Pinewood Corner Kitchen Chapter 21
Gabriella was thirsty. Her throat was completely dry and her head sent little pulses of pain through her with every heartbeat. Was she hungover? She remembered something about a dance night, but she hadn’t accepted the offer. She’d been at work. Because she needed to solve the Chapman case and-
Her eyes snapped open and she instantly regretted it as sunlight flooded in. She squeezed them shut again as she began to cough.
“Hey, Gabriella, are you awake?”
It was Madelyn’s voice right beside her. “Hmm?”
“Hey, wake up, it’s okay.”
It took a couple tries, but she opened her eyes, still coughing as she took in the monitors beside her bed. She was in a hospital room. “The house…” she started.
“It’s okay,” Madelyn repeated.
Madelyn was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand. And as Gabriella blinked, coming back to herself, she remembered everything. The Chapmans had tried to kill them and the energy had bounced back. Taking the kitchen ceiling down.
“Graham and James-” she started, her voice scratchy.
“Right here,” came Graham’s voice, to her immediate relief.
Madelyn pressed a couple buttons on the side of the bed and the head began to rise, helping Gabriella sit up. “The ceiling came down,” she said as Madelyn poured her a glass of water from the little pitcher on the rolling table beside her.
“I know. You’re okay.”
Graham was sitting in a wheelchair beside the bed. He looked terrible, exhausted and as beat up as she felt. Gabriella wasn’t sure she wanted to see what her own face looked like right now. She blinked, trying to clear her head.
Graham was right there, gripping Madelyn’s other hand. And as she looked over, she saw that there were three beds in this room. James was lying in the one next to her, with Amelia and Bradley there beside him.
“He’s-”
“He’s okay,” Amelia said softly. “The doctors said you’re all okay.”
“Where’s Casey?”
“He was fine, you guys got the worst of it.”
“The, um-” Gabriella pressed a fist to her forehead. “The Chapmans?”
“They’re here too,” Amelia said. “They’re both in bad shape.”
“They tried to kill us.”
“Yeah,” Graham said.
Gabriella nodded vaguely. She was drained and sore and still not a hundred percent sure she was fully awake. “How long have we been here?”
“About four hours,” Madelyn said. “Once they were sure you were all stable, they brought you here instead of the usual hospital.”
“Where’s here?”
“St. Hildegard’s,” Amelia said. “For observation for psychic damage. That’s what knocked you all out so badly, the energy they used to attack you. Any sprained limbs are your own problem.”
Gabriella laughed and leaned back on her pillow, closing her eyes. “He’s alright?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Amelia said. “All three of you are.”
“And you’re all here?”
Amelia laughed a little, though she sounded exhausted. “Yeah. McGovern offered to watch headquarters for us so we could stay with you.”
“That was nice of him,” Gabriella murmured.
She fell back to sleep for a little while, waking up as a friendly doctor came in to do an exam. Graham was asleep in the bed on her other side by this point and she didn’t know if James had woken up at all, but they didn’t seem to be concerned the way they would have been if he was in danger.
“You’ll be fine,” the doctor, a young man with dark skin and a handsome face, said. “You took a blast of psychic energy, but avoided the worst of that ceiling collapse.”
“Good,” she said distractedly as she looked over at James. “Has he woken up?”
“A little while ago,” Bradley answered before the doctor could go for James’s information. “Kind of.”
The doctor smiled at her. “Get some rest,” he said, then moved on to Graham.
Amelia was asleep in a recliner nearby and Madelyn was absently wheeling herself back and forth in the wheelchair Graham had been using earlier as she sat beside his bed. Bradley was sitting between Gabriella’s bed and James’s, looking half-asleep.
“Everything’s fine?” she asked.
He nodded and she closed her eyes.
“Gabs.”
James’s whisper woke her up at some point later. She opened her eyes to darkness coming from outside and dimmed lights in the room. Apparently St. Hildegard’s didn’t give a fuck about visitors at the moment because Amelia was still in her recliner, now setting down a book. Graham and Madelyn were both asleep in his bed, curled up somewhat precariously together on the tiny mattress. And Bradley was still in the chair between Gabriella and James, also asleep.
She smiled at James. “Hey.”
“We survived.”
“We did.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like hell.”
James laughed softly. “Same.”
“Want to hear something?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“So, when the ceiling came down,” she said, “I was like, this is it. And I remembered what Casey said. About how something big and scary was coming for me and it was something ultimately good. And I was like, maybe this is good? And then I was like, no this sucks. There’s no way this is what he was talking about.”
“And you realized that we weren’t going to die then, because this wasn’t what he said would happen?”
“No, I thought this shouldn’t happen, and then I woke up here.”
His smile was sadder now, but grasping his hands – which she realized were in vinyl gloves that the hospital must have provided – would require her to stand up and go to him.
“Love you,” he said.
“Love you too.”
“I feel a little guilty he’s sleeping in a chair,” James said, nodding toward Bradley. “He should go home and sleep in an actual bed. You too, Amelia.”
Amelia made a dismissive noise. “Fuck off,” Bradley muttered, not opening his eyes. “Go back to sleep.”
Gabriella was asleep again seconds later.
