Nick walks in, and the look on his face made me straighten up. (It's so hard not to write WildeHopps! I hope you all appreciate this. I'm slowly dying inside.) I can at least try to look healed.
Diana and Nick rush to my bedside, wrapping their furry arms around me as gently as possible, their tails wagging a hundred beats a minute. I hug them back, as far as my relatively short arms can allow, and silently thank the gods that may be for allowing me to stay, here with my family. They may not be blood, but they feel the pain when I get hurt, and vic versa.
We sit there for a long time.
~~•~~
I'm released from the hospital that day, after the doctors run what I think are pointless tests, and stick a few needles into me, just for kicks it seems.
Nick insists on wheeling me out himself, because apparently if you get hit in the torso, your legs stop functioning, according to the nurses who wouldn't let me walk, and he catches me resentfully rubbing my sore arm.
He gives me a sympathetic wince-grin. "I've always hated going to the doctor's. The smell, the invasive questions, the cost..."
"Speaking of that, why didn't they give us a bill on the way out?" I wonder. Since I was on duty, the ZPD would have taken care of it, but I still should have received a copy.
"I took care of it, least I could do." Jack says, pausing at the door of the lobby, as if he was leaving.
Nick's paws tighten on the handles of my personal moving chair, but he keeps his tone polite. "That wasn't necessary."
"Wasn't it? Good day officers, Ms. Wynn." Savage saunters our of the door.
"That was nice of him." Diana ventures.
"It was." Nick mutters. I can tell that he thinks Savage is responsible for my getting shot. Suppose that's only to be expected.
I fall asleep on the car ride home.
