I blinked slowly and kept my face calm even though I didn’t like any of this. I felt the thin pull of tape on my skin and the weight of a blood pressure cuff around my arm, and when I shifted my hand slightly, I felt the sting of an IV in my other arm. I looked down at it for a moment, then lifted my eyes again, refusing to let my expression change.
I turned my head and saw my men. Two were inside the room, positioned like they had been in here the entire time, and another was near the door with his body angled toward the hallway, watching everything that moved outside. Their presence was the only thing in the room that felt familiar, and I appreciated it more than I intended to.
The one closest to me leaned forward slightly when he saw my eyes open.
“Mrs. Mensah,” he said lowly. “You’re awake.”
My throat was dry. I cleared it once and spoke with the same tone I used in boardrooms and courtrooms and private meetings, because tone mattered, and I wasn’t going to sound weak in a place like this.
“Where am I?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “You’re at a hospital. We had to land the jet immediately, and they met us on the tarmac.”
I held his gaze. “Why wasn’t I taken home?”
His eyes lowered for a fraction of a second, then lifted again. “You went down on the flight. You came around for a minute, but you weren’t fully aware, and then it happened again. The med team said it wasn’t safe to let you go home.”
The words settled in a way I didn’t like. I tried to reach for the last clear memory, and I found it in pieces that still felt sharp.
I remembered the empty seat where Preslan had been, and Kashmere’s face when she saw her child. I remembered my own throat tightening while I forced myself to stand tall and watch her hold him.
Then I remembered the pain, and it wasn’t the pain you could ignore politely. It had been sudden and tight, like a hand closing around my chest, and I remembered placing my palm there as if pressure could solve it. I remembered refusing to acknowledge it out loud. Then my muscles had started pulling against themselves, and my body had done something I didn’t give it permission to do…It had collapsed.
I moved my fingers slowly, then my wrist, then my arm, testing whether my body was back under my command. Everything responded, but my head still felt heavy, and that irritated me.
I tried to sit up, my man at my side intervened. “Mrs. Mensah, take it slow. They said your pressure dropped earlier.”
“I’m fine,” I replied automatically, but the sentence didn’t feel solid when it left my mouth, and I noticed that, and I didn’t like noticing it.
I settled back against the pillow and looked around the room again. There was a tray table pushed to the side, a chair with a blanket folded neatly on it, and a monitor on the wall displaying numbers I didn’t care to read. I didn’t like the idea of my body being reduced to numbers on a screen.
“How long have I been here?” I asked.
He answered with the kind of honesty that didn’t exaggerate. “A few hours. You landed, they checked you in through emergency, and they brought you up here once they said you were stable.”
“A few hours,” I repeated, letting the information sit.
I looked at my men again. “Has anyone been allowed in here?”
“No, ma’am. Only staff. Trust me, we kept it controlled.”
“Good,” I said.
A nurse walked in a moment later with a tablet in her hand and a calm expression on her face. She didn’t look startled to see me awake, which told me she’d been doing this long enough not to flinch around powerful people.
“Mrs. Mensah,” she said, professional and polite, “I’m going to check your vitals and ask you a few questions.”
I didn’t answer her with warmth, but I gave her permission with my stillness.
She checked the cuff, looked at the monitor, and asked me if I was dizzy, if I felt pain or if I felt short of breath. And it all sounded strange.
“I need to know what the hell is going on,” I said directly.
She nodded. “You had multiple fainting episodes, and you had muscle spasms. It can take a while for your body to settle.”
“What caused it?” I asked.
“We’re still figuring that out,” she replied carefully. “The doctor will explain the results of the tests they’ve done so far.”
