Page 50 of After We Fall
“Um.” I clear my throat, grasping for control. “Could you, um, please handle curfew check-in with the girls tonight?”
His voice softens. “What’s wrong, Penelope?”
I’m not fooling him. And the truth is, I’m not fooling myself either. With each word I speak, pieces of fear, anxiety, and pain release into the space between us.
“Um, I’m not going to be home at the appropriate time. Will you please take care of the girls tonight?” My wobbly words match the tears streaming down my face.
“Baby, where are you?”
Baby.
The word makes me ache. For him.
I want to crawl into the lap of that gentle word and let the strong arms of his care-filled tone wrap themselves around me and soothe my frayed nerves.
What I really want is him. With me.
“Luke,” I release on a sob.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I draw from the depth of my gut to whisper three words I’ve never said to anyone in my life. “I need you.”
“Where are you, Penelope?” Urgency amps his tone.
“I’m—I’m at the hospital.”
“Which one?”
“Don’t be mad at me. I know—”
“Penelope, baby. I promise I won’t be mad at you. But I need you to tell me where you are.”
The nurse returns and says within earshot of the phone, “Miss Reid, it’s time to take you down to CT.”
“CT?” Luke’s grinding voice hits the room. “Penelope?”
My tears bring with them throbs of pain. It’s as if I can feel each individual vein of blood coursing through my head.
“Miss Reid? Are you okay?” The nurse steps toward me, glancing at the machine behind me monitoring my vitals.
“Will you please handle my phone call?” I ask her.
She retrieves my phone, and two orderlies enter the room, pull up the side rails, and unhinge the brakes on my hospital bed. They gather the rolling IV and vitals monitor, and as they wheel me out, the sounds of the nurse’s conversation with Luke fade behind me.
14
My brain is bleeding.
Dr. Anthony Gallo’s words ricochet off the walls in my ER room and land in the pit of my stomach.
My brain. Is bleeding.
I squint at the grandfatherly doctor, the movement uncomfortably stretching the skin at the cut near my eyebrow. But it blocks out the neon white of the ER doctor’s coat, so I count it as a positive. How can something so benign laser into my retinas with such severity? With the curtains drawn in my room and the fluorescent lighting turned off, only the green screens and tiny flashes of the monitoring equipment illuminate the small space. Except for his screaming lab coat.
That is, until the door opens and a brawny flash of lightning appears.
Luke.
One look at me in all my hospital glory, and his body locks tight. In the shadows of the room, his face is dark and stormy. When he takes one heavy step toward me, with a little better focus I see that I’m wrong. His face isn’t dark and stormy. It’s downright thunderous.
