“Ms. Lane is still resting.” Duncan, Easton’s nurse, paused in his work to make a tick mark on the hospital room’s white board, the way he did every time Easton asked. “Which is what you should be doing.”

Duncan hit Easton with a look that he was sure normally worked well on other patients. But no matter how good Duncan was at his job, Easton had no intention of sitting there, waiting for people who didn’t know her to decide if it was okay for her to have visitors.

“Listen to him, Son.” From the recliner in the corner of the room, Joshua never once looked up from his magazine.

“I don’t want River to wake up alone.” Easton pushed aside one of the many blankets they’d used to warm him up, frowning at the IV in his hand.

“Why do they always pair me with the difficult patients?” Duncan grabbed the IV fluid bag attached to Easton’s bed. “You’re going to spurt everywhere if you pull that out.”

This time, Duncan’s look was enough to make Easton pause…at least until the other man hung his fluids on a mobile IV stand.

“I didn’t tell you this.” Duncan talked as he worked to get a blanket wrapped around Easton’s shoulders. “She’s going to be fine, but Ms. Lane’s being treated for exhaustion and frostbite on her foot.”

Easton grimaced. “How bad of frostbite?”

“Let’s hope you don’t have a foot fetish. You, in contrast, needed some fluids, some warming up, and—for the hundredth time—some rest. Which you won’t get worrying about her, so we’re going over to her room. You’re a lucky guy, but even lucky guys can crack their skulls open if they collapse in a hospital hallway. Unless you want to see what a second concussion on top of a first can do, then you’ll start listening to me.”

“Her friends are with my sister,” Easton said, tired of repeating himself. “Which means she’s all alone.”

Solitude was something Easton had been lucky enough not to experience. When the National Park Service airlifted River and Easton to the small building that served as the Moose Springs hospital, not only had Easton’s family been waiting for him, but Graham and Zoey had been there too. Despite his reluctance at being separated from River, he’d understood the physicians’ need to evaluate them both. And even if he hadn’t, Ash and Joshua would have personally dragged him into imaging, where they ran test after test on him to make sure he wasn’t bleeding internally—cranial or otherwise—from his fall.

Duncan disappeared into the hallway outside his room, then returned, pushing a wheelchair.

“Nope.” No way. Never in a million years.

“Wheelchair or nothing.”

“I think he’s got you there, Son.”

“Dad, you’re really not helping.”