Chapter 18: Visitors Must Sign In

Chapter 18: Chapter 18: Visitors Must Sign In

Rhea caught the curtain before it opened fully, keeping her body between the bed and the gap while Dante tried to pull Posey behind him with the wrong hand. Pain caught his fingers, and she stopped him before he dragged the dressing against the rail.

A man outside said he had come to collect the next patient, which earned him several questions from Rhea and none of the cooperation he expected. Through the gap, Dante saw a narrow face, sandy hair and a white transport jacket over ordinary jeans.

The nurse asked for his collection order, took the paper he offered and read it without opening the curtain further. Anika held her phone towards her, showing the fresh photograph while Mom moved around the foot of the bed to stand beside Posey.

"That’s the girl’s name, isn’t it?" the man asked, and the nurse told him to remain where he was while she checked with the desk. He protested that another department was waiting, but Rhea had already pressed the assistance button above Dante’s pillow.

Dante hated being useful only as something with buttons nearby, although his attempt to sit straighter made the ceiling sway. Posey pushed the pillow behind his back, her arm brushing his chest, and told him that protecting her did not require falling on her.

"I was considering a much more controlled collapse," he said, trying to keep his voice steady while Anika photographed the order. Mom informed him that he could practise being charming after whoever was outside had explained why they wanted his friend.

The man gave a company name and held up a badge, but the nurse compared his paper with her bedside list and shook her head. Posey had no appointment here, and nobody on the ward had approved moving her anywhere.

The nurse kept the paper where he could see it.

His shoes scraped away from the curtain, followed by Rhea telling him to stop and a second voice asking what was happening. The nurse stepped out to speak to the security officer responding from the ward entrance, leaving Rhea watching the opening.

Dante could hear the man protesting that he only collected people whose names appeared on his screen. That sounded horribly reasonable, like the sort of excuse somebody might use after delivering a parcel to the wrong address, except the parcel was still holding his hand.

Anika returned the paper to the nurse when she came back, then asked Posey when she had last agreed to a medical appointment. Posey said she hadn’t, putting her own phone on the blanket so they could check the messages together.

Miss Vale arrived while the security officer took the collector towards the desk, having received Anika’s photographs during her walk from reception. The bandages at her wrists showed beneath her green sleeves as she asked everyone to explain what they had actually seen.

Dante described the curtain and the photographs, resisting the urge to arrange the details into something that made him sound less helpless. Miss Vale told the nurse that Posey was to stay with them until they had verified the threat and informed campus security.

"I’d like to stay with him, please. I don’t want him sitting here alone," Posey said, gathering her phone, and Dante immediately wanted to be worth the confidence in her voice. Anika reminded her that staying needed to be a choice made with information, which sounded unusually generous until she added that stubbornness was not a security plan.

Mom asked whether the same warning applied to redheads, and Rhea developed an urgent interest in the curtain rail. Dante would have enjoyed watching someone survive that question if Anika hadn’t answered that she had been practising stubbornness considerably longer.

Miss Vale asked the nurse to move them to a side room with a checked visitor list, then called the search team about the collection company. The order might connect to Jett’s removal, but she refused to promise Anika that the man outside had ever met him.

The nurse brought a wheelchair, and Dante discovered that refusing it made three women stare at him with identical exhaustion. He accepted before Mom could explain any of his childhood injuries, letting Rhea steady his elbow while he moved from the bed.

Posey collected her bag and notebook, Anika carried his cracked phone, and Mom brought the shopping bag. The nurse kept the sealed shirt with the medical evidence, making a note before leading them along the corridor to a smaller room beside the staffed desk.

A security officer checked its window and bathroom while Dante remained seated outside, then stepped aside so the nurse could help him onto the bed. Rhea parked the wheelchair clear of the door, and Posey put her tennis bag beneath the only spare chair.

"I’d have booked somewhere with a better view," Dante told her, looking at the wall opposite the window. She said the view from her chair was fine, which left him staring at the blanket while Anika suggested that his temperature might need checking again.

Miss Vale returned with the copied collection order, keeping the original with security. It named Posey as a prospective support volunteer and described Dante as the referring applicant, although the space for his signature contained only a printed version of his name.

He read it twice before asking whether they could simply write anybody’s name on these things. Miss Vale told him they could certainly lie on a form, but proving who submitted it required the collection records rather than his willingness to confess to something he hadn’t done.

The collector had supplied a dispatcher number, which security was checking independently, and the photograph was being compared with the ward’s visitor log. No magical eye had been found in the room, and Miss Vale warned against treating an unanswered question as proof of one.

Anika enlarged the image until the shopping bag filled her screen, then showed Mom the folded handle. It matched the position before she had moved around the bed, putting the photograph only minutes before the curtain opened, when several people had been passing outside.

Dante remembered strangers seeing him carried through the reception and felt suddenly sick about how easily a camera could become somebody else’s claim over his life. He asked Miss Vale to tell Bell, because the advert had started with another picture he never agreed to share.

Her phone rang before she answered, and she listened with her eyes on the false order. The private demonstration had acquired a venue and a date, three days away in the university theatre, with tickets already being sold under Dante’s name.