Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 73230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
She couldn’t even lift her arms high enough to wrap them around my neck.
“Am I gonna need to grab a bowl?” I asked her.
She moaned.
“I don’t know,” she moaned, burying her face into my shirt as she started to cry once again.
The ride to the hospital was terrible, and the whole time I wanted to scream each time she did.
I didn’t handle crying women well, but crying women in pain topped the list of torture for me.
I’d made it through BUDs training and multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing made me feel worse than this.
“We’re here,” I told her, pulling up under the ER’s entrance thirty minutes later.
She nodded her head where it rested on my thigh, and I slowly put the truck in park, got out, and moved around to the passenger door.
She was exactly where I left her only moments before, and I reached in and pulled her out.
The security guard saw me, narrowed his eyes and hurried to my side.
“What’s wrong with her?” he barked.
I guess it was the biker look that had him concerned.
I concerned a lot of people, but right then I didn’t have time for him to spew shit about me.
“She’s having belly pains and is vomiting uncontrollably,” I told him.
A man in grey scrubs walked out of a side room covered in glass windows, and brought a wheelchair with him.
“If she stretches out, it gets worse. I’ll carry her for you,” I spoke to the big man.
He looked like The Hulk in scrubs.
“What’re her symptoms?” The Hulk asked.
I repeated what Tasha had told me.
“Any rebound pain?” he questioned, raising his badge from his pocket and waving it in front of an electronic key pad.
The doors swung open, and he took me immediately to the examination room closest to the nurse’s station.
Nurses and a doctor slowly trickled in as I placed Tasha down on the gurney.
When I started to back up, she reached out like a snake and grabbed my hand before I could make it two steps.
“Stay,” she pleaded.
I stayed.
I wasn’t totally heartless, after all.
“Sir,” a woman in blue scrubs spoke. “How long has she been like this?”
I answered questions as another nurse tried, time after time, to get an IV started on Tasha.
She laid there limply, with her eyes closed and pain etched across her face.
On the fifth try, I was done.
“You’re not trying on her anymore, get another nurse,” I informed her.
The nurse blinked, wide eyed, and it was then I saw the ‘student nurse’ on her nametag.
“Do you even know what you’re doing yet? Go away so someone who knows what to do can do it and get her some relief,” I snapped at her.
The girl ran out of the room crying, and I couldn’t find it in me to care.
“Be nice,” Tasha whispered.
I glared at her hand still holding mine.
“She was fucking up,” I told her gruffly.
“She was learning,” she whispered back.
I didn’t reply.
She may be learning, but she didn’t need to learn on my Tasha.
I froze, thinking back over the words that’d just flittered through my brain.
She wasn’t my anything.
And I needed to get the fuck out of here.
“I gotta go,” I said. “I need to call your sister.”
“My sister’s busy,” she groaned. “I’ve called four times now.”
Her sister and Mig had disappeared about half an hour after Tasha had left, and I sighed.
She may be right.
“What about your parents?” I conceded.
“Mom’s watching Annie’s kid,” she replied, moaning. “Dad’s out of town fishing.”
Fuck.
Just fucking wonderful.
“Dammit,” I growled.
A nurse finally got the IV, but as I watched, blood started to leak out of it and onto the floor.
I watched as Tasha’s blood fell to the white tiled floor.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
One crimson drop at a time.
“Ma’am,” the doctor, a red headed man who looked like the white version of Steve Urkel with his too-short pants and huge glasses, interrupted. “I’m Dr. Mean. I’m going to roll you over and press on your stomach, okay?”
Tasha didn’t protest as she rolled over, but the moment that the doctor pressed on her lower abdomen, and then released it, she screamed.
The scream ripped through my chest like I’d been shot, and I bent down to press my forehead to hers.
“You’re okay,” I promised.
I wasn’t sure if she was okay.
“Appendicitis,” the doctor muttered. “Perfect symptoms.”
I wondered if that was bad, and then realized about thirty minutes later that it was, indeed, bad.
“You’re her husband?” the doctor asked.
I shook my head. “Fiancé,” I lied.
Hell, I didn’t know why I lied.
But I wanted them to give me information, and I didn’t want to be left in the dark.
“She’ll need an emergency appendectomy,” Dr. Mean explained as they rolled a sedated Tasha out of the room. “I’ll be handing her care over to Dr. Stephanopoulos, the surgeon on call.”
I nodded, watching her until I couldn’t see her anymore. “Thank you.”