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A woman in a white coat hurries past me, a nurse behind her, and she walks quickly up to Piper’s bedside. I stand in the doorframe, dumbstruck, heart racing.
Sheer terror. That’s what stares back at me from Piper’s normally sparkling blue eyes. That gaze that’s usually so joyful, so happy, is distraught and scared, and now, I think a little embarrassment crosses her face as she sees me in the doorway.
God, embarrassment? Aside from the wild expression and the obvious location, she doesn’t look like she just took a fly ball to the head. She looks like Piper.
My Piper.
Clenching and unclenching my fist at my side, I try to give her the best smile I can. It seems to catch Alex off guard, because for a second, she blinks at me from next to her friend, mouth opening and closing.
“Piper, how are you feeling?” the doctor asks, and leans over to look into Piper’s eyes. She pulls a light pen out of a pocket and points it at her, and Piper blinks a few times before following the light with her gaze.
“My head hurts,” she says quietly, and her eyes flit back to me. The doctor turns, gazing around to all the people in the room.
“I’ve got this,” Alex says shortly, dropping the cord still in her hand and striding toward me with more force than I’d been expecting. Carla teeters behind her.
“Where are you -” Piper starts.
“We’ll be right back, sweetie,” Carla says over her shoulder, and Penny sits next to her sister in the bed as Alex grips my arm firmly and leads me out of the room.
“What the fuck, dude?” she seethes when we’re out of earshot, but she doesn’t stop moving. She just drags me through the hallway until we’re pushing through the door back to the waiting room that I’d barely registered on my way in, running on adrenaline and fear and my own sense of terror.
For the first time, I notice a jersey-clad group sitting in the corner, and they all stand when they see Alex and Carla, the man from the field running to embrace who I can only assume is his wife. Alex nearly collapses into his arms.
“She’s awake,” she says, and a collective sigh of relief falls over the group. The other guy from the field - the one who hit the fly ball, Greyson, I think - falls back into his seat, burying his head in his hands.
Brett pats his shoulder, relief flooding his face, as Carla releases her hug from Vic and flies into Dylan’s arms, letting out a shuddered sob. Dylan grasps her, hard, holding her head to his chest as she cries.
“She was so panicked,” Alex breathes, letting go of her husband and looking around the group. Dylan raises an eyebrow at her over Carla’s head. “The heart monitor started going off and she just fucking lost it.” Tears stream down her face for at least the second time today, and Vic leans over, grabbing tissues out of the box on the table next to him and handing them to her. She takes one, and then turns to me. “You shouldn’t have been in there.”
“Dude just ran right past us,” Dylan says, nodding at me, and I fight the urge to glare at him.
It was obvious, watching the short interaction he had with Piper in front of me at the game, that something had happened between the two of them. The tone he’s using now is indignant, and implies I have no right to be here.
I guess, really, I don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I reply sincerely, and then sit in one of the nearby seats, scrubbing my face. “I was so worried, and-"
“We’re all fucking worried, man,” Vic counters, but his voice is soft. He turns back to Alex. “How is she, otherwise?”
“Doctor was looking at her when we left,” Carla says, sniffling as she pulls away from Dylan. “Her neck is fine, they did an immediate read on the scans to check. She’ll probably have a nasty concussion.”
One minute, she was sitting, talking, the next, keeled over on the ground in front of me. And my heart felt like it was in my throat.
“Do you need anything?” Alex’s husband says to her, wrapping an arm around her again. “I know that must have been triggering for you, too.” She sniffles.
“It was, but I’m just glad she’s awake, I was-"
Mid-sentence, she snaps her mouth shuts, and looks down as a trickle of water hits the floor underneath her. Alex looks up at her husband as we all stare. Slowly, she leans her head back into his chest as he stares down at her, shocked. Her shoulders shake in what I think is sobs at first, but turns out to be laughter.
“Of-fucking-course,” she mutters, and then her eyes find his again. “Well, looks like we’re having a baby.”
Chapter 13
Piper
Nope.Nope.Absolutelynot.I am not staying at this hospital. It may damn well be one in the morning, but I don’t fucking care.
And I tell my mother and Penny as much as I try to force myself out of bed. Wordlessly, my father puts a hand on my shoulder, and looks down at me, pleading in his eyes.
