By the time they reached the hospital and transferred her into the ER, her parents, and Jodi and Free had convened upon the ER staff.
“Can you have them wait out in the waiting room, please?” Shaun asked, her eyelids heavy, her sight still fuzzy.
“If that’s what you want,” the triage nurse said gently. “They’re just worried about you.”
“I know. I just… my head hurts,” she admitted weakly. The nurse nodded and placed a new, heated blanket around her legs, then set the overhead light to low. She’d had blood drawn and an IV started in the back of her right hand. “Thank you.”
“We can give you something for that headache, and for the pain in your ribs. Is there any chance of pregnancy?” she asked, wiggling the mouse on the rolling triage cart with a laptop perched on it.
“No,” she said. “I’m not pregnant.”
“We’ll run a blood test just to be sure,” the nurse said and typed away on the computer. “Just so we know what we can give you for pain.”
Settling down into the warmth of the blanket, she just nodded. “Am I allowed to sleep?”
“We’d prefer if you stayed awake, but if you do fall asleep it won’t hurt,” the nurse murmured, glancing at her from where she stood at the cart. “I’ll be back as soon as I know what we can give you for pain management, and then we’ll get you taken down for X-Rays and that MRI. Doctor will probably want to do some sutures on that laceration on the back of your head, too.”
Fifteen minutes later, a man in a white lab coat knocked on the door, then entered with a kind smile. “Hello, I’m Dr. Hudson. I hear we had a bit of a fall earlier?”
Nodding, she shifted on the uncomfortable hospital bed and winced as the pain in her ribs stole her breath.
“Well, we’re going to probably skip those X-Rays today. Fairly safe to say we’ve got some broken ribs, but I’m just not comfortable doing those this early,” he said as he washed his hands across the room.
Frowning, she asked, “What do you mean, this early?”
Dr. Hudson dried his hands on a paper towel, using his foot to lift the lid of the little garbage can by the door and turned to her, smiling. “This early in the pregnancy. It’s just good practice to wait until a little further along before doing any kind of X-Rays that close to the abdomen.”
Shaun felt like her head was about to explode. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re pregnant, Miss Kendall. Approximately three weeks. Still very early,” he said kindly, patting her knee. “So we can give you some Tylenol, but nothing stronger, unfortunately. You’ll probably be pretty uncomfortable for a little while. I wish there was something stronger that we could give you. I’ll be back after your MRI, and I’ll send the nurse in with that Tylenol.”
She nodded dumbly, her hands dropping to her stomach that was buried beneath the blanket and the thin hospital gown they’d made her change into upon arrival. Tears burned her eyes and she blinked rapidly, but they spilled over her lids and down her cheeks.
The nurse returned a few minutes later and Shaun tried to stem the tears to no avail. “Here you go,” she heard, and raised her eyes just as a box of tissues was placed in her lap. “Are you sure I can’t bring someone in for you? Is the baby’s father here?”
“N-no,” Shaun mumbled through her tears, shredding a tissue between her fingers. “I don’t want them to see me like this. And he’s not here.”
The nurse nodded, her kindness making Shaun cry all the harder. She was left alone after the dose of Tylenol. It was an hour before she would be done with the MRI and she received six stitches to close the cut on the back of her head.
Wheeled out to the waiting room in a wheelchair, she grimaced when she saw her mother’s tear-streaked face and felt a flush of guilt that she hadn’t at least let her come back with her. Seren’s usually unflappable poise was clearly rattled; and more tears welled in Shaun’s eyes that she was unable to stop. Her father took over pushing the wheelchair, moving her gently out the double sliding doors and out into the cold, dark parking lot. A fresh layer of snow had dusted the pavement and the vehicles in the parking lot, the tall light poles highlighting the snow as it drifted down.
Jodi and Serenity helped her out of the wheelchair as carefully as they could, but even so, the pain in her ribs was excruciating. She climbed into the backseat of her mother’s SUV, which was thankfully already turned on and warm on the inside. Levi closed the door and then assisted her mother into the passenger seat, ever the gentleman, before rounding the hood of the car and climbing in behind the wheel. Jodi and Free waved from the parking spot next to them in Free’s truck, and off they went.
“Why don’t you come to the house, that way we can take care of you for a few days?” Serenity said from the front seat. Shaun closed her eyes against the blindingly bright headlights of the vehicles that passed them, but closing her eyes made her dizzy, so she just bowed her head and stared into the darkness at her feet. “I hate the idea of you being home alone.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom, but thank you,” she whispered. She wanted to go home, to be alone, to cry where no one could see her. She didn’t want to tell anyone, not yet. “I just want to go to sleep.”
“You really shouldn’t be alone, sweetheart,” Levi rumbled, his voice low. “Let Mom fuss over you.”
“If I come over, can I just sleep, please?” she asked. She knew a losing battle when she saw one.
“Of course,” her mother said gently. “I’ll just run upstairs and get your old room ready when we get home.”
By the time they pulled into the driveway in front of the sprawling ranch house, Shaun’s head was pounding again, and every single movement made her want to throw up from the pain. Levi and Seren helped her up the wide front steps and into the house. Levi stayed with her while Seren rushed up the stairs and turned down the bedding in Shaun’s old room, then the two of them made their way, very slowly, up the staircase and into her room, which had thankfully been repainted into a pretty shade of olive green from the garish blood red she’d insisted on as a teenager.
“You left Jodi’s room the same color it was,” Shaun pointed out as her mother helped her climb into the bed carefully.
“Jodi’s room didn’t make me think a clown had gone on a serial murdering spree in it,” her mother countered dryly, winking.
