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* * *
Something was beeping.
An alarm? My phone?
No… something else. It was a sound I knew, but I couldn’t place it. My head felt… tight. Fuzzy. But the intense pain was gone—well, notgone. It was still there, but for some reason it wasn’t bothering me as much.
Was I dead? Everything was so still and quiet and warm. If it wasn’t for that damn beeping, it would have been really nice.
But the beeping was still happening, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t something dead people were supposed to experience.
I opened my eyes—and they actually opened this time—but I couldn’t tell much of a difference. Why was everything so dark? Where was I?Whywouldn’t the beeping stop?
“Is she awake?” I heard a whispered voice.
“Maybe…” Another whisper. A second voice? “I thought I saw her eyes open for a second, but then they closed again.”
It was Cole. And the other voice must have been Prescott. Even whispering, I knew my guys’ voices. And just knowing they were here with me gave me the strength I needed to open my eyes again, to fight through the floaty, cloudy, hazy feeling and try to make sense of where I was and what was happening.
With a little more effort this time, I opened my eyes again and tried to smile. I hoped I was smiling, anyway. My face was kind of numb. My whole head—my wholebody—felt like it had been packed in cotton.
“Hey, beautiful.” Cole’s handsome face was smiling back at me. “Glad you could join us.”
“How are you feeling?” Prescott asked, stepping into view.
“I feel…” I paused and tried to clear my throat but didn’t have much luck. HowdidI feel? I wasn’t sure. Weird. Floaty. Different. “Am I floating?”
Because I really needed to know. And if I was, I needed my guys to help me down. Floating around like this couldn’t be safe.
“That’s probably the painkillers, sweetheart,” Prescott said, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “You have a pretty bad concussion and some bruises that are not going to be fun once you start to feel them.”
“No broken bones, though,” Cole added. “So that’s a plus. They might even be able to discharge you in the morning as long as you do okay throughout the night.”
A concussion? I’d be discharged? I tried to move my head but then thought better of it. Not because it hurt, exactly, but because it just took so much effort. And all of this floating was starting to make me feel a little nauseated.
So I moved my eyes to the left and right as far as I could, taking in my surroundings. It was dark, but I’d been in enough hospital rooms during my nursing training that it was pretty obvious that’s where I was now. And that damn beeping had to be my heart rate monitor.
Yeah. Ugh. I’d never realized how annoying those things were before. I suddenly had a little more empathy for all the patients I’d dealt with.
“Do you remember what happened?” Prescott asked, moving closer and pulling up a chair next to Cole. “Do you know why you’re here?”
No.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to think through the haze that was clouding my brain. Why was I here? What had happened to me?
“The truck,” I answered, an image of a mangled wreck flashing through my mind. “And… a fire? The field was burning and I… I think I hit something? And then everything went upside down.” I paused for a moment, trying to think of more details. Everything was still so fuzzy, and the effort it took to force each word out of my throat was exhausting me. “That’s all I remember,” I said, finally.
“You did a good job, beautiful,” Cole said, reaching out and gently stroking my arm. “Just rest. We’ll talk more about the accident later.”
“Okay,” I said, trying for another smile. “I think… I’m going to sleep now.”
They both smiled back at me, but the haze closed in before I could hear anything else. I knew they were with me, though.
That was all that mattered.
* * *
I knew for sure that I had been awake and at least mostly coherent during the time I was discharged from the hospital and for the long ride back to Cole’s house.
