Eva’s long, sandy blonde hair was tucked back away from her face, the front fringes tangled between Carrie’s fingers while she stroked through the strands every so often. She’d been out of it since arriving, her fever finally breaking a little under an hour ago after another round of drugs.
This entire situation was scary beyond belief. I didn’t know how Carrie was holding it together so well because if it were me sitting in that chair, holding onto my daughter while she struggled to breathe, I’d be a mess begging for any medical staff walking by to do something.
Rolling to my feet, I nodded. “Let me. You stay here.”
Carrie hesitated, looking back and forth between Eva and me.
I knew how torn she was over this, wanting to stay by Eva’s side in case she woke up but also not wanting to put me out by asking me to do things that her fiancé should be here doing instead.
While I was plenty grateful for her including me, I wasn’t a fool to not know that all of this had been done out of desperation. Ryan being a seven hour flight away had made it impossible for him to get back to the city quickly, leaving Carrie to do all of the heavy lifting when it came to medical decisions for their daughter.
He’d been upset after hearing I’d come to keep Carrie company while she waited on answers, only really calming down after I’d snatched the phone from her and told him to get a grip—now was not the time to let the raging jealousy take hold of any rational decision making.
None of that would help how stressful any of this was.
I wasn’t interested in trying to step into his shoes anyway. I’d had that with Carrie years before he ever came into the picture and had decided pretty early on that it wasn’t for me. Hell, it would’ve been easier on both of us if we’d sucked it up and popped out a few kids to please both of our family’s expectations.
The thing was that people changed. What I thought I’d wanted with Carrie—an easy life with a beautiful and successful wife, a few kids and maybe a dog that we crammed together into a penthouse in one of the upper east high rises a few blocks from my office building—wasn’t the future that I ended up being the happiest living.
My happiest was driving to that damn body shop and sneaking into the back and surprising my best friend with a hot meal and reveling in the warm smile that crept across his face, and the slight color the rose to his cheeks.
“I’ll get her something cute,” I promised. “Stay, Carrie. She’ll want you first thing when she wakes up.”
She sighed softly, her shoulders slowly relaxing while she nodded. “Okay. Hurry back.”
Turning on my heel, I headed out in the hallway and down to the main floor of the hospital.
I wasn’t kidding when I told Brandon that this place was packed, patients and doctors all moving at a breakneck speed that was hard to keep up with when I exited the elevator and nearly collided with two medical staff pushing their way in with a stretcher.
Being back in the city after spending the past two weeks away felt strange in a way, like I’d distanced myself from the very place I’d called home for the past decade.
I never thought I’d somehow grow unaccustomed to life here, reverting back to liking the placid lifestyle of Edgewood and Ellington Heights over all of this in such a short amount of time away.
I wondered what that said about me. How much I’d changed after finding myself back in Ellington Heights and how much of the ‘real’ me was slowly starting to unthaw from the frigid bitterness I’d held onto all of these years.
Coming back to the States two degrees heavier and with a determination to make something out of myself that surpassed the McAllister name I’d been born into, I’d settled on sinking my roots down in an unfamiliar city an hour and a half away from my hometown and never once thought about looking back.
Why would I when all that awaited me back there were painful memories?
Until seeing Brandon again had ended up completely rewiring my brain entirely.
Now I was second-guessing everything.
The gift shop was stationed right as the lobby to the hospital opened up past the security desk, with a spinning rack ofoverpriced cards right outside of the glass doors as the first thing to welcome me inside.
Stepping through the doorway, I felt my shoulders slowly relax, no longer tense from the heavy atmosphere of a very active hospital. I wasn’t afraid of coming to places like this where miracles and death were commonplace—I’d spent enough time as it was when I was a kid with a strangely sick mother that never seemed to get better no matter what treatment the doctors put her on.
But I never quite could ever get over the stress that seeing such things put on me, more than a boardroom full of angry investors ever could.
Thankfully, stepping inside of the gift shop was a nice break from all of that, allowing me to breathe a bit better while the tranquil elevator music seeped in from the speakers overhead.
The place was small, jam-packed with stuff that ranged from hospital branded sweatshirts and sweatpants, to small knick-knack trinkets that looked at least a few years old given how faded the coating of paint on them were.
Finding my way toward the back of the store, I spotted a shelf full of stuffed animals easily enough. Eva was the type of little girl to like the unconventional stuff, not the run-of-the-mill horses and cats that any typical three year old would gravitate toward, giving most people a run for their money when gifting her things.
But to me, I found it too charming not to encourage.
After all, who could resist her begging for a pet pigeon when most kids wanted a dog or cat?
