Thank you for all the reviews! Here's the new chapter

The characters are not mine and I'm not making any money, sadly

Ranger POV

The drive to the airport was longer than it had ever been. I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened and I was scared because I didn't know anything. Dr. Carrelet had refused to say anything on the phone, just urging me to come as soon as possible. It could only mean that this was serious, really serious. I had left in such hurry that I didn't even have the time to say goodbye to the guys. I had just taken my bag that I had in my office for times like this, when I needed to make a quick exit and had taken the fastest car in the garage. I'd call Tank when I was at the airport.

The good thing was that I had always a private plane ready for flight in just 30 minutes. I hit the breaks outside the terminal doors and bolted for the plane. I called Tank as I headed through security.

"Yo" he answered right away.

"Tank, I need you to pick up my car at terminal 1 doors at the airport and get me a car waiting at Charles de Gauille airport."

"Boss? Why such hurry?"

"Steph's in hospital in Paris and they need me there yesterday"

"Shit" he breathed. "She okey?"

"Don't know, they refuse to tell me anything" My voice revealed the frustration I was experiencing. "Gotta go, Tank, my plane's leaving."

"Yea, call me as soon as you know anything"

I hung up as I climbed through the door to the plane and the doors were closed. I felt the adrealine pumping through my system after that long run. Now it was the time to wait the long seven hours of flight. I'd be in Paris round 7 p.m, and I hoped that that would be fast enough.

As Tank had promised there were a black SUV waiting for me just outside the terminal doors and I jumped in and sped off. I had been to Paris many times but needed still the navigator. Speeding towards the city center I began to worry that maybe I was too late. After all this effort, maybe I hadn't been fast enough. The pain ripped right through me as I imagined Stephs' still, cold body lying on some french hospital bed. I still didn't know what had happened, but if she was still alive I would hunt down whoever did this to my babe! And she had to be alive, I couldn't live with myself if she wasn't, I should've came with her, protecting her from the evil world.

Somebody yelled at me and I snapped right back to the reality. I was nearing the hospital, it was a couple of blocks away. Right on time the huge hospital emerged from behind of some, for me unnecessary, buildings. I hit the brakes and flew out of the car, leaving it in the middle of the road. I didn't care about the car or the fines they would give me, all I cared about was my babe and she was in there somewhere.
I ran up the stairs and in to the beautiful lobby. The floors in the round shaped lobby was in white marble and the ceiling was high. A young woman with long, blonde hair was sitting behind a huge desk looking worried as I jogged towards her.

"Excuse-moi, monsieur? Can I help you?" She looked like she hoped that I would go away.

"I'm looking for Stephenie Plum. Dr. Carrelet called me."

She put her nail file down and typed something in on her computer and waited a moment while it searched through the database. I seamed it took forever for the computer to beep. The woman studied the screen and studied it once again. I drummed my fingers on the wooden counter. I had never been this anxious in my whole life.

"Mademoiselle Plum has just gotten out of surgery and is now monitored on level six. Take those elevators to the sixth floor and ask again at the info desk there. They will give you more details there." She pointed at some elevators at the end of the hall and I jogged there. I could feel her staring at me and saw her turn away as I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button. As the doors shut, I breathed out a sign of relief. She wasn't dead! Though surgery wasn't good either, I was glad it wasn't worse. The elevator was quite large, large enough to fit a hospital bed and doctors at the same time. It was made from steal and had doors in both ends.

The elevator stopped and I stepped out through the same doors to the sixth floor. "Intensive Care Unit, condition 1" it said on the sign above the desk that was in the middle of a round hall. The hall was busy as people ran through it in hurry. I saw many doctors and more nurses and they all looked extreamly stressed. They all spoke in hushed voices while looking at patient files. I guess this was where all the most injured patients came. It worried me that Steph was here and I hurried through the people to get to the desk. An elderly nurse was sitting there going through files. She had her gray hair in a tight bun high on her head and she looked like she knew what she was doing.

"Excuse-moi madame? Could you please tell me where I can find mademoiselle Plum?" I asked in fluient french.
She looked shocked and stare at me for a while. Then she begun to go through the patient files.

"Stephanie Plum?"

"Oui"

"Are you a relative?" she asked me quite sceptically.

"Yes, I'm married to her" I answered to her. The lying was neccesary, if I wasn't I wouldn't have the right to see her.

She looked at me for a second.
"I have to call a nurse to accompany you." she explaned to me as she picked up the phone. After a few minutes a nurse walked up to me. She was young, propably straight from med-school.

"This way" she said to me and started to walk toward one of the many hallway that led out of the great hall. I noticed that there were signs above the hallways. "HEART", "ORTOPEDIC", "ORGANS", "BRAINS", "LUNGS", "GENERAL" and many other things was written on the signs. The nurse led my way to the "general" hallway. It seemed to go on forever. We walked in utter silence and just over the midd-point of the hallway the nurse stopped. It seamed to be a waiting area of somekind with three white couches and a coffee machine. An ugly painting was hanging above the middle-couch.

"Please sit on the sofa and wait a minute" she said to me. I sat down and the nurse looked pleased. She opended door number 6678, walked inside and closed the door.

The wait was acognising. I saw many doctors rush right past me not even looking at me. Guess they had seen many relatives sit on these couches. As the minutes ticked by I was becoming more and more stressed. Why was the nurse taking so long? As if she had heard my thoughts, she opened the door and stepped out and walked up to me.

"She is still half asleep after the surgery and might be in pain. Don't get her stressed and you should be okey. There is a red button above the bed that will call a team of doctors. Press that button in case of emergency. There is also a blue button that will call a nurse. Press that one if she's in pain and need some relief. Got that?"

I could only nod and hope she would let me in already. As if she read my mind she stepped aside and opened the door. I stepped inside the small, dark room and could only vaguely see the bed on the right side of the door. A small person was rapped in thick bandages and huddled inside huge blankets. The heart monitor beeped reasuring me that she was alive.

"Ranger...?" I heard in the darkness.

Stephs POV

My head was throbbing and my legs were killing me. I was lying on a hospital bed in the darkness alone and feeling quite depressed. I had sworn to myself to never talk about the events that led to this moment. I was so embarrassed by everything and it would be horrible for people to know about this. Now I just had to stop thinking about it. Easier said than done. I sighed and tried to adjust myself but stopped right there because I felt pain shooting up my spine. I groaned just as the nurse walked in to the room. Her name was Nadine and had been a nurse just for a year now. She had been my nurse for the past day or so and I had gotten to like her. She smiled as she approached me.

"Hey, how are you doing to day?"

"I'm fine" I said to her. Infact I was really tired after the surgery, I wanted to fall asleep but I was scared of the nightmares that had kept me up all last night. I had woken up in the middle of the night screaming at the top of my lungs and trying to get out of the bed. It had taken three nurses and a doctor to get me calm and I didn't want that to happen again.

"Your husband is here to see you." Nadine said to me, interrupting my thoughts.

Husband? But I wasn't married yet. It got to be Ranger, we had used the same lie in almost every hospital in the U.S. every time he had got injured while working. Tank was also my "brother" as far as the staff knew.

"Can I let him in?" she asked me. I though about the odds that it would be someone else, but nodded anyways. She smiled and walked out of the room. I could hear her talking to someone in a demanding voice. Like she was lecturing the person outside.

Gosh, I was sooo tired. I closed my eyes and breathed out. I was as relaxed that I could and then I felt those little hairs on my arms raise. I knew this feeling.

"Ranger...?" I murmured into the darkness.

Ranger POV

My heart broke as I heard her trembling voice. It was just like she was on the edge of crying. I hurried towards the bed and saw her for the first time in the vague light from the machines and the window. It was already starting to get dark outside and the shadows were growing longer and longer. My babe was huddled inside of atleast three blankets and still I could see that she was shivering. I could see that she had a collar on and her head was heavily bandaged. That was the only part of her body that I could see properly and the whole right side of her head was covered in thick bandages. Her mascara had run and she was as pale as a ghost. But still her eye lid up as she saw me and smiled at me. I couldn't help but smile back at her and reached out a hand to touch her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned on my hand.

"Oh, babe..." I whispered. I whiped a single tear off her cheek. "Please, don't cry. You aren't in pain, are you?"

"I had worse" she responded to me. I pressed the blue button, just to be sure and watched her. My babe was so small, so vunerable and my cave man instincts was growing. I wished that I could take her away to a secret place and take care of her untill the end of time.

My thoughts were interrupted by a nurse hurrying in to the room and pushing me away from the bed. She asked her the basic questions and she answered them. She was beginning to sound and look tired and the nurse told her to rest and pushed me out of the room. As we were in the hallway, she turned to me.

"You let that poor girl rest!"

"Yes, I will" I answered her but I think we both knew that I could be found in room 6678 during the night.

"Very well..." she said. "Do you want to talk to her doctor? Dr. Carrelet?"

I said yes and she hurried away. I was alone in the hallway and started to pace outside her room. I wanted to go inside but didn't want to be caught breaking the rules by Carrelet.

I paced for a long time or so it felt but when I glanced at my watch I could see that only ten minutes had passed. When I looked up and towards the hall, I could see Dr. Carrelet hurrying towards me on the long hallway. He looked totally different than I had pictured him to be. He was middle-aged, with dark hair that was cut very short and he was quite short, his head reached to the tip of my chin. He seemed stressed but I guess that this job did that to you. I also noticed that he had a huge coffee stain on the collar shirt he had under his white, doctors coat and he seemed like he tried to hide it. "Dr. Philippe Carrelet" was written on his coat.

"Mr. Manoso I presume?" he said to me offering me his hand.

"Yes. How is she?" I asked while I shook his hand. He glanced briefly at the file he had in his hand.

"She's stable for now. She had major surgery on her inner organs earlier yesterday. She was found staggering outside Sacre-couer yesterday morning, all bloody and beaten. She has a concussion, her left wrist is broken as are her right ankle and left fibula. This was though minor in comparison to her other wounds. We discovered that she had major inner bleeding and we fixed that with a operation yesterday as I mentioned earlier. Today we operated her bones. We also suspect that she might have a broken bone in her neck, that is why we have a collar on her."

Oh my God! What on earth happened to my Babe? These injures were not a laughing matter and my babe thought that "she had worse". I guess she was trying not to worry me. And who had done this? If I get my hand on that one, I swear that I'll make him suffer and bad. No one had the right to hurt my Babe!

"Is there any chance for me to take her home, back to the states?" I asked the doctor, trying to focuse on this matter, not going through what I was going to do to the attacker. The doctor looked .?docid=20867203d.

"Good for you to ask, since we would also happy for her to go home. Statiscs show that patients have better recoveries near home. I have talked this matter with my colleuges and we all agree that it would be great if the opportunity would surface. There is of course some practical questions that have to be disscussed and huge amounts of paperwork. Could we maybe take this to my office?"

Carrelet started to walk towards the hall and seemed pleased by the fact that I was following him without any objections. I sent Tank a text while the doc was facing away:

Check Philippe Carrelets background ASAP

Please review! :)

And I haven't been to the American Hospital in Paris, so I don't know how it looks there. I have completely made up the description of the hospital.