Page 140 of Crash Course
First, he’d deal with Doctor Tiles. He lifted his head, met the ER doc’s eye. "I’m fine. Look, I’m sure you’re great and we mean no offense by calling in this other doctor. Call it a second opinion, call it whatever, but Cilla needs to come out of this knowing we did everything we could for her."
"Well, obviously. I’d love to be the one to do that."
"I get that. Believe me. All I want is for her to not freak out when she wakes up and looks in a mirror."
"She’ll still probably be upset."
He shrugged. "Maybe. But I’ll be able to tell her we did what she wanted. That we did the best we could for her. And that’s what’ll matter."
Cilla,dressed in a hospital gown, lay in bed waiting for Dr. Richards’s arrival while doing her best not to think about her head and the pounding pain. It was as if a psychotic, caged gorilla rattled around in there. Being grateful for surviving only got her so far with King Kong doing his thing inside her skull.
She inched—that hurt—her head sideways to where Cruz sat in the crappy chair beside the bed, his thumbs hard at work on his phone.
Now that her initial mental fog had cleared and she realized that yes, her car had blown up right in front of them, she owed him a thank-you for not letting her touch her cheek.
"Hi," she said.
He whipped his head up and offered her his amazing smile. The full-wattage one that, if she were any sort of a decent judge, held a boatload of relief. "Hey, you. How’s the head?"
"Hurts."
"To be expected. You have a concussion."
"I always wondered what those felt like. Now I know. Anyway, thank you."
"For?"
Everything? She lifted her hand and—ow—winced when the IV needle tugged. She lowered it and raised the other, pointing to her face. "Not letting me touch it."
He shrugged. "You’d have done the same."
Yes. She would have. He’d stayed calm when others would freak and she appreciated it. Maybe even loved him for it.
Speaking of that little word, had she been dreaming when she’d heard him tell the ER doctor that he loved her? Did that actually happen or did she, in her concussed state, imagine it?
She couldn’t be sure, but what a lovely thought.
Cruz stood, slid his phone into his front pocket and dropped a kiss on her head. "Richards is on her way. You’re a beast thinking of that when you’re half zonked."
"I defended her son on a vandalism charge. He’s in college and was drunk. Carved his name in fresh cement on campus."
Cruz laughed. "Idiot."
"He’s a good kid. Dean’s list, tons of volunteer work. The university wanted to use him as an example and pressed charges. I got him off with community service."
"The ER doc wasn’t too happy with us, but he’ll get over it."
For a second, she considered asking for the mirror out of her purse.
Why bother?
Not only was the wound covered, but she was also in no rush to see it.
She’d long since accepted the fact that she had a sense of vanity. Growing up, she’d been aware of mother’s beauty and her father had expectations of how they appeared in public. Never disheveled. For a time, jeans were prohibited. Jeans, for crying out loud.
After years of being critiqued before walking out the door, Cilla was anal about her appearance.
And a giant scar down the front of her face?
