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“Sorry,” Matteo muttered. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it to.”
“Eh.” Tess shrugged, her smile reappearing. “I have two children under the age of three. It’s going to take a lot more than that to throw me off my game.”
Camila brightened at the mention of Tess and her husband Declan’s newest addition. “Oh, my God, how’s the baby? Niamh, right? Am I even close to saying it right?”
Tess laughed. “You’re close, actually. It’s ‘neeve”, only not spelled anywhere near how it looks. She’s great. Her older brother is a bit disappointed she’s not a puppy, but he’s coming around. And she’s got Declan wrapped around her little two-month-old finger, of course.”
“Not shocking,” Camila said. Tess’s husband was a stay-at-home dad who took his jobveryseriously. “Do you have pictures?”
Matteo cleared his throat, and Tess shook her head. “Let’s do the full health update first, so your brother doesn’t explode, here.”
Camila sighed, but didn’t argue. “Okay. So, no concussion. Does that mean I can go?”
“That would be the better news,” Tess agreed. “The neurologist and I are in agreement that your scans are clear and you passed the concussion protocol with flying colors. While neither of us is in love with the fact that you lost consciousness or that you do have a noticeable contusion on your head—that’s the medical-school word for a nasty bruise—you have been awake and alert since you arrived and your cut doesn’t need any stitches. So, yes. I’m prepared to release you.If”—she lifted a finger, her expression brooking exactly zero nonsense—“you agree to come right back if you feel any numbness, dizziness, tingling in your extremities, or blurred vision.”
“Of course,” Camila said. Just because she wanted to run for daylight didn’t mean she’d get reckless with her health.
“Do you think that will happen?” Matteo asked, his dark brows furrowed over his equally dark stare. “Maybe she should stay a while longer, just to be sure everything is okay. That cut did bleed an awful lot.”
“No need,” Tess said, before Camila could choose a different two-word phrase to lob in his direction. “Head wounds tend to bleed a lot even when they’re superficial because there are tons of blood vessels on the head and face.” To Camila, she said, “I wouldn’t release you if I was worried. Any of those symptoms, or the conditions that go with them, would be incredibly rare. But we have to let patients know when it would be urgent for them to come back. There’s always one in a million.”
“Thanks,” Camila said, and thankfully, Matteo didn’t push it.
“You’re going to have a headache for a little while,” Tess continued, looking at Camila. “Try to limit your screen time for the next few days. It should help.”
Camila bit her lip. There went work, with all the computer screens and smartboards. “Can I draw in my sketchbook?”
Tess nodded. “I don’t see why not, but if it strains your eyes, you’ll need to rest.”
At least there was one small win. Drawing was a weird way to relax, Camila knew, but then again, she’d never really done things the way everyone expected her to.
“You can manage the pain with ibuprofen,” Tess said. “Just try to make sure you take it with food. Some patients can get a bit of an upset stomach with repeated doses of NSAIDs.”
“Sounds good,” Camila said, although the thought of food right now made her stomach tighten.
You have twenty seconds, and Iamcounting. Fuck around and I’ll shoot you both...
She swiped at the memory, pasting a smile over her face as she asked Tess, “So, can I get dressed?”
“Of course,” Tess said. “I’ll go ahead and have a nurse bring you some ibuprofen for the road while I process your release.”
Camila thanked her, but didn’t waste any time after the woman had left before giving her brother a determined stare. “So,nowcan I go with you to give a statement?”
Matteo paused. “I told you, we can do that right here. You don’t need to come to the precinct.”
“Did everyone else go to the precinct to make their statement?” Camila asked.
“No one else was knocked out by one of the gunmen,” he countered, but at her continued silence, he finally added, “Yes. Everyone else is making full statements. We were able to take some of them on-site, but most of them are being taken at the precinct.”
An image of Roman, intense and beautiful and stupidly calm, popped into Camila’s head, completely unbidden. He’d probably been first in line to give a full account of everything that had happened. He’d been so composed during the robbery that she’d wanted to wonder if he was even human. She, on the other hand, clearly had a fight, flight, or freeze instinct that was set firmly to “freak the fuck out”, having been less than a breath away from full-on panic as the robbers had burst into the bank. Roman—and the ice water in his veins—had jumped all over telling her to breathe. Camila had sworn that this was just a byproduct of his training as a badass FBI agent who dodged bullets on the regular, probably as ingrained as hisownability to breathe in scary situations. But then she’d heard him murmur to the preteen beside them in the same reassuring tone, and something about it snagged in her mind now that she’d had time to examine it.
He hadn’t just been trying to infuse his calm into both of them for the sake of protocol. He’d seen both of their fear and he’d wanted to tend to it. He’d meant the words as comfort.
Andthatmeant Kai Roman had a heart somewhere beneath that Frosty the Snow Agent exterior.
“Right,” Camila said, blinking back to the trauma room. She couldn’t afford to get lost in thought about Romanorthe very weird way he’d been able to calm her in an impossible situation. She needed to show Matteo that she was tough enough to handle herself,byherself.
She straightened her shoulders. “Well, if that’s where everyone else gave their statement, then that’s where I’m going, too.”
