Annabeth lay in my arms, the blood from her back seeping into my jeans. I didn’t care. I threw the car on the road and drove to the nearest hospital. I carried my wife into the hospital and felt the blood flooding onto my hands, but once again, I didn’t care. I only wanted to make sure that she was okay again.
“What happened?” A doctor came rushing forward.
“We were in my car, and the next thing I know, she screamed. I think it’s a bullet. Help her!” I screamed. The doctor nodded and wheeled her away. I slumped in a chair and wiped my hands off before pulling out my phone and dialing Spencer’s number.
“Percy, where are you?” He hissed.
“At the hospital. Annabeth got hurt. I don’t know who did it. When I find out, they’re so dead.” My nerves were frozen with nervousness and fear.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.” Before I could protest, Spencer began barking out orders at people and snapped the phone shut.
Perfect. Now I had the CIA raiding the hospital and all because I had to go shoot off my mouth. I did always have a problem with that, or at least Annabeth thought so, because she told me that constantly.
Finally, when the guys arrived, we still had to wait for two hours until someone finally called out, “Annabeth Jackson?” My head snapped up and I jumped to my feet.
“She’s my wife. Is she alright?” I asked walking up to a nurse who wore scrubs.
“She’s going to be fine. I’ll show you to her room.” The nurse led me down the hall and into a room where Annabeth lay. Her eyes were closed and she didn’t move, but she was breathing and as long as she was alive, I didn’t care about anything else. “She should wake up soon. You can wait here if you’d like.” The nurse smiled and walked away.
I sat in a chair, leaning my head back against the wall. Spencer and the rest of the group came in, seeing Annabeth lying there, seeming so close to being dead. I kicked myself for thinking that. She would be fine, and whoever did this would pay.
“I’m sorry, man. Do you want us to stay with you?” He asked, lightly punching my arm.
“Nah. I’ll be fine.” My voice cracked. Spencer nodded and followed the rest of the guys out. Luckily, I managed to wait about thirty seconds before wiping the tears from my eyes.
I don’t know why I didn’t just use my water power, but I don’t think that even the son of Poseidon can heal people this deeply wounded with water, no matter how much the person means to them. A tear fell from my eye and onto the back of her hand. I wiped my eyes before wiping the tear away from her hand, and sitting back in the chair again before closing my eyes.

Annabeth was still asleep when I woke up, so I sighed to myself and noticed her phone ringing across the room. I got up to answer it, seeing that it was a text from an unknown number. My brow furrowed, and the growing anger got even bigger as I clicked the “read now” button and read it.
“Annabeth, I’m sorry my minions hit you. That bullet was meant for Percy. Forgive me and get well soon. Signed, Luke.” I bit my tongue to avoid letting out a stream of curses or waking Annabeth with a scream, and said the curses inside my head.
Luke had meant to kill me so he could get Annabeth for himself. He already tried doing that over a year ago, and it didn’t work then. It wasn’t going to work now either. I put her phone back down after forwarding the text to my phone and deleting it off hers.
When she finally woke up, she looked up at me and smiled. “Hey. How long was I out?” She asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
“About four hours.” I responded, sitting in a chair closer to the bed.
“Oh.” I was shocked that she wasn’t screaming. She’d nearly died for God’s sake! She smiled and sighed.
“Can I borrow your phone?” She asked. I handed it to her without hesitating. She messed with it for a minute, punching different buttons before she handed it back to me. I looked down at it, realizing it was locked. Oh, God! Not again!
See, after we’d gotten back from defeating Kronos, I got my first phone and whenever Annabeth used it, it always came back locked with a secret code that only she knew.
I sighed and looked up at her, wondering what kind of crazy code she’d put in this time. I began pressing buttons, but whatever I seemed to guess, it was always wrong. I looked up at her again, hoping she would just tell me and get it over with, but there was no mercy in her eyes.
On the phone I had, you could use either letters or numbers to lock the phone, and Annabeth mostly used letters or symbols. She thought this made it more difficult if she used the names of monuments that she told me about, or the name of a book I never heard of.
I switched over to the letter option, and typed in my name, her name, every monument she’d ever told me about, and when that didn’t work, I tried using our parent’s Greek and Roman names, but those didn’t work either.
“Ugh! I give up!” I threw the phone on the mattress and groaned. She picked it up, hit the letters option, and typed in something, and handed it to me without hitting the enter button. I looked down at the screen and saw what I never thought I’d see.
“I do.” And a few hearts were plastered on the screen.
“Thank you, Annabeth.” I gave her another smile and grabber her phone before she could, locking it.
This code is something she would probably figure out in… “Aww.” …zero seconds. “I love you too.” She smiled and sighed, letting her head fall back against the pillows.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I asked.
“Coffee would be nice. “ She smiled as I stood up. I nodded and walked out into the hallway, but there wasn’t much I could do before I got slammed to the floor and was forced to stare at Luke’s feet.