Rose heard the sincerity.
She had heard the same before.
It made her…uncomfortable.
She smiled to be polite and gave a little nod.
That nod took her smile and rattled her pain back to the forefront.
James’s eyebrows knitted together.
“I saw the nurse in the hallway earlier. She said the doc will be here in a minute but let me see if I can’t hurry him—”
Rose waved her hand to cut him off.
“I’m okay,” she said, pushing through a wave of nausea and hoping her statement was true. “I’m concussed, right?”
James didn’t look convinced, but he did nod.
“You have some bruising too. Oh, and two stitches on your leg. I didn’t see it but the nurse had me look away while she checked so I think it’s probably high up there.”
He paused while Rose did a quick inspection.
Sure enough, there was a bandage on her upper thigh and hip. Right where her underwear should have been.
Good on the nurse for having James turn away.
Though it did pose a question Rose hadn’t thought to ask about yet.
“You’ve been here since earlier? Why?”
A look Rose couldn’t place passed over James’s expression and tugged the corner of his lips down. He seemed to think carefully before he answered but it was simple enough.
“They said no one else was coming.”
An uncomfortable heat climbed up Rose’s neck and started to slide onto her cheeks. It wasn’t embarrassment—she wasn’t embarrassed at her lack of emergency contact—but it wasn’t all gratitude either. Instead, she had traveled back five months prior to the same hospital but on a much different floor.
She was staring at a doctor, seeing her lips move as she spoke, but all Rose could focus on was the body covered by a sheet behind her.
Derrick Tillman hadn’t had an emergency contact either.
And because of Rose, he would never need one again.
“Hey, don’t go getting all weird about it.” James’s words broke through the memory with surprising ease. Rose let her gaze refocus on the man. He waved a hand as if wiping it away. “I have a thing about hospitals,” he continued. “When I was a kid, I woke up in one alone and it really did a number on me. Now I try to make sure that it doesn’t happen to others if I can.”
He dropped his hand and snorted. There he was, playing nonchalant again. Casual and cool.
So very far from what Rose was currently feeling.
“But you did save my life,” he pointed out. “The least I could do was keep you company to say thanks.”
It was true, she supposed. He was there because he was thankful. Because he felt indebted.
Rose didn’t like either feeling.
She tried to smile into the new discomfort and play it off.
“Well, thanks, but next time don’t worry about me,” she said. “I don’t mind waking up alone. If something was really wrong, though, I’m sure the sheriff would pop in to check up on me. It’s just a hazard of the job.”
