“Nothing. I wasn’t saying anything.”
“Blake.”
“Sully. I wasn’t saying anything. Ellie’s going to be okay.”
I nodded, latching onto those words, even if he was just saying them to say them. I didn’t care. They were what I needed, why I called—to hear my med school brother tell me she was going to be okay.
“She has to be okay, Blake.”
“She will be.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
And because Blake always seemed to know things, and I might not survive if it wasn’t true, I let myself believe it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ellie
“I’D LIKE TO DO a few tests,” the doctor said. I was ashamed to admit I’d already forgotten her name, and the tag woven into her white coat was currently covered by a stethoscope. “We’ll draw some blood to check your HCG levels and also do a D-dimer to help identify if there is a concern of thrombosis, and if that might have anything to do with your symptoms, given your history.”
My stomach roiled, filled to the brim with nerves as I nodded, listening to her explain the function of the D-dimer blood test, something I was more than familiar with. Still, I hung on her every word.
“But we can probably wait for the results of the D-dimer before we make a decision about an ultrasound to check for clots?—”
“Or we can just do it now,” Sully interjected, moving closer to the side of my bed.
Actually, any closer, and he would beinit.
“We…could,” the doctor said, her mouth quirking. She looked from Sully back to me. “We could also do that. If you would prefer that, Ellie.”
Sully shifted on his feet next to me, impatient, anxious.
“We can do the ultrasound,” I said after a beat of silence.
“Her D-dimer blood test was negative,” Sully said on the tail end of my words, like he hadn’t been able to hold it in any longer.
“Excuse me?” The emergency physician cocked her head to the side.
“When she had the PE,” Sully explained. “Her D-dimer was negative, or like, didn’t show what it was supposed to. That she had clots. But she did. So, it was wrong. The D-dimer was wrong.”
I glanced at him, surprised he remembered a detail like that, something that had happened before he’d even gotten to the hospital back when I’d had my incident in college. A detail that had only added to my wariness when it came to medicine and the little rule in my head that told me that I was always going to be the small percentage—that I’d always exist in the small margin of error whenever it was presented.
“Oh, really?”
She looked back to me, and I confirmed with a nod. “I had to push them to give me the D-dimer because I knew something wasn’t right. And then I had to push even harder for the CT since the D-dimer was negative or whatever.”
They’d wanted to send me away with a prescription for anxiety.
“Interesting,” she mused. “I’ll put an order in for the ultrasound, then. But you’re not experiencing any shortness of breath, chest pain, leg pain, correct?”
I nodded. “Correct. Just—” Just…pain everywhere else, it seemed. I shook my head. “Just yeah, no other symptoms.”
“Good.”
Good.
