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Blondie starts to veer toward the parking lot, so I grab his wrist, forcing the SUV to jerk. “What the fuck?—”
“Drop me at the emergency room entrance!” I plead with him. “You’ll take too long to find a space.”
His eyes narrow. “I can’t let you go in there by yourself. My job?—”
“Your job is supposed to be protecting me, right? Well, that includes my baby and you’re wasting time!”
Blondie gives me a look like he’s contemplating driving off the nearest bridge instead. I can see him calculating the odds in his eyes. Does he let me do what I’m demanding, risking Reese’s ire? Or does he risk something worse? How much ire are we really talking about here?
In the end, he loses out. Grumbling, Blondie shifts the SUV in drive and screeches to a halt in front of the E.R. entrance.
“I’ll be right there,” he says evenly. “Take care of… that.”
I slip out of the SUV and stick around only long enough for him to drive toward the lot. I enter through the glass double doors, but I don’t go toward the ER. Even with my “symptoms,” it won’t take long for the nurses to see I’ve done the damage to myself and it’ll take even less time for them to realize I’m not miscarrying.
Instead, I head the opposite direction, toward the hospital common area.
I need to be quick. I can pass for someone that’s been slumming it here, waiting for a loved one to get out of the hospital—but only for so long. Nurses have sharp eyes and even sharper instincts. They’ll know something is up.
All those endless hours spent in hospitals with Mama are finally paying off.
I shove down the worry when I think of her. I’ve been gone for two weeks. What if something’s happened? Has Reese been checking in on her? My gut fills with more worry and I hurry to a nurse’s station.
The nurse behind the counter has a bubblegum pink streak through her hair that immediately reminds me of Quinn. I beeline to her. Nurses like that can be discreet if you ask them to be. They’re more comfortable with twisting rules and overlooking yellow flags.
“Hey, sugar. Whatcha need?”
“Hey… Listen, you think I could get a phone to call a cab over? I need to, ah… get out of here.” When her brow raises skeptically, I lean over the counter. “I’m trying to get away from a weird dude,” I whisper. “I really just need to get a cab, that’s it. My phone isn’t working.”
Her eyes widen a little, but then she nods. “I got you, honey. Here.”
She pulls out her own cell phone. A few taps and swipes and she hands it over to me. “Just put in the address that you wanna go to. I’ll pay for you.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“Sweetheart, you look like you’re dealin’ with a lot.” She gives me an up and down glance.
Right. I am in my pajamas, with my rat’s nest of bed head and painfully unbrushed teeth.
“Yeah,” I agree soberly. “It’s starting to feel a little ridiculous.”
I type in Mama’s address. She doesn’t even bat an eye when she sees how far away we are from my destination. I expect at the very least, a whistle of surprise. Instead, she asks, “You need me to call someone? Police? A friend?”
I shake my head. “No, no. Really, it’s fine. Like I said, just trying to get home on my own.”
She eyes me. Without a word, she reaches beneath the counter and pulls out a couple of pamphlets. They’re all for women in bad situations.
My face reddens. “Oh, I don’t really?—”
“Just go ahead and take ‘em, honey,” she advises. “I got the cab set up to pick you up around the secondary entrance, not the front one. I can stand with you.”
It feels a little wrong to have this woman thinking that I’m in a situation like that. But I reason out that, if she’s with me, Blondie has less of a chance to be able to get away with hauling me back to the cabin.
“Alright.”
The nurse—whose name I see is Peggy when I look closer at her nametag—stands up. “Goin’ on my smoke break, Patricia!”
“Okay, whatever!” a disembodied, high-pitched voice answers from seemingly nowhere.
