Page 24 of Go Back to December

He blinks, murmurs something incoherent, before his eyes fall closed.

I shout his name, but the EMT pushes me aside. The ambulance screeches to a halt. They unload Baz and rush him into the ER, as I trail behind, calling his name and cradling my arm.

“Ms. Johnson.” A doctor ushers me behind a screen. “Can you tell me what happened?”

My mind hasn’t fully registered the danger we escaped. If Baz hadn’t pulled me away from that knife, if my insane stunt to push him back from the stairs had failed, either of us could have been irrevocably injured. Or worse.

With relative calm, I relate the events of the evening before I offer the doctor my wrist for examination.

She takes it gently. “They took the assailant to a different hospital. You’re safe here.”

Twitchy doesn’t trouble me. I definitely wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley again, but his attack was random. He’ll either get clean and get his life together, or he’ll move on to his next fix.

I’m more concerned about Baz. He lost consciousness twice in a short space of time, and his knee was so swollen they had to destroy his luxury trousers to get at it.

The doctor checks out my wrist and forearm, asks about my last tetanus shot, and does a thorough scan of the rest of me to ensure there was no other damage to my person.

“We’ll disinfect the wound and put some liquid stitches on it to ensure it doesn’t open,” she says. “Better than sutures. It won’t leave a scar.”

There’s an avalanche of paperwork to complete before they’ll release me. As I sign reams of paper, the crash of wheeled carts and the sharp smell of disinfectant trigger hospital hallway flashbacks. Nightmares I can’t forget.

Once the anxiety horse is out of the barn, it’s easy to ratchet up my panic. My imagination spirals with all the terrible alternative outcomes we escaped.

After what happened at the party tonight, I didn’t think I had much else left to lose. But the possibility of Baz being permanently damaged because he chased after me—because of Blackhart & Steele and their overreaching influence on our lives—shakes me to my core.

The vacuum of information about Baz’s condition makes me full-blown frantic. Admitting nurses pass me from one person to the next, my tone turns more and more shrill, until someone finally tells me they’ve taken Baz upstairs for a CAT scan.

“Is there someone you’d like me to call?” the nurse asks.

Calling Craig or my mom would be overwhelming. If I talk to them, I may lose my grasp on the thin cord holding me together. I’ll send texts and emails once I’m calmer. When I know Baz is going to be okay.

If I’m this worried about him, other people must be. The Baz I met at the Jungle House spoke warmly about his sisters and his parents, and they should know he’s here.

I pull out my phone, open up my Blackhart & Steele email app, and search the directory for J.R. Dooley. I copy his mobile number and fire off a curt but informative text about the attack, and the hospital, and ask if he can get in touch with Baz’s family.

After I manage emails and messages to my family, Lacy, and Amal, my phone dies, which is terribly inconvenient because it leaves me no excuse to avoid speaking with the police about what happened at the station. They’re unsympathetic when I tell them I’m undecided about pressing charges.

“The guy’s an addict,” I say. “He wasn’t aware of his own mental state. He needs detox and rehab, not a jail cell.”

“How does Mr. Johnson feel about letting this guy off?”

Irritation flares at his implication that there’s some relationship between Baz and me, and I have to defer to what Baz thinks because he’s the one of us with a penis.

But when I take enough breath to think it through, I don’t know what shape Baz is in, or who he’ll blame.

I sigh. “You’ll have to wait to ask him yourself.”

After they leave, it takes three drive-bys of the nurse’s station before a doctor in scrubs finally approaches me.

“Ms. Johnson?” He looks up from a chart. “I have an update on your husband.”

The word dangles in the air, like a delicate Christmas ornament bobbing on a branch.

It’s a simple mistake. We have the same last name. I was frantically chasing Baz’s stretcher when we arrived, and the somewhat extraordinary lengths I went through to protect him at the train station have made the rounds at the hospital.

The misunderstanding is so wrong, I laugh out loud. Baz and I aren’t anything to each other, let alone married. I should correct them. His family may have to make a tough decision about his care, and I certainly couldn’t.

I shouldn’t.