Her numbers rose.
Slowly.
Then steadily.
The immediate danger passed by sunrise.
Michael came into the waiting room wearing wrinkled blue scrubs. Rook still held the sleeping boy against his chest. Rosie’s yellow ribbon protruded from the paper bag near his boots.
“She stabilized,” Michael said.
Rook looked at him.
“Thank you.”
Michael glanced toward Eli. “He stayed all night?”
“Yeah.”
“So did you.”
Neither knew what to say next.
Whitaker entered before the silence hardened. He lowered himself into a chair and revealed the reason he had treated Lucy without charging professional fees for fourteen months.
It was not only because he believed she retained awareness.
Twelve years earlier, after Michael’s surgery, Rook had sold his custom motorcycle to pay the remaining hospital bill of another injured teenager whose family had no insurance. He never told Michael. He never told the club.
Whitaker knew because the payment passed through a patient assistance fund he managed.
