“Slow down, Wyatt, you’re freaking me out.”
I force a slow breath in and out, fisting my hands at my sides. “Serena, please.”
“I’m her emergency contact. She’s got her phone programmed to call me if she pushes a certain button. We set it up when she was having a hard time controlling her asthma, but she hasn’t had to use it in years. I got her here as fast as I could, and they took her straight to the back. But they haven’t come out to tell me how she is.”
“Fuck.” I sink down in a hard plastic chair as the adrenaline that got me here so quickly, abruptly drops off, leaving nothing but a deep fear in its place. I’m dimly aware of Serena sitting down beside me, tapping something on her phone.
What feels like forever passes before a woman wearing scrubs comes over to us.
“Are you the ones who brought Paige Millstone in?” We both shoot to our feet.
“Yes, I did, I’m her emergency contact, Serena. Is she okay? Did you give her nebulizers? She’s latex sensitive, the nurses remembered that, right?” I put my hand on Serena’s arm to stop her endless ramble and she quiets.
“Please, how is she?” I ask, forcing my voice to remain steady.
“She’s stable, but weak. Her airway was quite inflamed, and her breathing rate was a lot higher than we like to see. I think we’ll keep her overnight so we can provide a steady dose of steroids through the nebulizer, and as long as she maintains adequate oxygen saturation, she can go home in the morning.”
I only absorb half of what the doctor says, but based on Serena’s relieved “thank God” I’m guessing this is good news. It doesn’t sound like it to me, but it’s hard to really tell with all the chaos in my head.
“Can we see her?”
I look up when Serena asks the question, and when the doctor nods, I’m frozen. Torn between desperately wanting to see Paige and abject fear at seeing Paige in the hospital. But I force my feet to move and follow them into the back of the emergency department. Serena speeds up and sits down next to a stretcher. I walk a little closer, but stay back and let Serena have a minute first. I need the space to somehow get myself under control.
My eyes sweep over Paige, taking her in, cataloging everything. She’s so pale and seems so small lying there on the bed, her long hair spread messily over the pillow, oxygen cannulas coming out of her nose, and a monitor clipped on to her finger. I watch Serena say something. Paige’s eyes dart over to where I’m standing, and a tremulous smile comes across her beautiful face. I can’t bring myself to smile back.
Yes, I’ve seen her in the ER before. But back then, I didn’t know her. I didn’t love her then.
But this is different. Because I do — love her, that is.
Which is why I can’t do this. I can’t be here. I can’t watch another person I love suffer.
My hands tremble as I pull out my phone and open a text message to my father.
WYATT: Dad, I’ll be in the office tomorrow. We can discuss me moving to Toronto after the 8th. I’ve changed my mind about staying here.
Chapter twenty
Paige
I despise hospitals with ever fiber of my being. It’s not the people that work there, oh no, I have the utmost respect and appreciation for every doctor, nurse, social worker, respiratory therapist, even the cleaning staff are inspiring in their dedication to their jobs and the patients they care for.
But when you spend most of your childhood in and out of hospitals, and your adult years doing everything possible to avoid more visits, it becomes very tiresome when your body simply lets you down.
The only way I was able to convince the doctors to let me go home and not admit me to the hospital was with Serena promising I wouldn’t be left alone for at least the next week. I kept waiting for Wyatt to return, to tell Serena and the doctors that he would take care of me, but he never did. Just as he didn’t answer my call when Serena drove me home, nor my text message later on last night.
It is all very confusing to me. Serena said he had seemed terrified for my well-being and desperate to see me when he first arrived at the ER. Why then, did he take off without even saying a word?
When I woke up this morning, alone in my bed after a fitful night of coughing and poor sleep, I roll over and hug his pillow to my chest. It smells like him. I can hear someone walking around in my kitchen and for a brief moment my heart leaps. Then I hear Serena talking to Polly. My confusion over his silence last night has morphed into hurt and embarrassment. I don’t fully understand what happened, but I have apparently been deemed not good enough in some way. Not worthy of his attention anymore. Only this time, the pain is extra powerful as I realize I have been falling in love with Wyatt, and he clearly does not feel the same way.
I slowly move to a sitting position, wincing at the ache in my chest from a night of coughing. The fatigue will take a few days to pass as it always does when I’m battling a bad virus. At least this time the doctors are hopeful it won’t settle into a pneumonia, thanks to the prophylactic antibiotics and steroids they sent home with me.
The door to my bedroom opens slowly, and Polly runs in with an excited yip, standing on her back legs at the side of the bed. Serena comes in and puts a tray down on the bed before lifting Polly up.
“How are you feeling?”
“Not well,” I answer honestly.
“Physically, emotionally, or both?”
