19
It was mid-morning before that Noah realized he had a voicemail from Jilly.
The timestamp on it read three a.m.
Her voice on the recording was thin and sounded as if she were close to tears. "Hey. The kids ran away last night. I found them, though. Lindsey and Casey are fine. Cold and upset. But PJ fell in a creek and by the time I found them, he was hypothermic. I'm at the hospital—"
He didn't listen to the end. He called Aiden, putting the wheels in motion for a car service to the hospital. While he waited for the car, he castigated himself for not realizing she'd needed him. Had he been so deeply asleep that he hadn't been able to hear the phone ring when she called?
He replayed the message as the car bounced over rutted dirt roads. Hypothermia was dangerous. Was PJ all right? What about the other kids? Was Lindsey meowing again because she was scared for her brother?
And what about Jilly? She must be frightened and upset and angry that the kids had run away. Was her sister at the hospital with her? A friend?
The message got to the part he’d missed before. "He was hypothermic. I'm at the hospital now. Look... don't come up here, okay? Call me later, and I'll answer if I can."
What?
His head buzzed with white noise.Don't come up here. She didn't want him there? Why?
It was like being hit from behind on a passing play. The wind was knocked out of him, though he hadn't moved from his seat in the back of the car.
He tried to talk himself through it.
It’d been late. She’d been worried about the kids. Maybe she’d known PJ was being released and they were going home. Or maybe PJ had been transferred somewhere else.
Don’t come uphere. It didn’t mean anything.
But he'd bared his soul to her last night. Was she rejecting him? Or had she said it because she knew how much he hated the hospital? Didn't she know that his discomfort was nothing compared to how he felt about her?
He needed to make sure she was all right.
"Sir?" The driver's voice shook him out of his musings. "You wanted the ER, but there's a couple of ambulances at the curb. Looks pretty busy. There's a lot of folks in scrubs out here. You want me to take you around to the other entrance?"
"Yes. Thank you."
He and Jilly had walked through the atrium weeks ago, when she'd had her follow-up appointment. Today, the echoing space seemed cavernous.
He knew the emergency wing was off to the left. He navigated the space by sticking close to the curving wall and then walking down a long hallway that gradually declined. No one spoke to him, though he passed several people.
He was in full-on invisible mode.
He didn't have enough headspace to care. He needed to find Jilly and PJ.
The chaos his driver had described in the parking lot had moved inside the building. There was a cacophony of voices and machines and even a gurney being wheeled through the bustling intake area.
How was he supposed to find PJ in this mess? He could call Jilly. But what if she told him to get lost? His gut was already tied in knots just thinking about the possibility.
He was considering making a retreat back to the atrium lobby when he thought he heard her voice. He tried to still his pounding heartbeat.
There it was again, somewhere off to his left.
He followed the sound, using his cane to make sure there were no obstacles in his way. No one challenged him or told him he couldn't be here.
His cane connected with something soft, and he realized he was outside a curtained-off area. Machines beeped from inside. And there was Jilly's voice again.
"I told you. I checked on the kids after they went to bed. When I came back upstairs to go to bed myself, all three of them were gone."
Who was she talking to?
