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It was way too loose.
As in, if I wasn’t careful, it would fall right off and I would lose it.
“You got me this ring?” I asked him.
His eyes glanced down, but due to the brace he had around his neck, he couldn’t look very far.
“My dad,” he rasped. “Gave.”
His dad gave it to him before he’d left on the cruise with his mom.
“So you weren’t going to surprise propose to me, hubby?” I teased.
His eyes sparkled slightly and then his face went utterly white.
I looked over to see them straightening his leg.
“You feel that?” I asked worriedly.
I’d heard the nurse say that they were going to give him some pain meds. But, obviously, they hadn’t been enough.
He needed more.
Dammit.
“He feels that really bad,” I cried out, not making too much sense in my distressed state.
My college-level education was glaringly not obvious in that moment in time.
“I know, sweetie,” I heard someone say. My nurse that’d told me to talk to him. “That’s why I have you up here to distract him. Keep talking to him.”
I swallowed hard as I looked back down into Bain’s pain-filled eyes. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” he croaked.
I felt a tear slip out of my eye and I quickly dashed it away.
I could see him wanting to reach for me, but I caught his hand before he could get it an inch off the bed. “No, don’t do anything extra right now but sit there and look pretty.”
He snorted and it was the softest sound that I’d ever heard come from him.
Then his eyes were closing. But before they did so completely, I saw his eyes roll back into his head.
“He passed out,” I said as I looked down at his leg once again.
This time, they were straightening the other one.
I swallowed vomit.
“He’s nice and straight for now,” I heard what I assumed was an orthopedist say. “I can’t get him in the OR until you have him stable down here. Are we worried about brain trauma?”
“No,” I heard another one of them answer. I was so focused on Bain’s legs, though, that I didn’t see which one. “He was wearing a helmet. Witnesses say he went down feet first and slid across the pavement after he was hit. No scratches or abrasions concur with brain trauma.”
“Good deal.” The orthopedist nodded firmly. “Then we’ll get him back into the OR.”
Things happened fast after that.
He went from passed out with my hand in his, to being wheeled away into the OR, within forty-five seconds of that announcement.
“Come on, darlin’,” the nurse who’d helped me out since we’d arrived, ordered quietly. “I’ll get you to the OR waiting room where you can wait for progress updates. I’ll also show you the private corridor where you can wait without having a ton of people bothering you while you do.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
She squeezed my arm and said, “This is my first job right out of nursing school. I can honestly say that that man, that brother, is by far the worst person I’ve met in the months I’ve been working here.”
Braxton.
He was a real piece of work.
“He’s my ex-husband,” I said softly. “I can tell you with one-hundred-percent certainty that he’s the worst thing that I’ve ever met in my life. If I could take back the moment I met him, I would.”
“But then, from what I hear, you wouldn’t have met the good brother.” She squeezed gently before pointing at a shallow alcove practically hidden from the rest of the area.
I gladly took the spot and thanked her before she left, leaving me behind.
I closed my eyes and all but sank into the alcove, my head feeling so full that I could feel a pressure headache starting at the base of my skull.
I didn’t have any idea how long I waited there. What felt like hours, at least.
The first indication that someone had come into the area within hearing range was the whispered hiss.
“What do you mean she ran him off the road?” I heard Braxton whisper-yell.
“I mean,” I heard Sunny say. “That we have eyewitness accounts that she hit him with his own car and caused him to wreck. She’s also in labor right now. As of the moment that baby is born, you will be taking custody of your child and we will be allowing Miss Telly to recuperate long enough here that she’s well. Then she will be transferred to a detainment facility until she can get in front of a judge. From there, she’ll be either given bail or not. But we highly suggest that she has no contact with the infant.”
“I don’t want that infant,” Braxton snarled. “I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“Sounds like you don’t have a choice,” Sunny countered. “The child is of your blood. You’re responsible for him or her.”
