He was really hurt.
“I’m fi—” Will doubled over as a new round of spasms racked his lungs. Lucy tried to pry herself off the stretcher to help him.
One of the paramedics put a hand against her shoulder. “Let them take care of him.”
They loaded Lucy into the back of the ambulance, and Will climbed in behind her. He sat across from her, holding an oxygen mask to his face.
“Will—”
“It’s all right, Luce. Everything’s fine.” The oxygen mask muffled the words. His breath clouded the plastic, partially obscuring his serious expression.
He was wrong. Everything was not fine. Not fine at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sunshine radiated through the blinds into the sterile hospital room. Lucy blinked her eyes open and squinted against the light. She checked the clock on the wall at the foot of her bed. Nearly noon.
She was leaving Confluence. She rubbed her palms over her cheeks and blew out a breath.
She’d tell Will. Her path was somewhere else. The road she paved went a different direction.
When she sank back into her pillows, the one propped against the bandage on her arm shifted. She mashed her lips together at the tugging pressure. To her surprise, the emergency room doctors hadn’t treated her immediately. They waited for the plastic surgeon to arrive. Everyone seemed put out about the delay, so she was fairly certain it wasn’t protocol.
She had a suspicion it was Will’s credit card that pulled Confluence’s one and only plastic surgeon from his bed at midnight to fix her up.
A light tap at the door, and her nurse popped her head in. “Oh good, you’re awake. You have a visitor. Feel up to it?”
“Who—”
“She’s awake? Then of course she’s up to it.” Katie’s voice came from the hallway.
“Katie?” Lucy raised herself up, grimaced, and lay back on the bed.
Katie slipped past the nurse into the room.
“Hey,” Lucy called before the nurse could leave. “How’s Simon?”
“He’s shook up, but he’s fine. Jeff’s on the warpath about those kids.”
“How’d you get here?” Lucy tapped a button to raise the head of the bed a little.
“It’s called a car. Nifty things. You get in them, turn the key, and they take you where you want to go.” Katie leaned to give her a hug. The scent of gumdrops and cinnamon perfumed the air around her.
She took a long look at Lucy, pausing at the large swath of gauze and tape. “Jeff called me in the middle of the night to tell me what happened.”
Jeff. After things calmed down at Camelot, he had visited with Lucy at the hospital to take her statement.
“Is he all right?” Lucy asked.
“He’s beating himself up. He’ll be okay, once you are.” Katie bit at her lower lip. “Listen. Between that whole alligator thing and your house burning down, I figured your family would be worried, so I called your parents last night when I heard.”
Lucy sucked in a breath. “They aren’t coming, are they?”
Katie scooted one of the metal guest chairs closer to the bed. “I told them not to, that you’d call later.”
“My cell phone is presently a molten mess of plastic and metal somewhere in Camelot.”
Katie flopped to the chair. “You can use mine when you’re ready. Where’s William?”
