Page 121 of You First
He squeezed her hand and tugged her closer. She leaned over him, draping her arm across his chest and framing his face in her hands. Even now, even though the color had drained from his face and his eyes stared back at her with haunting uncertainty behind them, his was the most beautiful face she’d ever seen. She wanted to wake up to it every day of her life.
“If I don’t…” he continued, pushing past her objections, “…you’ll be looked after… André—”
“You stop talking right now, Gray Blakewood,” she warned, pretty sure her tone was not the tone one should take with a stroke victim. Benny’s glance between them said as much, anyway.
Gray only smiled a small smile, but it was with great relief that Meredith noted it was an even smile, perfectly symmetrical. If a little wicked.
“Not worried about you,” he muttered, his eyelids blinking heavily.
The ambulance banked a hard right followed by another, and Meredith realized they’d arrived at the hospital. Her heart raced like a hummingbird’s. As Benny stood to open the doors of the rig, Meredith gripped Gray’s sweatshirt in her fists.
“I love you. Way too much, Gray,” she said, the lump in her throat swelling to the size of a boulder. “You pull through this, or I’ll never forgive you.”
Benny opened the door, and a pair of attendants shoved in and grabbed the stretcher.
Meredith straightened up to get out of their way, but Gray’s hand shot out and claimed hers.
“Whatever happens, I belong to you.”
Their eyes locked for a moment — the piercing blue of his lit with an almost other-worldly shine that terrified her — and then he was gone, tugged out of the rig by strong, swift hands.
Meredith jumped down in time to see the attendants, Benny, and Sam stampede through the hospital entrance, Benny barking stats and flanking the stretcher as the doors whooshed closed behind them.
With rubbery legs, Meredith followed, but she found herself shunted to a side entrance by a woman in pale lavender scrubs. “This way, ma’am. They’ll need you in Admitting.”
She sat in front of a partitioned window ten minutes later when a frantic Dahlia Blakewood called her, lost and trying to navigate the hospital from the main entrance instead of the ER. Meredith could hear Oscar whining in the background. When Gray’s mother found her a few minutes later, both she and Oscar broke into the same look of startled relief, and Dahlia set Oscar down so he could sail into his mother’s arms.
“Hello, big boy,” she said, gathering him up and pressing his chubby, sure flesh into her body. The reassurance of his weight and the way he clung back gave her a measure of calm that helped her keep her tears in check. Dahlia sat beside her and picked up with the admitting staffer right where Meredith had left off.
Half an hour later, after asking three different hospital personnel, she and Dahlia finally got confirmation that Gray had, indeed, been taken up to Neurology, and they could find the waiting room on the fourth floor. They rode up the elevator, Oscar temporarily entertained by pushing the round button, and found the information desk just as a white-coated doctor strode up.
“Are you Mrs. Blakewood? Miss Ryan?” he asked, his green eyes alert and searching. Meredith then tagged his ID badge, and all of her muscles flooded with relief.
“Dr. Cates! How’s Gray? Is he going to be okay?” The words rushed out of her, rapid-fire, and the doctor’s eyes flared a little at her greeting.
“Uh, hello,” he said, shaking her hand before reaching for Dahlia’s. “We’re prepping him for surgery now. The CT scan doesn’t show any hemorrhaging, which is excellent news—”
“Oh, thank God.” Dahlia gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Y-yes, but the situation is still quite serious. If we don’t operate now, the damage could be permanent — if not fatal.” The grim set of his mouth said it all.
Meredith’s knees threatened to give, but she was holding Oscar, so she forced herself to stay upright.
“As you know, the craniotomy will take several hours. I’ll come back out to brief you as soon as it’s over. Try…” The doctor looked at both women in turn, seeming to reconsider his words. “…try not to put yourselves through hell worrying.” With a nod, he turned and sped down the hall before he was swallowed up by the pair of automatic glass doors at the end of the corridor.
Meredith and Gray’s mother stared at the tails of his white coat until he turned out of sight, and then they both faced each other. Meredith imagined that she probably looked just as awful as Dahlia Blakewood. Try not to put themselves through hell? Meredith was pretty sure they were already in hell, and there weren’t any exit signs as far as she could see.
CHAPTER THIRTY
GRAY WAS OKAYuntil they rolled him into pre-op.
That’s when it really sunk in that a team of doctors was going to cut a hole in his skull, remove a chunk of his brain, and hope for the best.
The tingling in his face and tongue made talking awkward, but he needed the distraction. The nurse anesthetist, who detailed all the ways he could die while under anesthesia, and the surgical nurse — with her overuse of the wordcraniotomy— weren’t helping. There was only one nurse he wanted now, and she couldn’t be with him.
“Is my girl out there?” he interrupted, lifting a hand in the direction of the corridor that had led him here from the elevator.
The nurses looked up at each other before glancing back at him. Gray sensed that before he spoke, they hadn’t really even seen him.
