Page 30 of Floodgates

“Yes,” Alex agreed. “That’s what’s gonna happen.”

It wasn’t. “Can you call my doctor in here?” I questioned the nurse who had appeared at the foot of my bed.

“Of course,” she assured me, glancing over at Breckin. “It’s nice to see you again, Dr. Alcott.”

“And you, Angela,” he replied. “And don’t worry about paging Dr. Cutler; I just called him on his cell.”

“Thank you. I’ll be back to take patient history.”

“I did that for you already.”

“Oh, thank you.” She beamed at him.

“Of course.”

“Am I okay?” I asked Breckin the moment Angela left the room.

He nodded. “You’re okay, you’re just banged up. You have a concussion, so Tate’s going to keep you overnight, but the brunt of the blow was to your upper back and shoulder blades, not your head. You were really lucky. If you had taken the full blow to the back of your head, things might have ended differently.”

“Tate?” Matt asked him.

“Dr. Cutler,” he informed my best friend since college.

“That’s me,” Tate Cutler, one of Breckin’s old colleagues, said as he breezed into the room and up to my bed.

“So?” I asked him as he got out his penlight and checked my eyes. “Can I go home?”

“Tomorrow,” he answered quickly. “I just want to keep you overnight.”

“But he’s going to be okay?” Alex pressed him, and I noticed how he purposely didn’t direct his questions to Breckin or ask him his opinion. In the past two years, that would have been the case. And while Alex didn’t know the specifics of why we were taking a break, it had relegated the man to a stranger in his mind.

“He is,” Tate said resolutely, finishing up with me.

“He’ll be fine?” Matt inquired of my doctor as well.

“Absolutely.”

Matt turned to look back at me. “You feel okay?”

“I feel a little out of it,” I confessed and was going to say more when I really looked at him. “Why? How bad do I look?”

“I just—” He trembled. “I was scared.”

“Come here,” I said, lifting my arms for him.

He moved fast, bumping Alex as he dove at me, breathing hard so he didn’t cry, dragging air in and out of his nose “There’s only Eric and you and… and… I have a lot of… but not you. Not Eric.”

I nodded. “I know.”

He had such a soft heart, which was why I was glad that Eric Harmon, the man who did the sports on Channel 5 at six and eleven weekdays, saw Matthew Sato’s heart quite clearly and cherished it and kept it safe. After Matt came out in college, he’d had no family but mine. And yes, he adored my father and my brothers, but me—I was the one who really mattered.

After Matt pulled himself together, the nurse came in and announced that everyone needed to clear out of the room and let me get some rest. The only people she succeeded in herding to the door were Ira, Courtney, and April. I promised to call them as soon as I got home.

“Where did you leave Jennifer?”

“I dropped her at her place,” Alex muttered as he got on his phone.

“Are you going to see—”