Flames At Midnight

04 | grace yearwood

CHAPTER 04

It was halfway through the next day when Quentin finally woke up. His eyelids fluttered slightly before his eyes blinked open. He winced and pushed himself up into a sitting position.

He stared at his bandaged arm. "What the...?"

"You're awake," I said, rushing to the side of his hospital bed. My back and neck were stiff from spending so many hours curled up in a chair. "We should get a doctor."

"I'm on it," Porter said, running out of the room.

Jae, one of Quentin's fathers, was muttering under his breath in Korean. I didn't know what he was saying, but he sounded relieved. He had spent most of the night pacing around the room, hardly getting any sleep. And the constant squeak of his shoes on the linoleum made it hard for anyone else to try to sleep too.

I only managed to get a few hours of rest by disappearing into the waiting room down the hall.

"Are you alright? What happened to you?" Jae asked. He looked haggard from staying up all night. "You can't imagine how worried we've been. We got a call in the middle of the night from Mr. Yearwood saying that you and Grace were attacked, and that they were taking you to the hospital—"

Trevor placed a calming hand on his husband's shoulder. "Give the kid a second to wake up before you lay down the third degree."

Jae took a breath and relaxed. "So? What happened?"

Quentin ran a hand through his already messy hair, making it worse. "I have no idea. I remember walking to the car after talking to the sheriff, and then falling. I must've slipped."

I shook my head. "It didn't look like it. You just froze there for a few seconds. You kind of looked possessed, and you were shaking. I thought I was going to have to pull up a how-to exorcism video on Youtube. And then the next thing I knew, you'd fainted."

"Passed out," Quentin corrected me. "I didn't 'faint.'"

The door opened and Porter came in, with a doctor and a nurse following closely behind.

The doctor had us step back as he examined Quentin's pupils. "I'm Doctor Mudrick. How are you feeling, Mr. Miller? You gave everyone quite a scare."

"I'm feeling okay now."

"Great. I've already heard the young lady's side of what happened. Can you tell me how you were feeling before you fainted?"

I smirked at Quentin.

"Well, before I passed out," he emphasized, "I remember feeling like the world was spinning and I was seeing stuff."

"Can you describe exactly what you were seeing?" the doctor asked.

"Nothing weird. Just images of trees and a park spinning around and around. Like my brain was flashing random images at me." He hesitated. "Wait, is that weird?"

I saw his dads glance at each other, concern mirrored on their faces.

They were always transparent when it came to Quentin's past. He's always known that he was adopted. He also knew that, as a baby, he had been dropped off anonymously in front of an adoption agency. He came without any family or genetic history.

"We can run a few tests to look into it," the doctor said, flipping through the clipboard he'd pulled from the end of Quentin's bed. "You didn't hit your head when you fell, and there weren't any signs of a concussion. Have you experienced anything like this before?"

I suddenly thought of the headache Quentin had had at the café two days before. I remembered how he'd clutched his head because of the pain.

He was thinking the same thing. "I had some headaches a few days ago. Some nausea."