Gillian followed right behind us, staying close enough that I felt her presence like heat on the back of my neck. She’d grabbed her purse and phone, clearly planning to follow us to the hospital.
I heard the soft catch in her breathing as we loaded Doc into the ambulance, saw the tremble in her fingers as she pushed her hair back from her face.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she said to Doc, voice stronger than her shaking hands suggested.
He managed a weak smile. “Don’t speed.”
As Twitch climbed in behind the stretcher and Donkey headed for the driver’s seat, I turned to Gillian. “Ride with us. You’re in no shape to drive.” Not with the way her hands shook.
For a long moment, Gillian hesitated, her eyes searching mine. Behind the panic, I saw the steel I remembered—the girl who’d always calculated every move, weighed every risk. Even now, with her world tilting sideways, that brain of hers was running the math.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” I said, soft enough for her ears alone. “And he shouldn’t be either.”
Something shifted in her expression—relief, maybe, or surrender—and she nodded.
“Okay.” She tucked her phone into her back pocket.
I held out my hand to help her up into the rig. She took it, her fingers cool and surprisingly steady against mine. Just that brief contact sent an unwelcome spark up my arm, a ghost of old memories. I let go the instant she was stable.
Gillian settled near Doc’s head, careful to keep clear of the monitors and IV lines Twitch was setting up. She brushed her fingers through her grandfather’s thin hair, murmuring something I didn’t catch. The tenderness in that gesture hit me somewhere unexpected. This was the Gillian I’d known before law school and corporate life had claimed her.
Cutting off the thought, I shut the doors with a solid thunk and called out to Donkey up front, “Roll out.”
CHAPTER 5
GILLIAN
I barely registered the ambulance ride. Every bump in the road made my heart lurch as I watched Doc’s face—pale but stubbornly alert, eyes drifting between me and the surrounding equipment. Diego and his partner worked with practiced efficiency, checking vitals, murmuring medical shorthand that blurred into white noise. I kept staring at Doc’s left hand, how it lay slightly curled and motionless while his right still fidgeted.
The hospital’s emergency entrance appeared too quickly and not fast enough. Red light splashed across the concrete as Diego threw open the back doors. The night air hit my face like a wash of warm breath compared to the ambulance’s sterile chill.
“Suspected TIA, BP one-sixty over ninety,” Diego called out as the waiting ER team approached. “Onset approximately forty minutes ago.”
I scrambled out behind them as they unloaded Doc with smooth precision. The wheels of the gurney hit the pavement with a metallic click that sent a shiver through me.
“This is silly.” Doc’s voice was clearer than it had been at the bar. “I just need to sit down for a minute.”
Relief surged through me at his coherence, but I didn’t dare trust it. I’d seen too many medical dramas to believe anything but what the doctors would tell us.
Inside, the Emergency Department hummed with controlled chaos. Monitors beeped in irregular patterns. A woman cried softly behind a thin curtain. Someone called for a crash cart down another hallway. Everywhere, people moved with that particular urgency that meant lives hung in the balance, yet no one was running.
I followed the gurney as far as they let me, the heels of my boots clicking against the linoleum. My fingers brushed Doc’s arm once before a nurse with kind eyes but a firm voice said, “You’ll need to wait here, miss. We’ll take good care of him.”
“I’m his granddaughter,” I said, as if that might grant me passage.
The nurse nodded. “The doctor will be out to speak with you soon.”
They wheeled Doc through a set of double doors that swung shut with a soft whoosh. I stared at those doors, willing them to open again.
The image of Doc collapsed on the floor played on repeat in my mind. That gray face. His puzzled expression. The slur of his voice as he’d tried to speak.
I forced myself to take a deep breath. Then another.He’s here. He’s alive. The best people are helping him right now.
Someone stepped up beside me. I turned my head, expecting to see a doctor or a nurse ready to pepper me with questions about Doc’s medical history.
But it was Diego.
“He’s in good hands here.” That low voice was more soothing than it should have been. “Dr. Maxwell is an excellent neurologist.”
