benhastings

[benhastings]

They were calling him a hero. It was all over the morning papers, the top banner of local news sites, and the header of every email his coworkers had mockingly sent him all morning. The last one had been the easiest to handle. Shutting the door to his department car, Ben tugged the collar of his jacket up against the biting wind that swept across the parking lot-- courtesy of late October finally showing up-- and mentally prepared for what awaited him through the Hospital doors. 

All things considered, there were worse reasons he had walked through the sliding glass doors, customarily nodding at the security guard by the wall; worse reasons why the security guard and desk nurse knew his face. As an officer, Ben was no stranger to walking into the emergency room at all times of night and day-- sometimes with a victim, often with a suspect-- and compared to that a friendly visit should have been a piece of cake. But the way the nurses gathered in the nurses station lit up and smiled when they saw him, looking at him with recognition after the events of last night, made him uneasy. 

He nodded back automatically but didn’t stop to talk-- or worse, hear their praise. The bust last night had been huge for his career, even huger for the city itself, but it made him a good cop, not a hero. He didn’t slow until he was in front of the beige door bearing the number the detective sergeant had given him. No longer an emergency, she had been moved to a quieter wing of the hospital and he was glad for that; after what she’d been through, the loud chaos of the ER must have been torturous. He didn’t even know if she’d want to see him, or any cop, so soon, but he couldn’t shake the urge to check on her, so when the sergeant was assigning someone to interview the witnesses, he volunteered to be the one to talk to her. After all, he’d carried her out of that place in his arms.

Rapping on the half-ajar door with two knuckles, he pushed it open the rest of the way, and stepped into the room. His eyes fell on her small form, swallowed up in a sickly colored hospital gown. “Hey,” he greeted tentatively, unsure of how she would react to the intrusion. Clearing his throat, he continued. “Is now a bad time?”