She heard the low murmur of Nick’s voice and sprang to her feet. He appeared in the parting of the privacy curtain, alongside a salt-and-pepper man in a white coat and scrubs.
Sassy bit her lower lip, but it stubbornly refused to stop wobbling. He was fine. He was on his feet. An angry red scrape rode the edge of his cheekbone, and he cradled his right wrist against the center of his chest. But he was alive and well and…
“Damn it,” she hissed when tears crested her eyes. She stepped forward. “Goddamn it, Nick.”
He had the sense to move his wrist out of the way before she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, refusing to let him see how scared she’d been.
After a moment’s shock, he bracketed his uninjured arm low around the dip in her waist. He groaned. “Perez called you.”
“It should’ve been you,” she chastised. “If it’d been your voice on the phone, I wouldn’t have…”Freaked out. Lost my mind. Jumped headlong into hysteria.
“I’m all right,” he claimed. “Really. It’s not that bad.” All the same, she felt his arm tighten around her. “About earlier—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, shaking her head firmly. She did not want to see the business end of the F-150 flashing before her eyes again.
“This is nothing,” he dismissed. “My life was never in danger. You, on the other hand…”
“I’m not in pain,” she pointed out. “You are. Please, can we just focus on you?”
His cheek pressed to her temple. Slowly, he took a long, cleansing breath. She felt his lungs expand then release against hers, and that affirmation of life was more soothing than any lullaby ever had been.
“So this is the wife, I take it?” the doctor drawled.
Nick stiffened. Sassy took a step back, her hands on his shoulders. She eyed the doctor. “Depends. Do you kick nonspouses out?”
“Hardly,” the doctor answered.
“Good,” Sassy said. She leaned toward him and lowered her voice meaningfully. “Because I could take you.”
“She means well,” Nick said, his voice gravelly. He cleared his throat.
“What’s the prognosis?” Sassy asked, examining the wrist for herself. The skin around it was red and noticeably swollen.
“We took some pictures,” the doctor explained, gesturing them both toward the bed. It felt natural for them to sit side by side, hip to hip, as the doctor toggled the monitor of the computer out of sleep mode. He clattered away at the keyboard for a moment. The mouse moved under his cupped hand. As images came onscreen, he shifted the monitor so they could more easily view Nick’s X-rays.
“There doesn’t appear to be a break,” the doctor observed. “My guess is you’ve got a partially torn ligament.”
“So, a sprain,” Nick parsed.
The doctor’s head bobbed. “Appears so.”
Nick tried to wiggle his fingers and hissed at the movement. Sassy held his wrist to keep it stable, careful not to put pressure on the swollen area. “So what do we do about it?” she asked.
“We?” Nick said.
She turned to find a pained half smile desperately trying to hang on to the lower half of his face. “Someone needs to take care of you.”
“Sassy, it’s just a sprain.”
“Will he be out of work?” she asked the doctor, smoothing over Nick’s dismissal and ignoring his sigh of frustration.
“He’ll need to take some time off,” the doctor acknowledged.
Nick cursed. “I can’t.”
Sassy shook her head. “You think Dilinger is going to let you work like this?”
“I don’t have a choice,” he said adamantly. Strain appeared in the spots of color growing on his cheeks. “You know I don’t.”
