Well, yes, it was. But… Shit. Fuck. Damn. “She’s notmySam. And there is no situation.”
Not one that needed a fake broken hip or the fire department. Any situation they had only required that they avoid each other.
“She is perfection for you,” Babushka assured, letting out a loud, “Help!”
“Could you stop doing that?” he asked, in a tone he thought sounded pretty nice given that he wanted to strangle her.
The defiant look Babushka threw his way?
She wasn’t gonna stop.
“Let this go,” he said, glancing up the hallway where he suspected Sam would emerge at any second.
“Yes. Of course,” Babushka said. She waved him off and began moaning once more.
Dammit.
As expected, Sam hurried around the corner with a handful of blue Sharpies in her grasp. She paused only long enough to do a quick mental triage. He could nearly follow her thoughts as she moved from head to toe.
“I fell. Help. I fell.” Babushka laid her hand on her right hip this time. “It’s broken. I think it’s broken.”
Given that Babushka was playing this up royally, and Sam cared for her, Sam bought the charade.
Tanner would’ve believed Babushka too, if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes this was all fake pretend.
“Tanner, you’ve got her for a sec?” Sam asked, going into that calm, detached mode of those excellent in an emergency. “I’ll get one of the nurses.”
“Yeah.” He sure as fuck hoped Babushka would can it before they called in the fire department.
Sam tossed the Sharpies on a table as she bolted back down the hallway she came from.
“You’re embarrassing me,” he whispered to Babushka. “Please stop.”
Babushka ignored his pleas. “My arm!”
“Two seconds ago, it was your hip,” Tanner said, accidentally reminding her.
“My arm! My hip! My shoulder!” Babushka cried.
“Anything else? How’s the nose?” he asked. “Did you maybe break it sticking it in my business?”
She gave him a know-it-all look as she added to her list of ailments. “My heart. You are breaking my heart.”
“You agreed to let this go,” he said low.
She moaned, then whispered, “I agreed to nothing.”
Sam hurried toward them with a nurse he only knew a little. Katy. Her name was Katy. He moved out of the way as the two of them took over.
“Sam, she’s okay. Katy, she’s fine,” Tanner assured. “I promise she’s okay. This isn’t real. She’s playing a game—”
“There’s no way to know when it’s real or not.” Sam’s gaze caught his and the gravity of her words hung there in the air. “So you always have to move ahead like it is.”
“She’s got good movement,” the nurse said. “Do you think you can walk, Nadzieja?”
“No,” she said, entirely too fast.
Instead of arguing, Tanner turned his attention to Babushka. “Can I carry you?”
