Page 179 of True Blue

“Where is she?!” I bark.

The fear is making my voice too loud in this quiet, peaceful space, but I can’t make it softer. Not with the panic running through me. My eyes keep searching the hallway, the doors, the signs, like one of them is going to flash neon and point me toward her.

“Where’s Indie?”

All I can think about is Indie sick, falling, and smacking her head on the ground, the brutal sound her head must have made against the linoleum. The image makes my stomach turn violently.

It’s also not escaping my notice that it’s January.

How close we are to the anniversary of Nana’s death.

How Nana died from pneumonia that she battled privately. I don’t know if Indie was feeling this sickness for a while and keeping it to herself because she and Nana are cut from the same cloth.

And the horrifying thought slams into me all at once.

If I lose another woman I love in this godforsaken month because she was sick and didn’t tell anyone, because she thought she had to handle it alone, I won’t survive it..

“Come on,” Mimi says, pushing back from the desk. “I’ll take you to her.”

She leads me down the hallway to what looks like an examination room. Mimi stops outside it, glances at me once, and then opens it. I rush in first and skid to a stop so hard my boots squeal against the floor.

Indie isn’t small, not in presence, not in height, but right now, lying back against the pillows with a huge ice pack pressed to half her face, she looks so tiny that it makes something inside of me crack open.

Her legs are stretched out, she’s still in her navy scrubs, and her hair is uncharacteristically messy, coming out of its usual ponytail

When she hears me, she turns her head and lowers the ice pack, giving me a full view of the cut splitting through her eyebrow.

The sight of the wound and stitches has me moving again, rushing toward her and carefully taking her flushed face between my hands like the precious woman she is.

I almost hiss at the temperature of her skin—burning.

“Oh, honey,” I whisper.

“I’m okay,” she says, and then immediately winces because even that small movement pulls at the stitches.

Still, she gives me a small smile that’s meant to soothe me.

It doesn’t.

All I can focus on is the redness of her skin. The darkening bruise that’s spreading toward her temple. The stitches. The dried blood. The way her heavy eyes look glassy and red-rimmed and unfocused.

“No, you’re not,” I breathe, thumb hovering near the bruise because I’m terrified of hurting her.

“It looks worse than it is,” she mumbles, shrugging like it's nothing.

Her voice is scratchy, slightly slurred at the edges with exhaustion. Her skin looks too pale—slightly gray beneath the fever flush. A thin sheen of sweat glistens on her forehead, and she can’t seem to keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time.

She looks so sick.

“And it looks pretty fucking bad,” Mimi says, shutting the door behind her and walking over to inspect the stitches closely, humming in approval. “Dr. Moore’s got good linework, huh? Should still leave a pretty badass scar.”

Indie’s mouth curves faintly. “I’ll say I got it in a fight.”

The laugh that tries to follow turns into a cough. She pulls away from my hands and turns her head sharply away from me, letting out a hacking cough that sounds painful.

The motion is too fast for someone with a concussion. Her body tips sideways off the bed, arms flailing for a second as if she is reaching for something that isn’t there.

I catch her before she can fall, one arm around her back, the other holding her head and neck steady as I secure her to my chest. She makes a soft, happy sound and practically melts into me.