Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“It’s not funny,” he rasped.
“No, I agree. Nothing funny about camping. And I have volunteered, as you know, to never go again as long as I live.”
His jaw clenched hard, the muscle in his cheek working.
“This is not your fault,” I said frankly, wanting to assuage the guilt I’d heard in his voice. “So stop beating yourself up. Please.”
“Then stop treating this like it’s no big deal.”
“What? I’m not.”
He growled at me. “Yes, you are. You’re gonna laugh any second now.”
“What? You’re crazy.” I smiled suddenly.
Everyone gasped but Alex and Matt, the rest, even Breckin, not having been around long enough to know that when faced with anything really serious, I laughed. My mother had been the same.
“Who would want to hit me with a bat?” I asked Alex, chuckling because I was imagining someone whacking me with a fruit bat. I was a little loopy.
“I dunno, maybe I’ll go ask your scary-ass boss?” he yelled loudly, and I flinched from the volume.
“Must you?”
“I knew it,” Breckin nearly snarled at me. “You’re quitting. Today. Now.”
“Yes,” Alex agreed. “That’s what’s gonna happen.”
It wasn’t.
“Can you please call my doctor in here?” I asked the nurse who had appeared at the foot of my bed.
“Right away,” she assured me, then glanced at Breckin. “It’s nice to see you again, Dr. Alcott.”
“And you, Angela. And don’t worry about paging Dr. Cutler. I just called him on his cell.”
“Thank you. I’ll be back to take patient history.”
“I did that for you already. It’s in the chart.”
Apparently he still had privileges at the hospital he left. I suspected that was also why my bed was the width of a twin bed and not a normal gurney size.
“Thank you.” Angela beamed at him.
“Of course.”
“Am I okay?” I asked Breckin the moment Angela left the room.
He nodded. “You’re okay, just banged up. You have a concussion, so Tate’s going to keep you overnight, but the brunt of the blow was to your upper back and shoulder blades, not your head or neck. You were really lucky. If you had taken the full blow to the back of your head, things might have ended differently.”
“Who’s Tate?” Matt asked him, and I could hear the ice in his voice.
“Dr. Cutler,” Breckin told him.
“That’s me.” Tate Cutler, one of Breckin’s old colleagues, breezed into the room.
“So?” I asked him as he got out his penlight and checked my eyes. “Can I go home?”
“Tomorrow. I want to keep you overnight.”
“But he’s going to be okay?” Alex pressed him, and I noticed how he purposely didn’t direct his questions to Breckin or ask his opinion like he used to. While Alex didn’t know the specifics of why we were taking a break, he’d already relegated the man to a stranger in his mind.
“He is,” Tate said resolutely.
“He’ll be fine?” Matt inquired of my doctor as well.
“Absolutely.”
Matt looked at me. “You feel okay?”
“I feel a little out of it,” I confessed, and was going to say more until I really looked at him. “Why? How bad do I look?”
“I just—” He trembled. “I was scared.”
“Come here,” I said, lifting my arms for him.
He moved fast, bumping Alex as he dived at me, breathing hard so he didn’t cry, dragging air in and out of his nose. “There’s only Eric and you, and…and…I have a lot of…but not you. Not Eric.”
“I know.”
Matt had such a soft heart, which was why I was so glad that Eric saw Matt’s heart quite clearly and cherished it and kept it safe.
Matt pulled himself together, and a few moments later Angela came in and announced that everyone needed to clear out of the room and let me get some rest. The only people she succeeded in herding to the door were Ira, Courtney, and April. I promised to call them as soon as I got home.
“Where did you leave Jennifer?”
“I dropped her at her place,” Alex muttered as he got on his phone.
“Are you going to see—”
“Shut up,” he barked.
My brother had the social skills of a wolverine. I turned my attention to Breckin. “Are you all right?”
“Me? Who cares about me?”
“I do,” I said, reaching for his hand. “And you look a little green.”
He sucked in a breath, squeezing my hand. “I was scared.”
“I’m sorry.”
Leaning in, he kissed my forehead. “When the EMTs rushed into that bathroom and we saw you lying there… I can’t lose you.”
“If you’re gonna get hit,” I teased him, smiling, “doing it in front of a doctor is what I’d recommend.”
“Yeah, well, don’t do it again,” he insisted.
“I’ll try not to.”
He calmed, gave me a nod, and then went to confer with Tate.
I asked Matt to entertain me, so he sat on the end of my bed and told me how the wedding he’d coordinated on Friday night had ended up not happening.
“What? Why?” I was dying to know. Matt’s stories were legend. Most of his weddings went off without a hitch. They were either stunning, romantic, or over the top, but every now and then, there was drama.