Shit.
Shit.
I knew she’d be upset. But shit.
Seeing her like that…
Panicked. Scared. Crying.
No surprise, there, given the terrible news she’d just been given.
Well. She remembered part of it on her own—the part where Bea discovered her friend dead in the hospital locker room and was attacked shortly after. But the wholeshe’s the primary suspect in a murder investigation? And as a bonus:we snuck you out of the hospital and brought you across the country to keep you from going to jail?
Those are on me. And I feel pretty fucking terrible about it.
Not for bringing her here. No. I don’t regret that. Not considering the alternative, which would end up with Bea in jail.
Whenever I start to doubt my decision, I let my thoughts wander down that path again. The one that starts with Bea arrested. Fingerprinted. Strip searched. Dumped in a cold anddirty cell with a criminal as her only companion. And later, forced to stand trial for a crime I know she didn’t commit, all the evidence stacked against her and the Congressman pushing for her conviction.
Maybe Ishouldhave stayed out of it. Maybe I should have let the past stay where it was.
If it were someone else, I might have.
But not Bea. Not her. Not after?—
Shit.
I keep seeing her crying.
I keep seeing the pain in her eyes. The shock. The confusion. The horror.
On my tenth, fifteenth, twentieth? lap around the living room, I stop in front of the bedroom door again and lean my head against it, listening.
Is she still crying in there?
But even holding my breath, I can’t hear anything. Which makes me worry even more.
Worst-case scenarios avalanche one after another. Bea in the midst of a panic attack. Passed out after hyperventilating. Or what if she tried to get up but fell, and now she’s lying on the floor, unconscious?
Shit.
Maybe I shouldn’t have left her alone.
I didn’t want to. But she told me to leave. Begged me, even. How could I ignore her?
Yes, I unilaterally decided to take her from the hospital and bring her here. But I’d like to think if I could have talked to her about it in advance, she would have understood. Would have agreed with my plan.
Keeping her out of jail was one thing. But when she flat-out told me to leave? When my very presence only made hermoreupset?
Still.
I’m torn.
I rest my hand on the bedroom doorknob, hesitating.
What if I make things even worse by going back in?
What if she’s hurt, though? What if the doctors at the hospital were wrong, and there’s a complication they missed? A blood clot. Brain damage. A skull fracture.
