. Damn it!
She was able to get the attention of all three males, thank goodness. She put her hands on her hips. “Until each of you gets your act together, no one should go in that room,” she said, pointing to the door. “Over there, Lena just got away from the Grim Reaper, and you guys are fighting among yourselves! You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
She was happy to see them shift their weight and seem ashamed. Idiots! They were glad she didn’t have her favorite knife with her just then.
“And you,” she said, turning to Kellen. “Don’t you think you should come back later when Lena is more stable? She just woke up, for f**k’s sake!”
Ryan complained. “Later? He shouldn’t even come back later!”
Lola now looked at Ryan with a scowl. “How about we let Lena make that choice?”
Then, she pushed past them without being too kind. Mission Lena was waiting ahead.
Lena’s first thought when she woke up was how heavy her eyes felt. The light flowing in through the window was like it was getting past her closed eyes. Knowing that light existed and experiencing it were both very unpleasant. Her head hurt, but then someone fumbled with her arm, and soon, the pain turned into a numbness that she couldn’t figure out.
After several futile tries and a lot of groaning, she finally opened her eyes a little bit.
A man with a sickeningly happy smile looked at her through a pair of unclear spectacles.
She recognized the face. She slid her gaze slowly down to see the white jacket on his torso and the stethoscope around his neck. A physician. Oh…  Dr. Robert.
The guy questioned Lena slowly, as if she were a stupid kid, “How are you feeling?”
Lena opened her lips to say something, but all that came out was a strange scream. Suddenly, a nurse came out of nowhere with a cup and put the straw from it to her lips. Dr. Robert rubbed his beardy jaw while she avidly drank from it.