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“Then talk to me.”
I look away from her and curse low under my breath. I’m fucking this up and I know it. But damn it, the words won’t come. They stay stuffed halfway down my throat, foul and unmoving.
Her expression sags in my lengthening silence.
When her phone abruptly starts ringing, we both flinch.
It bleats three times before she reaches into her purse to retrieve it. “It’s Pauline,” she murmurs woodenly. “I gave her my number this morning and asked her to call if anything changed today.”
I nod, feeling absurd as I stand there, our sudden impasse stalled as she takes the call.
Avery’s face blanches a second after she says hello. She hangs up a moment later. “I need to go to the hospital. Kathryn’s in an ambulance on the way to the ICU.”
Chapter 15
Nick holds my hand as we get off the elevator on the intensive care floor of the hospital.
Because we’re not family of Kathryn’s, the staff at the nursing station can tell us nothing about her condition. Instead they direct us to a waiting room that’s filled with other anxious and grieving people. Nick and I take the only two vacant seats next to each other. And then we wait, sandwiched between a set of parents trying to reassure their fearful children that their grandpa will be home again once his heart is better, and a middle-aged man with tear-stained cheeks staring zombie-like at the muted flat screen television while he absently twists the worn gold wedding band on his finger.
Although there is a heavy swinging door that separates the seating area from the ICU corridor outside, there’s no escaping the constant jarring barrage of hospital noise and activity. Intercom announcements summon doctors and other personnel. Nursing staff moving occupied gurneys and wheelchairs tethered to IV poles and medical equipment sail past the narrow window of the waiting room in a seemingly never-ending parade.
Each time I hear the sudden piercing alarm ring out from a patient’s room outside, my throat constricts with panic.
“I wish they’d let us see her.”
Nick wraps his arm around my shoulders and presses a kiss to my temple. “I’m sure they’ll tell us something soon.”
Although he sounds confident and his embrace is warm and tender, when I look at him I’m not sure he actually sees me. There is a tension around his mouth that I haven’t witnessed before. His mood has been grim since we left the rec center. Each mile that brought us closer to the hospital seemed to make him withdraw a little more.
And I haven’t forgotten the odd silence that had engulfed him even before then.
I swivel my head to look at his unreadable profile. “Is everything okay?”
His eyes meet mine and I know he understands what I’m really asking. Are you okay? Are we?
“Yes.” His expression is utterly earnest. In Nick’s solemn, honest gaze, I feel our connection as strongly as ever. He’s giving me that now, trying to let me in. Tenderly, he draws my hand to him, linking our fingers. “I’m here with you, baby. Don’t ever doubt that. I’m not going anywhere.”
I want to believe that. And I don’t doubt he cares about me, or even that he might love me as completely, as desperately, as I love him. But there are times when I feel Nick is always just a hairbreadth out of my reach, existing somewhere no one can ever truly touch him.
It’s that part of him I fear the most. The part that makes me worry if I hold on too tightly, probe too deeply, he’ll be gone.
I recognize that elusiveness in him because I’ve spent most of my life in that place too.
The waiting room door swings open and Kathryn’s personal nurse nods at Nick and me in greeting. She gestures for us to join her in the hall outside.
“She’s stabilized,” Pauline assures us right away. “She was in one of her stubborn moods and refused to take her afternoon pain medicines. I’m her nurse and she pays me to take care of her, but I can’t hold her down and force her to swallow those pills.”
“No. Of course, not.”
She lets out a regretful sigh. “Twenty minutes later, I found her out on the terrace, slumped on one of the chairs. I can’t be certain how long she’d been there, but she wouldn’t respond and her blood pressure was bottoming out, so I immediately called 911.”
Nick curses low under his breath. “You say she’s all right now?”
“As best as can be expected, considering the progression of her disease,” Pauline offers gently. “The doctors are administering IV fluids and pain medications. They’ll monitor her here in ICU overnight most likely, then reevaluate her tomorrow.”
Relieved somewhat, at least temporarily, I swallow the knot of dread that had been sitting in my throat since we arrived. “Can we see her now?”
Tapping a code into the keypad at the entrance of the secured intensive care wing, Pauline brings us past room after room of patients in various states of trauma or illness. Nick still holds my hand as we walk, our fingers threaded together. His grip is firm, and I don’t miss the subtle tightening of his grasp as we make our way deeper into the ICU.
