Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Emergency Room
Harborview Medical Center at 3:15 in the morning was a chaotic vortex of bleary-eyed nurses, beeping monitors, and the sharp, sterile scent of antiseptic.
The sliding glass doors of the emergency bay hissed open, and Griffin Drake strode through them. He didn't look like a man worth billions at that moment; his hair was slightly disheveled from the wind, his black coat was half-unzipped, and his eyes were locked entirely on the reception desk. The heavy aura of absolute authority that always surrounded him made the triage nurse look up from her computer screen before he even reached the counter.
"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice softening slightly at the sight of his intense expression.
"Sloan Callaway," Griffin said, his voice flat, demanding, and tight with barely contained panic. "Where is she?"
"Are you family?"
Griffin froze. Family? Legally, on paper, he was a stranger. A man who hadn't seen her since a rainy Tuesday ten years ago. But deep inside his bones, he knew the answer. "I'm the father of her children," he said, each word deliberate and iron-clad. "Where is she?"
The nurse blinked, typing rapidly into her terminal. "Trauma Bay 4. But you can't—"
He was already moving, his long strides eating up the linoleum hallway before she could finish her sentence.
Down in Trauma Bay 4, Sloan was lying on a high metal bed, an oxygen mask strapped over her nose and mouth, making her look impossibly small against the white sheets. An IV drip fed fluids into her arm, and a white bandage was wrapped neatly around her temple where she had struck the table.
Sitting rigidly on plastic chairs in the corner of the small room were Hazel and Iris. They looked like carbon copies of each other, wearing matching dinosaur pajamas, clutching small stuffed animals they must have grabbed on their way out the door.
Griffin slowed down as he reached the open doorway.
He didn't make a sound, but something made Hazel look up.
Her wide, amber-brown eyes locked onto his. It was like looking into a mirror across a span of twenty-five years. Those were his eyes—the exact same sharp, observant shape, framed by the same dark lashes.
Griffin swallowed hard, his throat tight as he stepped across the threshold.
Iris looked up next, tilting her head with the exact same analytical curiosity that had driven Sloan crazy during their university days together.
"You're Griffin," Iris stated quietly, not asking, just stating a fact.
Griffin stopped a few feet away from them, kneeling down so he was eye-level with the two little girls who held the entire architecture of his life in their tiny hands.
"Yes," Griffin whispered, his voice cracking slightly. "I'm Griffin."
Hazel looked from his face down to her own hands, then back up. "You have the same nose as us."
May you like
A sudden, fragile laugh escaped Griffin's chest, laced with a profound wave of grief and wonder. He reached out slowly, giving them time to pull away if they wanted to, and gently rested his large, warm hand on Hazel’s small shoulder.
"I think," Griffin murmured, his gaze shifting between the two pairs of eyes that mirrored his own soul, "I think I've been looking for you both for ten years without even knowing it."
