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Other voices came through the line, and he heard a man said, “Ma’am? Ma’am, I need you to wake up.”
“Hey,” Blaine yelled, hoping to get someone’s attention.
“Who’s this?” a man asked.
“I’m her boyfriend,” Blaine said, wearing the label proudly. “Did she pass out?”
“Yes, sir, she did. We’ve got a team here working with her.”
“She said her back hurt,” he said. “She was in a car accident about five years ago with her mother.” Blaine could still remember getting that phone call too. His anxiety shot through the top of his skull. “She couldn’t tell me where she was, and she guessed at her last name.”
“We’re at the corner of Leavers and Hoof.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Blaine said. “Or should I meet you at the hospital?”
“We’ll still be here in five minutes,” the guy said. “I have to go.” The line went dead, and Blaine banged his open palm against the steering wheel. He wasn’t angry, but frustration looked a lot like anger for Blaine Chappell. So did worry, and that what was really eating through him.
“I’m coming, Tam,” he said under his breath, practically taking a corner on two wheels. “Hang on. I’m coming.”
2
Tamara Lennox opened her eyes at the touch of someone with cool fingers.
“Tam,” he said, and she blinked to be able to see Blaine better. He came into focus slowly, and she tried to sit up.
“Shh, no,” he said, pressing that large, cool hand against her shoulder to keep her down. “You’re in the back of an ambulance, sweetheart, and you’re not getting up.”
“No,” she said, a powerful sense of choking coming over her. She coughed at the suddenly sterile air. “I said I didn’t want to go in the ambulance.” Her legs thrashed, and she found them tied down. “Blaine,” she said, plenty of panic in her voice. “Help.”
But he moved, and another man’s face filled her vision. “Ma’am,” he said. “It’s a six-minute drive, and we’re already halfway there.”
“No,” she said again, desperate now. She couldn’t be in an ambulance. They were so tiny, and she was fine. Even as she thought it, a wave of pain moved down her back. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“I can give you a mild sedative,” the paramedic said.
“No,” she said again.
“Tam,” Blaine said from somewhere. His voice echoed, but she felt it when he slid his fingers between hers. Her body sighed, and some of the panic inside Tam ebbed away. “There you go, baby. Just calm down. They’re helping you, not hurting you.”
“I don’t like ambulances,” she whispered. “They’re too small.”
“You’re okay,” Blaine said. “You passed out for a minute there, and they had to do something to stabilize your back and neck.”
“I said I was fine.”
“You’re a liar,” Blaine said. A moment passed, and he chuckled. Tam found what he’d said funny too, and to her horror, a very girlish giggle came out of her mouth. Maybe they’d already given her something for the pain in her back. Maybe that was why she couldn’t feel it anymore.
Another round of anxiety kicked against her ribs. “Don’t give me anything,” she said. “I don’t like drugs.” Her voice slurred on the last sentence, and she knew then that she’d already been given something.
Her brain sloshed from side to side as the ambulance turned, and she closed her eyes as a debilitating round of vertigo hit her. “I hate ambulances,” she said over and over.
“I hate you, Blaine, for letting them put me in this ambulance…”
* * *
She wokethe sound of Blaine’s deep, luxurious voice reading to her from her favorite book. “It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people…”
…who break easily, Tam thought, reciting along with him. Or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been—
