She nodded and gazed up at me. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You need anything?”
She reached out and grabbed my hand. Well, my thumb. She wrapped her hand around my fucking thumb, and my heart melted.
I knew that as long as she was with us, she’d always hold me hostage.
“All right, Doc,” Brielle said as she squeezed my thumb, “let’s do this.”
I braced myself. I waited for the shrieks of pain. For the blood we hadn’t seen. For the wounds we hadn’t clocked. I brushed her hair away from her forehead while her stare stayed connected with the ceiling. And fucking hell, I had to resist every single urge that I had to dip down and kiss her.
Just to keep her from worrying so damn much.
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Doc said after about twenty minutes.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“What’s the good news?” Brielle asked.
“The good news,” Doc said, perching himself on the edge of her side of the bed, “is that you’re going to be just fine.”
Brielle sighed with relief, almost as if she didn’t believe she would have been.
The thought broke my heart.
“And the bad news?” I asked.
Doc clicked his tongue. “You don’t technically have a concussion, but I need you to treat yourself as if you do.”
“I’m not following,” Brielle said.
“Concussions are rated on a scale of one to ten, based on their symptoms and how bad the trauma is. You’ve gotten socked in your head pretty good, but none of your symptoms are near that level one threshold.”
“That still sounds like good news, Doc,” I said.
He held up his finger at me. “The problem is that if you experience any other sort of trauma—a bump that’s too much, or being shook up too much, or another little whack to the head—and you’re going to need a hospital for your concussion.”
“Ah, that’s the bad news,” I said flatly.
“So,” Doc said, pressing his hands into his knees and standing, “Doctor’s orders are to rest for the next week.”
Brielle bolted upright. “The next week!?”
Doc nodded. “One week, in bed, very little movement or jostling.”
She looked between me and Doc. “I can’t stay here another week. I have a family to get back to. A home. A job. Goddamn it, you guys, I have a fucking career to get back to!”
“And you will,” I said as I helped lay her back down, “but even if you were on the job right now, you know they’d send you home.”
She hissed up at me. “My job wouldn’t have abducted me and kept me prisoner in a fucking basement.”
Fucking hell, the mess we had created with her. I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself.
“You’re right,” I said.
Tears lined her gaze. “Thanks for coming, Doc.”
He patted her head. “I know it isn’t the news that you wished to hear, but it is going to do you a great deal of good. You’ll rest, you’ll recuperate, you’ll eat lots of good food that I’m sure Mav wouldn’t mind whipping up for you at the drop of a hat—”
