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Dad winced. “She has. Four times.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Really? How do you know this?”
“Because she announces it far and wide,” he said. “The moment that she learns that she is, it’s like she’s trying to shout it from the rooftops knowing that you’re going to hear. But we don’t pass the message along, and her sails deflate fairly fast.”
By the way, my ex hated me.
When she’d moved back to our hometown, she’d turned into the town pariah.
It wasn’t long in coming, hearing the words ‘I told you so’ coming from every mouth that had the chance to say it.
By the time that I realized it was happening to her, she’d turned her dislike for me into hate, and never missed the opportunity to tell me how much she despised me.
Needless to say, everyone and their brother knew that she hated me, knew that it was my fault she’d lost our baby, and still sided with me because of how much of a bitch the woman was.
“Jesus, you sure know how to pick them,” Jubilee said. “First Raine, and then Zuri? You’re boned all the way around when it comes to crazy exes.”
I shot her a look that said she wasn’t funny. She returned one that clearly said ‘I think I am.’
I sighed and leaned my head back against the booth, closing my eyes and trying to decide whether taking this trip with Jubilee was a good idea.
It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. Yet, I couldn’t tell them no. Couldn’t say no to her when I knew she needed the help.
When she and I had been in the hospital, in rooms that had a curtain between them. She’d been the one in worse shape than me. She’d almost died three times in the bed right next to me. She’d literally been forced to endure so much more pain than I had to, also.
I could still remember the feeling of watching her code just like it was yesterday.Chapter 10If my blinkers are on, I’m not asking to merge. I’m telling you. Move, bitch. Get out the way.
-Zee’s secret thoughts
Zee
Everything hurt.
My teeth. My lips. The tip of my nose. Hell, I was fairly sure even my fingernails did, too.
I had no clue what was wrong with me, but I knew that there was definitely something very bad happening. You didn’t experience this kind of pain and not have something seriously wrong with you.
“Blood pressure is better,” I heard someone say. “He’s doing remarkably well considering the circumstances.”
What circumstances?
“She’s not, though,” I heard someone else say. “Her BP is so low, even after we’ve maxed out all meds she can safely have. Hell, the doctor even had to pull out the big guns with that last order. I haven’t seen any improvement, though. Oh, shit.”
My eyes opened even though they wanted to stay closed—possibly forever—and I looked around the room.
There was a lot going on. There were at least three nurses in the cubicle next to me, all of them in an ugly brown/olive type colored scrub shirt and pants, and each of them were crowded around another bed that was quite close to mine.
Not too close, not close enough for me to touch it, but I could definitely toss a pillow over toward the other bed and hit it.
“Her blood pressure is dropping fast. Too fast,” the first woman who’d spoken said. “Annnd, her pulse is gone.”
Things happened fast after that.
A flurry of activity exploded in the room. A cord was pulled at the top of the bedside that the nurses had been surrounding, and suddenly the crowd in the room doubled, going from four to eight in such a short time that I hadn’t even had time to blink.
People were yelling, a cart was rolled in, and there was beeping. God, all the beeping.
The room was bright, and there’d been so many voices that I was honestly curious if they just knew who the other was talking to, because they all responded as if they knew what they were doing.
Then suddenly I could see who was in the other bed.
Annmarie.
No, check that. It was Jubilee. Jubilee was the one with the black nail polish, not Annmarie.
My heart rate started to race, and not only could I feel it inside my chest, but I could hear it on the monitor.
A cool hand touched mine, and I looked over to find Annmarie touching my hand, with Eitan standing a few inches to her right.
“It’s going to be okay,” she lied.
I shook my head, my mind racing.
She had to be okay. She had to!
“Yo,” Jubilee poked me in the side. “Are you going to eat your food, or can I have a bite of that oatmeal? It looks really good.”
I looked over at her half-gone waffle and said, “How about you just keep your hands to yourself. And if you want more food, order it.”
