He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 176

Chapter 176

(DeLuca’s POV)

The nurse didn’t look relieved, and that alone was enough to make every muscle in my body tighten.

I had spent enough time around bad situations to recognize he expression. It wasn’t panic, and it wasn’t hopelessness either. It was the look people wore when they were carrying information they knew wouldn’t be received well. The moment she stepped through the ICU doors, the corridor seemed to narrow around me until all I could see was her approaching figure and the clipboard she carried against her chest.

I didn’t wait for her to reach us completely.

“How is she?”

The question came out rougher than I intended, but I didn’t particularly care. Politeness had lost all value several hours ago.

The nurse slowed to a stop and looked directly at me before answering.

“The surgery was successful.”

For the first time since the shooting, I felt something loosen inside my chest. The sensation was brief and incomplete, but it was there. I hadn’t realized how tightly I had been holding myself together until that moment.

“The bullet was removed, and we’ve managed to control the bleeding.”

I nodded once, absorbing the information as quickly as she provided it. The words should have been enough. Under normal circumstances, they would have been. The problem was that she still looked concerned, and people rarely carried concern on their faces after delivering good news.

I watched her carefully.

She noticed.

Then she sighed.

“She’s stable.”

There it was again.

A good word.

A reassuring word.

And yet it somehow failed to reassure me.

Stable wasn’t awake.

Stable wasn’t standing.

Stable wasn’t arguing with me, annoying me, making reckless decisions, or throwing herself in front of bullets she had no business intercepting.

Stable simply meant she wasn’t dead.

The realization settled heavily in my mind as the nurse continued speaking.

“However, she lost a significant amount of blood, and we need to monitor her closely over the next twenty-four hours.”

My jaw tightened.

“And?”

The nurse hesitated for only a second.

“She hasn’t regained consciousness.”

I stared at her.

The answer wasn’t unexpected. Daisy had already been unconscious when the ambulance arrived, and she hadn’t opened her eyes once during the journey to the hospital. Still, hearing it confirmed transformed possibility into reality, and I found myself disliking reality more than usual.

“When will she wake up?”

“We don’t know.”

Of course they didn’t.

Nobody in this building seemed capable of giving a direct answer to anything.

My irritation must have shown because the nurse immediately continued.

“It isn’t uncommon after trauma and surgery. Right now her body is recovering. We just need time.”

Time.

I almost laughed.

Waiting was apparently still the solution.

I thanked the nurse with considerably less enthusiasm than she probably deserved and watched her disappear back through the ICU doors before turning my attention elsewhere. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to focus on. The corridor remained exactly as it had been before. The lights were still painfully bright, the chairs were still uncomfortable, and the clock hanging on the wall still seemed determined to move slower than every other clock on earth.

Daisy was alive.

The thought should have brought relief.

Instead, it brought frustration.

Not because she had survived.

Because surviving wasn’t enough.

The way still lying behind those doors. She was still unconscious. And despite everything that had happened, despite all the resources available to modern medicine, nubody could tell me when she would wake up.

Several minutes passed before another nurse approached carrying a transparent belongings bag.

I noticed it immediately.

The nurse looked around before settling her attention on me.

“These were recovered from the patient.”

I accepted the bag automatically and lowered my gaze to its contents.

Most of the items were exactly what I expected.

Her phone.

A bracelet.

A few personal effects.

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