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Elisa had the sensation of being lifted off Josh. She cried out from the pain.
“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” Harris’s panicked voice.
“No.” Elisa gave in to the adrenaline crash and the dizziness, the spinning and the nausea, and passed out.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Elisa bounced in and out of consciousness. When she finally woke up even her bones ached. She felt drained and thirsty. Machines beeped around her. The scent of cleaning fluid made her cough.
She felt a hand in her good one and looked over to see Harris. He sat at her bedside with a pained expression. His features pulled tight as he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. The gesture made her smile. After everything, all the loss, it still brought comfort.
She drifted back out without saying a word.
She woke again, this time to the sound of talking. She opened her eyes and saw Harris standing across the room, talking to a man she didn’t recognize. Shelby was there, animated and arguing about something.
Elisa’s arm ached. It hurt to shift and wiggle her fingers. She tried to move her head, to call out and get the attention of the people less than ten feet away, but her body gave out. She wanted to say something... something about Josh and Rachel, but her mind went black and she fell back asleep.
The next time she woke up a nurse was fussing over her. Her head wasn’t as fuzzy. The dizziness, after what seemed like weeks, finally had eased. She could move her head without wanting to throw up and the light no longer made her squint.
She glanced down at her arm. It was wrapped in a thick bandage. She tried to move her fingers and sighed in relief when that worked.
“You’re awake.”
Elisa didn’t recognize the voice but glanced up and saw the nurse. Watched her smile. “My husband?”
“Ran down to get coffee.” The nurse winked. “We had to force him. That man has been plastered to your side.”
She couldn’t think about that. “My son?”
“He hasn’t been in, but we’ve heard about him.” She pointed at a piece of paper taped to the wall with a lopsided crayon-drawn picture of a dinosaur on it. “He did that for you.”
Some things never changed. He might be growing and getting older, but he was still her little boy. Knowing his life ticked on as usual made her smile.
The nurse took her temperature and promised to call in the doctor. It was another five minutes before the woman stopped fussing.
Elisa asked the question she dreaded to know the answer to. “How’s my brother-in-law?”
“He’s in the room next door. We shifted things around to make it easier for your husband to visit both of you.”
Of course. Harris had to be with Josh. Some things changed and others never did. Elisa couldn’t even call up tears. She just wanted to go home and hug Nathan. Sleepand sit in her yard, enjoying the last bits of warmth before late fall and cold settled in.
Harris slipped into the room without saying a word. He waited until the nurse left to approach the bed. His steps looked careful and a bit wary. “How are you feeling?”
She’d been there two days. She knew because she got a peek at the nurse’s chart.
“I want to go home.” She blocked out visions of the kitchen and the blood. Tried not to think about how awful the cleanup must have been.
Harris stood there, holding his takeout coffee cup. “The doctor said tomorrow.”
“Really?” She feared it would be a long, drawn-out process.
“You have physical therapy ahead of you, but as long as your blood pressure stays steady the doctor thought you’d be happier at home.”
A horrible reminder. Pills. Rachel. Being drugged. “How much do you know about what happened?”
Harris set the cup on the tray next to her bed. “Shelby filled me in about how you’d hired her and what she found. The police filled in the rest.”
The memory of the two of them running into the kitchen floated through Elisa’s head. Shelby had looked so out of place in the house. Elisa truly thought she’d dreamed that part. “I didn’t tell you about Shelby.”
