That didn’t stop him from looking back at the road the ambulance had driven down. Selena was probably halfway to the hospital by now, yet he still had this crazy urge to run all the way there to check on her.
Chapter 3
“Dr. Pham wants to keep you for observation for a few hours.” The blond nurse tucked the blanket around Selena, covering up the hideous hospital gown they’d given her to replace the blood-soaked clothes she’d shown up in, then added, “Maybe overnight.”
Selena sat up in bed and pushed the blankets down, not even trying to hide her agitation. “Why would I need to stay here overnight? I’m fine. Heck, I’ve never felt better in my life.”
In fact, she felt more energized and alive than she could ever remember. But the nurse—Melinda—merely arched a brow and gave her a dubious look before glancing pointedly at the bank of monitors on the cart beside the bed. The instruments were beeping and blinking, which meant absolutely nothing to Selena but apparently everything to the nurse.
“Ms. Rosa, your heart rate is still dangerously elevated, and so is your blood pressure,” Melinda said, sighing like she was talking to a kid. “Your temperature is insanely high, you’re soaking wet with sweat, your oxygen saturation is so far above normal our equipment can’t even read it, and you haven’t stopped shaking since you were brought in.”
Selena clasped her hands together, trying to stop the worst of the trembling the nurse was talking about. Even though everything the nurse said was probably true, she had a crazy urge to argue with her. She hated it when people told her what to do, where to go, or how she should feel in any given situation. Pushing back came as natural to her as breathing. But in this case, she realized there was something else going on.
Simply put, she was terrified.
She’d been scared when Pablo had started waving that gun around in the classroom and even more freaked when the gangbanger had taken a shot at Ruben. But then the whole classroom had exploded around her, men with guns crashing in through the door and windows, a huge body slamming into her just as Pablo had tried to kill her.
She remembered that moment like it was trapped in time.
But while she’d been afraid, she’d been angry, too—furious even. The idea that Pablo had come into her classroom, her private sanctuary from the whole ugly gang world out there, and tried to hurt her and the students she loved made her want to scream.
Then, when the big cop had tackled her to the floor, everything had gotten hazy. All kinds of unfamiliar sensations and raw emotions had assaulted her, overwhelming and terrifying her. Something had happened to her in that classroom, and it scared her that she couldn’t understand what it was.
“Am I going to be okay?” she whispered.
The nurse’s expression softened, perhaps sensing how agitated Selena was right then. “You’ll be okay. The doctor is a little worried you might have a concussion from getting tackled by that police officer. From the way you described him, it sounds like he’s huge.”
Huge? Now that was one hell of an understatement.
“But could a concussion cause all these weird symptoms?”
“It’s possible.” Melinda gave her a small smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring. “I’m sure it’s nothing more than that.”
The nurse looked away just long enough for Selena to somehow know she was lying or at least deliberately exaggerating the truth.
“Dr. Pham will be in to talk to you soon,” the woman added, still not looking at Selena as she busied herself with the blankets again, then the instruments on the cart. “He’ll explain everything then. Until he gets here, relax and don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.”
Melinda left shortly after that, once again telling her this was all very normal. It took everything Selena had in her not to laugh. The whole day—and everything that had happened in her classroom—had been anything but normal.
Selena lay back on the pillow and replayed the moments after the cop had saved her life. Getting tackled by a guy who probably outweighed her by over a hundred pounds had definitely hurt, but getting shot would have been worse.
Maybe she’d gotten a concussion then. That would certainly explain the confusion and blurry vision, along with the memory of how the impossibly handsome dark-skinned cop had so easily picked her up and carried her out of the classroom like she was a kitten.
Then there was the blood. The skewing of reality that came with a concussion might also explain all the blood she’d been covered in. Or at least why she couldn’t remember where it had come from.
She’d first noticed it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. When the paramedic—Trent—had pushed up her sweater to check her for injuries, she’d told him she hadn’t been injured. He’d paused, then said the least calming phrase she’d ever heard in her life.
“Ma’am, please don’t be alarmed, but you’re bleeding.”
Yeah, that hadn’t worked. She’d freaked out when she realized her sweater and slacks were covered in blood. They’d quickly figured out that the blood wasn’t hers, which had only upset her more, because she couldn’t remember where it had come from.
“Was the cop who carried me out wounded?” she’d asked, inexplicably frantic at the thought.
The idea that he might have been shot was simply too painful to consider.
“No way. Not with the way he was carrying you,” Trent said. “He definitely wasn’t hurt. He would have said something if he was.”
Trent had suggested it might be Pablo’s blood, but that hadn’t seemed right, either. Even as addled as she was, Selena was sure Pablo hadn’t been anywhere near her after the shooting started. The rest of her students had been even farther away. There didn’t seem to be any explanation for where the blood had come from.
