Samuel's POV
"Olivia?" I whisper, but it's already too late.
Instead of the police station, I find myself inside what looks like a standard three-bedded hospital room. I'm standing at the foot of the bed closes to the door, while Charlie, Nick's brother, is sitting on the middle one. He is hunched over a phone, but instead of hospital pajamas, he is dressed in a pair of plain jeans and a black T-shirt with the Bat-Signal drawn over his chest.
My presence inside the room must mean that Nick is somewhere around, but I don't bother to check on his location. Instead, I snap my eyes close and think of Olivia. Normally the mere thought of one of my charges causes me to teleport to their side, yet when I open my eyes again I'm still inside the hospital room. I'm about to try again when the Head Guardian's last words echo through my mind.
From this moment onward, you, Samuel Yang, are no longer Olivia Han's Guardian.
A dark blaze flares inside my chest and before I know it my leg shoots forward. I kick the chair beside the bed I'm standing next to, causing it to flip over. At the loud bang, Charlie snaps his eyes from his phone. He first looks in my direction and then at the fallen chair a few feet away from him.
"What the..." he begins and then turns to the window at the opposite end of the room. "Get your psychic abilities under control."
Standing beside the window, with his back turned to the rest of the room, is Nick. At Charlie's comment, he turns first toward him and then the overturned chair, but a moment later he wordlessly snaps back to the world on the other side of the window.
His clenched fists finally remind me of what happened at the intersection right after Olivia remembered Anya's role in the accident. Or more importantly, I remember the hurt look on Olivia's face when the idiot called her crazy and then walked away from her.
"You've been glaring at the window ever since you returned," Charlie says. "And since you're the only other person in here, it must mean you caused the chair to fall."
"Shut up," Nick hisses.
"Did you have a fight with that girl? The one you brought here?" Charlie lowers the phone onto the bed and focuses on his brother. "Olivia something?"
"Stop." Nick tightens his hands into paler fists.
"Just apologize for what you did wrong." Charlie shrugs. "Even I know that's how it works with girls, and I'm only thirteen. Say you're sorry and that she's the one who's right."
"You know nothing." Nick leans his forehead onto the glass.
"No, you know nothing." I glare at Nick's back. "You should be with Olivia right now." After all, if I'm unable to be at her side, then at least he should be there.
Charlie clears his throat and glances toward the door, his eyes flickering all around the room. "When's Dad coming?"
He pauses for Nick to answer, but the older sibling remains a stubborn idiot and continues to wordlessly face the outside world.
"I can't wait to sleep in my own bed again." With a sigh, Charlie lies onto the bed and folds his arms behind his head. "And to eat take-out food again. You've no idea how sick I'm of this hospital garbage."
Charlie's monologue is interrupted by Nick's ringtone. Nick pulls his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and then looks at the caller ID, but instead of answering, he swipes the call to ignore and stuffs the phone back into his pocket.
"It's the girl, isn't it?" Charlie asks.
"Is Olivia calling you?" I repeat the question when Nick continues to ignore his brother.
The ringing returns, yet this time Nick doesn't bother to take out his phone. He simply continues to glare at the window.
"Pick up the phone, damn it!" I kick the chair again, which causes it to crash into the nearby wall.
The loud bang causes both Nick and Charlie to snap their eyes in the direction of the chair, but I don't care. What I need is for Nick to pick up Olivia's call and make sure she's okay.
"I think you should answer her call," Charlie says and turns to his brother. "Or your psychic powers will cause you to destroy the entire room."
"Stop being a child." Nick glares at Charlie but then moves away from the window.
For a second, I think he's come to his senses and is leaving the hospital to check on Olivia. However, instead of going for the front door, he brushes past me and goes to the fallen chair. He picks up the chair and sets it close to the place it was in before.
With him being so close, all I can see is the phone resting in the back pocket of his jeans. I don't care if it prolongs my punishment as a Guardian for another hundred years. All I care about is getting my hands on the phone and making sure Olivia is okay. Just when I reach forward, the door behind me snaps open and two familiar figures appear in the doorway.
"Hugo!" Charlie's frown turns into a smile as he looks at the guy who saved his life.
"Hey." Hugo steps further into the room, while the person right behind him remains rooted to his spot.
While I have seen the giraffe of a man only once before, I instantly recognize him. He is, after all, the reason Olivia made it through that accident.
The moment the fellow Guardian's eyes land on me, though, he turns around.
"Wait!" I call out and shoot forward. I rush past Hugo, who is making his way over to Charlie's bed, and stop a couple of steps away from the other Guardian.
Instead of instantly fleeing, the big guy turns back around. The three humans behind me begin a conversation of their own, but I push them out of my mind and focus on the Guardian in front of me.
"What's your name?" I ask.
"Why?" He narrows his eyes. "We don't have any charges close."
"I know. But I still want to know."
He observes me for a moment and then says, "Isaiah."
I nod and then prepare myself for him fleeing the moment I ask the next question. "Why did you save my charge?"
Instead of disappearing like the last time when he was faced with Olivia, Isaiah lets out a long breath and lifts his hand to rub the crease formed on his forehead. "You're the girl's Guardian, aren't you?"
"Yes, my name's Samuel."
"Can she still see us?"
"I think so."
"What do you mean you think?" Isaiah drops his hand back to his side. "You're her Guardian. If anyone, you should know if a human can see us."
"I'm not her Guardian at the moment." I see him open his mouth, so I continue before he can ask more questions. "It's a long story, and I'm not getting into it. What I want to know is why you saved a human that isn't your charge."
With a loud sigh, Isaiah slumps against the doorframe. "My charge," he nods in Hugo's direction, "likes to sleep on a bench near a park. I usually wander around the park, as I did on that night. I saw how the girl rushed across the road and how the car hit her, but since I'm a Guardian there wasn't anything I could do. I watched the other human get out of her car and kneel next to the girl, but despite her Guardian's best attempts, she fled the scene... Then she, your charge... She... She grabbed a piece of broken glass and... and cut herself."
My mind freezes. No. I heard wrong. Olivia never mentioned anything about hurting herself, and she would never do something like that.
"She was bleeding out, but no one was around to help her. She looked so much like..." Isaiah shakes his head and averts his eyes. "Anyway, I alerted an old human couple to the danger, so they called for help. And I... I pried the glass away from the girl and did my best to stop the bleeding."
"She... Olivia..." I shake my head, still refusing to believe that Olivia would do something like that. "You're lying. Whatever happened that night, Olivia would never hurt herself. You're making things up to cover for the part you played in the accident. There must be another reason why you saved my charge."
I move a step closer, but Isaiah snaps his eyes shut and disappears a second later. Even with him gone, though, I remain facing toward the empty doorway and continue to tell myself that he's lying. There's no way Olivia would hurt herself.
Right?
***
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- E