“Okay, keep me posted,” her mom said. “And I want to know more about why Mark’s name keeps coming up so often lately, but right now, you need to get home and rest. Lunch later this week?”
“Definitely.” Jessica said good-bye to her mom, checked out of the ER, and went to find Mark in the waiting room. He was still sitting right where she’d left him, messing around on his phone, andoh, he was a welcome sight. She wanted to lose herself in the comfort of his embrace and let him hold her until she felt better, but that was silly.
Instead, she let him lead the way out to his SUV. She could hardly wait to crawl into her bed for a nice, long nap. Mark insisted on stopping at the pharmacy on the way home to fill her prescription, and while she wanted to protest, the promise of pain relief was too tempting in the end.
“Thanks for your help this morning,” she told him when they got back to her house.
He nodded. When she opened her front door, his dog came barreling out, tail wagging, looking more excited than Jessica had ever seen her. “Call if you need anything,” he said.
“I’ll be fine.” She stepped closer. “But thanks…really.”
It was such a shame she hadn’t gotten to kiss him earlier, but maybe she could still fix that. She leaned in. Her blood heated, and her heart started to pound, butdammit, the pain in her head intensified until spots danced in front of her eyes. She closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath. If only she could kiss him without her pulse racing…“I’m going to go in and lay down,” she said, accepting defeat.
Mark nodded.
“If I don’t see you before, you’ll be at the party on Saturday, right?” She suspected he’d only be there if Ryan and Ethan dragged him kicking and screaming, but she didn’t care, as long as he was there. Her annual Halloween party was one of the highlights of her year, and she could hardly wait.
Mark made a noncommittal sound.
“Come?” She gave him what she hoped was her sweetest smile. “It’ll be fun. Promise.”
“I’ll stop by,” he said.
“Don’t forget your costume.” She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and then released a long, shuddering breath. Dammit, her head really hurt. Her knee hurt—the right one now, not the left—and she just felt generally awful. She walked to the kitchen for a glass of water and washed down one of the pills the ER doctor had prescribed for her.
Please let it help.
She walked to her bedroom and curled up in the middle of her bed, blinking back the tears that burned in her eyes because, if she cried, it would only make her head hurt even worse.
Something’s not right.
The feeling had been nagging at her for weeks now. Ever since her bout with the flu earlier this month, she just hadn’t been herself. She’d been plagued with fatigue, aches, and pains. She’d managed to keep the feeling at bay until this morning, when Mark had voiced his concern. Now that he’d spoken her fear out loud, she couldn’t shove it back into its little hiding place in the back of her mind. She drifted into a fitful sleep filled with frantic, unsettling dreams. When she woke up, it was just past three o’clock, and her head did feel better, but that knot of fear was still wedged in the pit of her stomach.
It was time to call her doctor.
