That sound meant Thomas was alive.
Right now she needed to keep that at the front of her mind. She had to find some way to come to terms with what had happened… and what hadn’t. Her mind needed peace and maybe seeing that he really was alive and breathing would bring that peace.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet been able to drag her eyes from the floor and look at him where he lay unmoving on the bed. When she got up this morning she was sure seeing him would make her feel better. Now, the thought of it terrified her.
Facing him, even unconscious, had her already twisted gut trying to strangle itself. Would he remember what happened?
She groaned inwardly at herself and leaned forward in the ridiculously uncomfortable chair, resting her forehead on her knees. Please God don’t let him remember. If he did what would she say? ‘Yeah sorry, I got a little handsy while you were trying to die. My bad.’
The sight of him suffering hit her in a way she never would have imagined. All she was trying to do was comfort him. Before she realized what she was doing, her hands were all over him. On his face, in his hair, touching him in ways usually reserved for someone you know on a much more intimate level. Not your friend’s son who you have been secretly lusting after for months. Especially not if he’s lying on a cold barn floor bleeding to death.
She sat up straight and leaned her head back on the chair. What was wrong with her?
Fantasizing about Thomas when he was some random farmer was fine, but after finding out Nancy was his mother it should have stopped.
But it didn’t.
When he almost died and was lying in a hospital, it absolutely should have stopped.
It still didn’t.
Now she was here, weirdly sitting alone in the corner of his hospital room staring at the ceiling. What if he woke up? Oh God, what if he woke up? Her stomach hit the floor. She needed to get out of here. Launching out of her seat, she was halfway across the room when she heard a noise and froze.
Shit.
He was awake.
She slowly turned, her mind racing trying to come up with any explanation for her awkward presence in his room. But he wasn’t awake.
His eyes were closed, his face screwed into an odd expression. Pain? She watched the nurse shoot a hit of morphine into his IV line when she got there so he shouldn’t be feeling too much of anything. His eyebrows were drawn low making two vertical lines in the space between. His jaw was clenched tight, a tiny vein easily visible through the skin at his temple bulging from the pressure. He looked angry, but not quite.
He began to struggle, trying to move his legs, fighting against the blankets and tubes that restricted his movements. She watched, frozen as he became more desperate in his actions, struggling against the bandages protecting his mangled thigh. Shit. He was going to hurt himself.
Before she could stop herself, she was across the room, beside him, her hand in his.
“Shhhh. It’s okay.”
She cupped his cheek, the scruff on his face that almost qualified as a beard softly scratching her palm. All at once he stopped moving, stopped breathing.
Panic filled her belly and she felt sick. He was supposed to be fine. They assured Nancy he would be okay.
She needed help. Now. Her mouth was open to scream, just as that damn beeping registered.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
A few minutes ago, the noise made her want to pull out her hair. Now it was the sweetest sound she could hope to hear. She lowered herself into a bedside chair and blew out a long sigh of relief.
The sound of Thomas letting out a matching breath almost made her laugh. The kind of giddy, adrenaline fueled laugh that only comes out of a person just this side of crazy.
She sat, holding his hand in hers, the fear of him waking from earlier forgotten as she tried to get some sort of a grasp on her wildly out of control emotions. The past two days, she’d been all over the map. Scared, relieved, embarrassed, guilty. Add to that trying to live normally for her kids and being a strong friend for Nancy and she was just about tapped out.
A low ache formed in her throat. Damn it. She was going to cry.
Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision before they broke free, running down her cheeks, one quickly streaming behind another. Soft sobs, wracked her body as she leaned forward, resting her head on the blanket, too exhausted to hold herself up.
She hadn’t slept since the accident. Every time she tried, it played like a movie on continuous loop, forcing her to relive every second. To remember every detail. As if she would ever forget the sight of him lying there, bleeding everywhere. The sound of him screaming in agony… because of her.
“I’m so sorry,” she managed to whisper between sobs. “I had to. It was all I could do to save you.”
She thought coming here to see him alive would help, but it hadn’t. Seeing him lying here, broken, was just making it worse. He almost died. If she left her house a few seconds later, or ran just a little slower she would have found him dead.
The thought brought on a new round of sobs and tears that only subsided when her nose was so stuffy it was hard to breathe. She sat up, hoping the change in position would discourage the swelling in her nose.
Wiping the last tears from her hot cheeks, she glanced down and noticed a large wet circle smack dab in the middle of the blanket covering Thomas’ chest. Great. Now she could add crying on her best friend’s son while he was unconscious to the list of crazy she had going. At this rate, she’d be able to fill a book before the week was over.
She sighed, wiping the last tears off her face. Against her will, her eyes made the short trip from his damp chest to his face.
She expected him to be pale and weak looking but the man on the bed in front of her was anything but. Even after almost bleeding out, a pretty substantial blow to the head and quite a few hours in the operating room, he was still ridiculously handsome. Stubble so long it was almost soft covered his jaw line, a few red hairs standing out against the dark blonde majority. Remembering the feel of it under her hand just a few minutes ago made her want to run her fingers over it again which she most certainly would not be doing. Not right now anyway.
“Damn it.”
There was something about him. Every freaking time she thought of him, immediately her brain wandered off into the land of illicit thinking. She needed to get out of here before she did something really stupid. Like kiss him.
“Jesus Christ Mina. Get it together.”
And now she was talking to herself. While she lusted after her friend’s son. Sitting alone in his room watching him sleep. This just kept getting better and better.
She stood up, allowing herself one last, a little too lingering look. Damn he was handsome.
Without thinking, she gently brushed a few wavy strands of sandy hair that managed to escape the bandages covering his head off his face. “Please be okay.”
**************************************
“Holy shit.” Did I drink last night? Must have. That was the only thing that would explain the intense pounding in his head. Hopefully it was worth it, but considering he couldn’t remember anything, it might be one of those epic nights you only know about because someone is only too happy to remind you.
Sleeping it off sounded like the best idea, but he had shit to do. As terrible as it sounded, he was going to have to open his eyes and let in the light. If it didn’t split his already throbbing head in half, he’d get his shit together and confront the day.
He went to rub his temples, hoping to ease the transition a little bit. His fingertips bumped into a thick layer of gauze. “What the-?”
“Tommy, stop.” His mother’s hands were on his shoulders, gently pressing him to the bed as he tried to sit up.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Couldn’t a guy sleep in just once without his mother ruining it? As he squirmed around in the bed, he felt the covers shifting… everywhere. Grabbing at the blanket he tried to spare himself t
he added humiliation of his mother finding him not only extremely hung over, but naked.
Nancy leaned over him, her face pale and tired looking as she tried for a small smile. He looked past her shoulder expecting to see the un-curtained window of his bedroom but all he saw was a flat white wall. “Where the hell am I?”
Nancy drew a deep breath, and paused, clearly in no hurry to answer his question.
Between the pain in his head and a deep ache he was beginning to notice in his leg, his patience was lacking. “What the hell is going on?”
Nancy’s eyes searched his face. “You don’t remember?”
“Remember what? What is going on? I’m not in my own bed, I have a splitting headache, I feel like I had the shit beat out of me and all this talking is starting to make me feel real sick, so if you could hurry it up. I either need to barf or go back to sleep.”
“You’ve been asleep for days Tommy.”
His already aggravated stomach churned. He swallowed hard trying to push the rising pressure back where it belonged. How could he have been asleep for days? Even if he was, it still wasn’t enough, because all he wanted to do right now was close his eyes and sleep some more, and he planned on it, but not until he got some answers from his mother.
“Please. For the love of God, tell me what happened. My head is killing me and I just want to know what the hell is going on.”
“You fell.”
That’s it? You fell?
This was going to be like pulling fucking teeth. He was tired. He was in pain and as much as he wanted to know more, he didn’t have the energy or really even the inclination to lay here and coax more out of her.
Closing his eyes, he decided it would wait until later. “Whatever. I’m going back to sleep. Maybe you’ll feel like telling me later.”
“Maybe you’ll wake up in a better mood.”
Smart Ass. He smiled as he drifted easily back into sleep, hoping his mother would be right.
Thomas was awakened by the sound of someone rustling around him. He opened his eyes, finding a pretty young woman in pale green scrubs standing beside his bed, her attention focused on a bag of clear fluid she was working to hook up to an IV stand he could only assume belonged to him. He watched quietly, not wanting to startle her and risk ending up in worse shape than he already was.
She finished fiddling with the bag and looped it onto the stand. She glanced down at him, doing a double take, clearly surprised to find him awake. She smiled warmly. “Good morning. Have a nice nap?”
“From what I hear, it was a little more than a nap.” His voice sounded raspy and his throat was painfully dry. “Could I have a drink?”
“You can. How is your stomach feeling? Your mother said you were feeling nauseated when you woke up before.”
“Better, maybe.” He rubbed a hand over his stomach, feeling it rumble ever so slightly under the pressure. “Can I sit up?”
“Let me get a few pillows to help prop your head up if you need it. You will get tired pretty quickly so don’t be surprised.” She crossed the room and gathered a few pillows from the chair beside the window. “Want me to open the curtains since you’re awake?”
“That’s fine.” He tried to sit up on his own, struggling to get his arms under his body. Almost immediately, his head began to throb at the change in position.
One hand went to his head in reaction to the pain. He had forgotten about the bandages he’d discovered earlier. He felt around gingerly for the edges as he attempted to identify the point of injury.
The nurse swung the heavy drapes open. Soft morning light streamed gently across the room only making the throbbing in his head slightly worse. She turned back to him, arms full of pillows and watched him for a minute. “How’s it feel?”
“It hurts to move.”
“Still want to sit up?” She deposited the pillows in the chair beside the bed and waited, hands on hips, for him to answer.
“Yeah, I think so.” He tried to heave himself up again, a little more carefully this time, hoping to keep the throbbing in his head to a minimum. The dizziness brought on by that little bit of exertion surprised him.
“You’re probably going to be pretty weak.” She pushed and held a button on the side of the bed. “Might want to let the bed do the work or you’ll be ready to lay back down as soon as we get you situated.” A mechanical whir sounded as the bed inclined, slowly raising him to a 45 degree angle. “I’d start there for now. Once you have something in your stomach, we’ll try to get you moving a little.” She propped the pillows around him. “Good?”
He nodded. She was right. He wanted to lie back down and rest. He wasn’t tired. He was exhausted. His whole body hurt.
A deep pulsating throb he imagined would be pretty unbearable without the help of whatever was being shot into the tube feeding into the vein in his left hand radiated from the back of his head. He noticed a sharper type of soreness bothering his thigh. Taking advantage of his new position he cautiously lifted the blanket draped over his lower half.
He blew out a breath. “That does not look good.” His left leg was wrapped in thick bandages from just below the knee up to the joint of his hip.
“It looks a heck of a lot better than it did when you came in here.” She gave him an appraising look. “You do too. Not that it would take much.”
“That bad huh?” He dropped the blanket back onto his lap and rested his head back against the pillows interested to hear what she had to say. He was more than ready to find out exactly what landed him here.
“You almost bled out.” Said like the medical professional she was. No beating around the bush, no avoidance. Looks like his mom wouldn’t have to explain after all.
“Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
“Yeah, well that was not your only problem.
“I figured that.” He fingered the bandages covering his skull. “Do you know what happened? How I ended up here?”
Her eyebrow rose. “Your mother didn’t tell you?”
“She said I fell. I assume that was a pretty condensed version and I’d like to know exactly what happened.”
“Apparently you were climbing a ladder to the loft of your barn when a wooden rung split under your foot. The side of the rung still anchored to the ladder ripped up the inside of your leg and made quite a mess. You hit the floor pretty hard, breaking the same leg and hitting your head, giving yourself a pretty nasty laceration and concussion.”
Thomas sat silently, stunned. He expected her explanation to jog his memory, help him remember what happened, but nothing she said sounded even remotely plausible. That ladder had been around for years. His grandfather climbed up and down it as far back as he could remember and Jim had at least fifty pounds on him. Never once in all those years had the ladder been anything but solid.
“If that woman hadn’t been there and done what she did, you would have been a goner.”
“What woman? My mom?”
“No. I think it was just some random woman out on a jog. Talk about fate. You never know how—“ She kept talking, but her voice faded into the background as realization swept over him. It was no random runner that saved him.
He realized his nurse was quiet and looking at him expectantly.
“Sorry, what?”
She smiled at him. “It’s okay. It can be a little hard to keep a train of thought after a head injury.”
He had a train of thought all right and it was running full steam ahead. It was Mina who saved him. What had she seen? Was she okay?
He needed to talk to his mom.
“Thomas.”
“Sorry. Again.” He did his best to focus on the nurse, trying to force everything else aside and actually listen to what she was saying this time.
“Juice. Would you like juice?”
“That would be great. Thanks.” His stomach rumbled again. “And crackers maybe?” It had been who knows how long since he ate and crackers seemed like the best place to start. If
they sat well, maybe he could move onto a big juicy burger.
His stomach lurched at the thought. Maybe not.
“I’ll work on it. My name’s Sara. If you need anything else push the little button on the side of your bed. I just came on so you’re stuck with me all day.” She gave him a wink, turned on her heel and was gone, leaving him to digest the information.
His leg was broken, maybe worse. At least he could tell it was still there.
His head hurt like hell, but he was awake and coherent. Hopefully the time he was missing would fill in over the next few days.
His injuries should have been more concerning, but he wasn’t all that worried about it. What he was really worried about right now was Mina. If his guess was right, she was the one who found him… and saved his life.
TEN
“Awake and upright? That’s a definite improvement from the last time I saw you.” Nancy blew into the quiet of the hospital room like a tornado, large bags swinging from each forearm and a large vase of flowers in her hands.
“Flowers?” He watched as she centered the arrangement on the table in front of the window, spinning it until the side she liked most faced the room.
“They’re not for you, they’re for me. I hate this place and if I have to be here, I at least want something pretty to look at.”
“I’ll try not to be offended by that.”
“Well have you seen yourself? You look like crap.” She dropped the bags to the floor and slid her arms out of her jacket. “Not that it’s surprising.” She laid the jacket over a chair and pointed her finger at him. “You almost died you know. Did they tell you that? Say what you want about Mina and her history, but that girl saved your life Tommy.”
He hoped to ease into this conversation, but his mother clearly had other ideas. It looked like she’d had a good night’s sleep and a healthy dose of caffeine since he saw her last and she was ready to handle him head on.
Luckily nurse Sara hooked him up with juice and crackers which seemed to be helping settle his stomach and fuel his brain back into the land of productivity. Once he was fully awake and had a little something in his stomach, it hadn’t taken long for his memory to begin filling back in. He still couldn’t remember falling off the ladder, but he did remember the conversation that had his mother so fired up this morning. He knew they needed to talk about what he said, but he was hoping she’d take it a little easy on him, considering.
Run (Never Waste A Second Chance Book 1) Page 7