Alyssa blinked. One minute he was leaning over her, sprouting nonsense, and the next he was gone. She propped herself up on her good arm to watch him storm out.
"Lean back down," one of the nurses said. "Or do you need to be secured?"
Numb, Alyssa levered herself back down. She let the nurses fuss around her, and tried to figure out what had just happened. The scene replayed in her mind -- seeing Alvin go for the gun, shoving Karl out of the way... pain. Hadn't there been a second shot? The ambulance ride, his Houdini act -- and now him coming, picking her up like she was a sack of potatoes and throwing her on the bed, scolding her like she was a stupid kid..
One of the nurses injected the IV none-too-gently back into her, "Ow!"
"Think about that the next time you want the hospital staff pouring out and looking for you," the nurse said, devoid of sympathy.
"You think about it the next time you won't let me use a phone," she returned. OK, so maybe trying to leave the hospital and going after her idiot partner hadn't been one of better ideas, but like hell she was going to back down from it now. She still didn't want to be here. Just because Karl was alive and an ass didn't mean she wanted to sit here in this bed overnight. She was fine. She would have been fine. And he would have known it, too, if he'd been here instead of out doing God-knows what.