Sitting upright came with a price—the sensation of an ice pick wiggling into his spine. It wasn’t a surprise that he was even stiffer and tenderer than the previous night. The endorphins had had a chance to wear off and despite whatever drugs they’d pumped into him, the pain had a chance to firmly establish itself.

What exactly had they used on him? He wanted to read the chart to find out, to get the inside scoop and to perhaps evaluate their strategy. But this information was miles away, on a clipboard hanging off the foot of the bed.

He resigned himself to lying back down in the bed with a soft groan, with the back of his head digging into an uncomfortably large and puffy pillow. Where had that nurse gone? He could have used a new pillow. And his questions—even the most basic—could have used some answers. Even just something straightforward, like when his CAT scan results would be released. He’d been scanned upon admittance, and then had his shoulder and arm looked at. By the time he’d been fitted with a brace, the sun was just about ready to crest the jagged tops of skyscrapers. And by then, he was sufficiently tired and doped up to finally get some rest.

How many hours did he sleep? Four?

He checked the time on his phone, groaning again, not out of pain but out of the sad realization that he’d barely slept. What had woken him up? That nurse? Although he didn’t expect privacy in a hospital, there was just something about the way she had stared at him . . . It was more than simple voyeurism. He felt something from her, plus she looked vaguely familiar. Or was it wishful thinking, his nurse having such a pretty face? Of course, it could’ve also just been from the combination of pain killers and lack of sleep.

Maybe he’d find out. Might as well. What else was there to do?

Jasper lowered his hand down around the edge of the bed, finding a remote to click for the nurse. He pressed a button, and moment later, she arrived.

Only she wasn’t the right “she.”

“Hi, Mr. Delaney,” the nurse said sweetly. “Do you need a hand with anything?”

He was hoping for that same doe-eyed nurse who’d interrupted his sleep. But this person seemed older, and a lot less peculiar.

“I was just wondering, um . . .”

“Yes?” she asked with a polished, institutionalized boredom.

“When is the doctor back on call?”

She was looking at his chart, saying, “He’ll be back to see you this afternoon.”

“Thank you.”

“Mhmm,” said the nurse. “Is that all you needed?”

No, it wasn’t. But he said yes anyway, letting her go about her business and on to more important matters. He, too, should move on to something more important than identifying some nosy nurse. Despite his injures, he had work to do at the hospital. In fact, his injuries only made it easier to lie to the staff. He could now lie low and observe things at the hospital as a patient. Just an ordinary patient. He had the brace to prove it. Not that it would be staying on for long if the scans came back clear. It made mobility too difficult, should his services be needed in an emergency. He could let his shoulder heal later.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been his shooting hand.

Jasper rolled over in his bed, going easy on the wrist, trying to squeeze an ounce of comfort out of the stiff hospital bed that was barely an iota above the plush luxuriousness of an army cot. He might as well try to catch up on some sleep. He wasn’t officially supposed to be at the hospital until the next day, when he and Jackson were to run some diagnostics on the equipment.

Perhaps he could get an early start on his profiling the staff. Get familiar with the faces, especially the nurse in question. Get a feel for the kind of people that worked at the hospital. Know them well enough to be able to spot any new faces that might pop up just prior to the prince’s arrival. Was that possible in one day?

Jasper checked his phone again. Research would require moving. Maybe he’d make do with some mindless Internet surfing instead. Maybe something to get him tired again so he could escape for a few more hours. But there appeared to be no Internet connection. He worked at it for a minute, trying to not only connect to a signal, but just find a signal. There was none. He couldn’t even find any restricted networks.

He rolled over again, gingerly, and reached for the landline phone by his bed. He placed the plastic receiver to his ear. No dial tone. Then he looked down at the wire, following it all the way into the wall. Sometimes they might come undone by a clumsy nurse, or the cleaning person. Or maybe no one had reattached it since painting the room five years ago. With every patient having a cell phone, who would ever notice?

When the nurse returned to check his vitals, he asked about the spotty service, the Wi-Fi, the phone. And her face went as blank as the wall across from his bed. Her expression turned into a frown when he’d asked her to check her own phone.

“We’re not allowed to have our phones in patient areas,” she said, her hand slipping into her pocket unconsciously.

“They don’t want you Facebooking on the job, huh?”

“They claim it’s for your privacy,” she said sourly.

“How so? So you can’t take my picture or something?”

The nurse shrugged.

“Well, that’s no fun.”

“We should have Wi-Fi though. For you.”

“And how about the phones?” asked Jasper.

“What about them? That phone doesn’t work either?”

Jasper shook his head.

“I’ll have to let someone know,” she said before leaving, not looking overly concerned about it.

“Wait,” called Jasper. “Will it be that nurse who was in here earlier? With the red hairband?”

“Umm . . .” She made a grimace.

“Blonde hair? Hairband? Red hairband?”

She finally brightened up with, “Oh, maybe you mean Fiona?”

He knew a Fiona. Or he had, one time long ago.

“Yes,” he said, “Maybe I mean Fiona.”

But the odds of her being that Fiona . . .

“So, what about her?” she asked.

“If you see her, let her know that Jasper was asking about her. Jasper in room 314.”

She was squinting. “Not Rick?”

Fucking Jackson and his security protocols.

“No. Not Rick.”

* * *

It took him awhile to fall asleep after that, waiting for his plan to come to fruition, the perhaps overmedicated expectation that Fiona, his Fiona, would promptly arrive. But she hadn’t. And after an hour of waiting, fatigue had set in to override the excitement he’d once had about the possibility of meeting an old friend. If that was even her. What he was really trying to do was just stay somewhat amused. Stuck in a hospital bed, for now, and with no internet. No escape into the sports recaps or hiking forums, and no stopping the bad guys. Why not play out some sophomoric fantasy with his real-life predicament? He might even get to know some of the nurses in the process. Wasn’t that the point of his staying there in the first place?

He supposed he had a new and an equally important reason: his health. The integrity of his bones and his brain. He could tell there was nothing fractured, but he couldn’t so easily dismiss the possibility of an intracranial hematoma. He’d have to wait on the CT scan results for that. And for the results, he’d have to wait for some doctor to stop by. That’s what being a hospital patient was all about. The waiting. He hated being on this side of things. Being powerless.

With each hour, the fatigue and boredom—and the loss of hope of seeing Fiona—further set in. His eyelids began to weigh heavily, sliding down, closing. And then he was back at Fort Bragg. In the goat lab. This was before PETA and social media blew up in some uproar about live-tissue training. Back when medics got a real education, performing surgery on living beings. Moving, breathing, sentient patients that had feelings. Not just a piece of plastic with a face molded onto it. A $75,000 mannequin.

The goats made you nervous. And rightfully so. They made you respect the animal, and what you were doing to it. It humbled you and made you thankful. And it made a proper medic out of a greenhorn recruit. You could mimic surgery on a simulator all you wanted, but until you felt that warm splash of arterial blood on your face, you were never really prepared for the real thing.

It also weeded out some of the guys who weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. If they couldn’t perform trauma care on a farm-raised goat in the quiet comfort of Fort Bragg’s goat lab, how could they possibly deliver any care to their fallen brethren in the heat of battle?

Jasper could see his brother was there with him, in the lab, laid out on an operating table next to one of the bleating goats. Kyle was bleating as well. Bleeding. Bleating. Calling for help.

And then someone was grabbing Jasper. He could feel the pressure, someone wrestling with him. Hands. Voices. Someone shaking him from some faraway place.

He awoke to find Jackson staring down at him. Jasper’s eyes were still unfocused, but slowly bringing the rest of the room’s details into view. Jackson was sitting at the foot of his bed, smiling.

“You were talking,” he said.

“What?” Jasper said groggily. “Was I?”

Jackson nodded.

“What was I saying?”

“Nothing intelligible.”

That was a relief. He’d rather not have Jackson hear him talking about goats, or anything else. Especially details about his brother Kyle.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m just tired.”

“Me too.” Jackson lifted himself off the bed and walked to a nearby chair. He dragged it over and slumped down hard into it with a sigh. “It was a wild night, huh?”

“Yep.” Jasper reached for his phone again. “It was a little more action than I was expecting.” He checked for an internet connection, but it was still down.

“I bet that hacker felt the same way,” said Jackson.

“Any news on him?”

“Nothing yet. We’ll have to talk to some people, once you’re feeling up to it.”

Jasper frowned. He wasn’t particularly excited to “talk to some people.”

“I know, I know,” Jackson said. “But you should probably stay away from active shooters. Just for a day or so.”

“So what’s with the internet here?” asked Jasper, happy to change the subject.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s down.”

Jackson gave him a weird look, scrunching his brows. “I was just using it.” He grabbed his phone, checking it. “I have service. Maybe it’s your phone. It probably got damaged.”

It was a distinct possibility. Jasper checked his phone once again to be sure, swearing under his breath when he saw the Wi-Fi signal bars all lit up.

“Maybe it’s not your phone that’s fucked up,” Jackson laughed. “Maybe it’s your head.”

“I don’t get it . . .The land lines were down, too.” Jasper reached for the phone and heard a dial tone. He hung up.

“Yup,” said Jackson. “Definitely showing some signs of head trauma.”

Maybe he was right. Between his head, the drugs, fragmented or no sleep, and seeing people who apparently weren’t there, like ex-lovers . . . Maybe he imagined the whole no-internet thing. It could have been just another dream, something that came before the bleating goats of Fort Bragg.

Jackson was still smiling. He seemed to find the whole thing very amusing. “And to think, all this time I was worried that you wouldn’t be convincing enough as an undercover patient.”

Jasper stared at him. “So did you come in here and wake me up for a reason?”

“Sure,” he said. “I just wanted to check on you. See if you needed anything.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Jasper. “I’ve really got a hankering for some shitty hospital food. Think you can bring some up?”

“Maybe you should ask your nurse about that one,” Jackson said, checking his phone as compulsively as ever. “I have to get going soon. I just checked on a bunch of things here and now I have to . . .” he looked up at Jasper again, his face easing with sincerity. “But how do you feel, really?”

“I feel fine. I bet I’m totally fine.” Jasper looked down at his brace. “Even this shoulder is not a big deal. I can almost use it.”

“You think you can hold a gun with that?”

“I’m left handed.”

Jackson snorted. “Until they come at you from the right.”

“By the way,” Jasper said. “How am I going to get my piece up here?” He reached over for his duffle bag that Jackson must have brought in, and plopped it onto his lap. “When does the prince get here?”

“Tomorrow.” Jackson pulled the bag out of Jasper’s fumbling hands. “Will you really be able to get around then? It’s okay if you can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘it’s okay’?”

“I mean, I’ll take you off the assignment. No biggie.”

“Ahuh.”

“You can stay here, take a little break from Fort Bragg.”

Eye rolling was becoming a bit of a habit around Jackson lately. “Tempting.”

“Take a break from all those brown-nosing recruits.”

“I just feel more tired than anything else.”

“And confused, coupled with the occasional hallucination. Involving goats, apparently.”

Nothing got past Jackson. Jasper should have remembered that. To his boss he just shrugged. It wasn’t as if he could deny it.

Jackson sighed and then unzipped the duffel bag. He reached in and pulled out a folded bundle of jeans.

“Oh, you brought my jeans.” He couldn’t wait to get out of the sad excuse for a hospital gown. They must only come in one size and this one barely covered his ass. “How thoughtful.”

“Yeah, and I rolled them up just how you like them.” Jackson plopped the heavy, rolled-up bundle of jeans on top of Jasper’s legs.

“Thank you, really,” Jasper said, his voice quiet now, serious. “But where am I supposed to keep it?”

“If you can’t keep it on you, then stash it under the mattress.” Jackson said it so casually, like it was common knowledge. “Come on, you’ve never hidden a gun in a hospital room before?”

“With the types of hospitals I’m used to, everyone carries a gun. And I’m also usually not a patient, either.”

“Well,” said Jackson, zipping up the bag and standing, “you’ll figure it out, I’m sure. I also left you a laptop. It’s on the table.”

“Thanks,” said Jasper, pulling the bundle close to him. “So, do you think you can wheel me down to the cafeteria?”

“Mmm . . . I don’t think so.”

“What? Why not?”

“We need you to get mobile, on your own, not stuck in some chair.” sad Jackson. “You need to start walking again.”

Jasper stared at him.

“I can bring you a cane if you want.”

Jasper sighed. “I just wanted you to bring up some breakfast.”

“I brought you something much more important than that.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Go ahead, Man, get some exercise. Want me to walk with you?”

“No, it’s okay.” He was probably better off just getting some more sleep.

“Alright,” Jackson pointed to the gun folded within Jasper’s clothes. “Just remember your package there.”

Jasper sat there holding the bundle for a few minutes after Jackson left. He carefully unfolded the clothing, pulling out his Glock 17 and then quickly stuffing it under the mattress.

Handling the gun had made him feel more awake than ever, and so with his weapon safely stashed away, and Jackson having enough time to be out of the hall, Jasper decided to try his legs. The last thing he wanted was an audience.

He carefully lifted himself up, rifling around in the duffle bag for a pair of sweatpants. He slid them on and then slid himself to the edge of the bed and onto his legs. He took a step, his knee and hip throbbing. But as he completed the step and made another, the pain leveled off. He could deal with it. And so he continued to the doorway, checking both ways for Fiona, the figment of his imagination.