Page 83 of Home Again

“Sebastian!” a voice called. He shot up out of the chair and looked at the emergency bay doors. He couldn’t tell what was going on with Gideon; he couldn’t read him at all.

“How is she?” Gideon asked as he marched over to him.

“I don’t fucking know. Nobody will tell me anything.” Sebastian raked his fingers through his hair and pulled.

“Okay, don’t worry. I’ll find out.” Gideon patted his shoulder and walked away.

Sebastian watched as he walked up to the same desk he’d been disrupting for the last half hour. Gideon came back to him with a clipboard. He was frowning.

“We need to go upstairs. She’s been admitted. They’re doing surgery.”

Sebastian couldn’t breathe. What was he talking about?

“Surgery for what?” Fergus asked. “Did they say?”

“A brain bleed. We need to get upstairs to the waiting room. They said the surgeon would come and inform her fiancée. They also need her insurance information.”

“Fuck that noise,” Fergus growled.

“What floor?” Sebastian asked.

“Seven.”

* * *

She loved the sun. She adored the sun. How come it hurt so much?

Gianna tried to open her eyes again, but again she whimpered. When had the sun become her enemy?

“Gianna, can you hear me?”

She felt pressure on her hand. It was warm and nice. She grabbed on tight. It was Sebastian. He was threading their fingers together, palm to palm. She tried to lift her lids, but the light was just too much.

“Hurts,” she mumbled.

“What hurts, cher?” he asked.

“The sunshine.”

He let go of her hand and even behind her eyelids she could feel the room darken. She still kept her eyes closed anyway. “I’m in the hospital, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

She turned her head toward his voice, then gasped in pain.

“Don’t move your head. You were operated on a few days ago, and they just brought you out of a coma.”

“A coma?”

“It was medically induced. They wanted the swelling in your brain to go down,” Sebastian whispered.

Gianna heard herself breathing fast and hard as she took in the information. Sebastian took her hand again, this time stroking circles in the middle of her palm. “Are you calmer now?”

“I think so. Am I going to be all right?”

“The doctors say you’ll make a complete recovery,” he assured her.

She sighed.