by Jessi Gage
“What’s wrong?” Derek’s hands were on her shoulders, guiding her to sit back against the wall. “Jesus, you look pale.”
“I think I ate too much.” Nausea joined the cramping, and she pushed away from him to jump off the bed. She needed to throw up.
“No!” He grabbed at her hand. “Don’t go.”
She was beyond words. She yanked out of his grip and launched herself across the hall to the bathroom. Waves of cold licked up her chest and face. It was coming, and the toilet lid was down. Why did he have to be a lid-down kind of guy? Desperate, she turned to the tub. The curtain was drawn. She tried to move it aside, but the fabric didn’t budge. She might as well have been shoving at steel.
Argh! She fell to her hands and knees on the tile. Time was up.
“Sweetheart? Are you in here?” He sounded panicked. He came into the bathroom and stopped short, maybe realizing that if he rushed in, he might step on her. “I’m going to open the lid for you.”
He skirted the wall and sink until he reached the toilet too late. Her stomach squeezed like a fist. The dinner he had thoughtfully prepared for her splatted onto the floor in a wash of chunky crimson.
“Oh, God, DG!”
The clink of the lid opening punched through her haze of nausea. She dove for the toilet just in time for round two. Derek groaned behind her as her body attempted to turn itself inside out.
When she finally stopped heaving, sweat drenched her from head to toe. She was shaking and didn’t think she could stand up if her life depended on it. She rolled her head on her arm to see Derek standing by the sink, staring down at the evidence of her sickness with a stony expression.
How appalled he must be. And she couldn’t offer to clean up what had landed on the floor, since she couldn’t hold a towel or a dustpan. Not bothering trying to flush, she got up on her shaky legs. Leaning on the sink, she stepped close to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, knowing he couldn’t hear her. She squeezed past him and shuffled across the distance to the bed. With each step, she began to feel better. By the time she lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress, she was almost back to normal, but she still nudged the dirty plates away. Looking at them threatened to make her sick again.
Derek was still in the bathroom, standing with his back to her like a marble column. She felt horrible. He must be worried about her, and overwhelmed with the carnage before him, maybe even upset with himself for suggesting she try to eat.
She took a breath to let him know she’d made it to the bed again and felt better, but his voice stopped her.
* * * *
Horror slammed into Derek as he watched wine-colored puke hit his bathroom floor and splash into the toilet bowl from out of nowhere. This was his fault. It had been his stupid plan to see if DG could eat, and she could—his confidence that she couldn’t possibly be a ghost had grown with her every bite. But apparently, she couldn’t digest anything. That realization struck him deep. She might not be dead, but she wasn’t truly alive either.
He’d learned something, but at what cost?
What a shithead. He’d encouraged her to eat when he didn’t know what harm it might cause her. He might have killed her, for Christ’s sake.
The bathroom fell silent. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. He was worse than useless.
He couldn’t even lift her in his arms and carry her back to bed. He’d done this to her, and had no way to fix it.
Pressure kicked at his lungs. Hate and guilt collided like stone on flint, and something in him caught flame.
He hadn’t asked to be this woman’s tether to the world. Whatever force had thrown them together had done her an unspeakable disservice. When it came to the women in his life, he was a hopeless fuck-up. DG deserved someone smarter than him, someone gentler than him. His lungs tightened until he felt like a pressure cooker about to blow.
“Why me, goddammit?” Pulling at his hair with his fists, he surveyed the carnage in his bathroom. “What the hell am I supposed to do with you when I can’t even take care of the real females in my life? I didn’t ask for this!”
Chest heaving and hands shaking, his words registered with his brain five seconds too late. Dread cooled his temper like a bucket of ice water. “DG?” he asked, looking down at the toilet. Was she still there? He glanced over his shoulder to check the bed across the hall.
There she sat, hands on her lap, lower lip trembling. He turned to face her and watched her eyes fill with tears. Then she disappeared.
“No! DG, baby, I didn’t mean that!” He ran to the bed. “Come back, sweetheart. Please.”
Please let her have just gotten off the bed. He climbed on the mattress. “Come back up here.” But the clock read 5:01.
She was gone. Back to the fog that frightened her.
He punched the mattress. “Mother fucker, Derek! You fucking asshole!”
Chapter 10
Fog closed around DG, wiping Derek from sight. “No! Just give me one more minute with him!” She flailed her arms and legs, trying to clear away the thick gray, but it only grew thicker. “Derek!” The fog absorbed her cry. She screamed with frustration.
She would have given anything to be able to tell him the tears in her eyes weren’t because of what he’d said but because she ached for him. He might have raised his voice at her, but she saw the helplessness underneath the anger. He obviously felt guilty over her getting sick. On top of his earlier fight with Haley and far too little sleep, any man would have reached his limit. She didn’t blame him for needing to vent. She only wished she could hold him and tell him everything would be okay.
She had to get back to him.
She was sick of this fog. “I’m done with this. Do you hear me? I’m done!”
Physical movement did nothing to dispel the fog, but she hadn’t tried using her mind.
Focusing her concentration like a laser beam, she thought of Derek. She pictured his serious face as it opened up in a smile just for her. She imagined his hands on her skin, his mouth on hers, him whispering, “Sweetheart.” She thought of him until her stomach fluttered and places low inside her pulsed with need. She thought of him until her heart ached.
“Bring me back to him. I’m not asking. This is me telling you to bring me back. Right now.”
A faint noise made her suck in a breath of surprise. She strained her ears. Barely audible but there, the noise rose and fell with rapid, random modulation. A voice. She heard a voice!
“Derek?”
The voice faded away as if hers had chased it back into the fog. She bit her lip. Please, let me hear him again.
She poured all her concentration into remembering Derek. The effort had every muscle in her body clenching to the point of fatigue, but she pushed through it. Discomfort was nothing compared to the need to see her dream guy again.
There! She heard the voice again. She strained to make out the words until her head throbbed.
“Come back to me, sweetheart. Please, come back.”
Her heart jumped at “sweetheart,” but the voice belonged to a female. Definitely not Derek. Disappointment crushed her concentration. The voice floated away.
“Come on! This is so unfair!” Panting with exhaustion, she set herself to trying again. She’d get back to Derek if it killed her.
* * * *
Attila the Hun had nothing on a sleep-deprived Derek. He yelled his way through his morning at work, and when he wasn’t yelling at somebody, he internally berated himself. There was no excuse for how he’d unleashed on DG. He hoped for her sake she never had to see his sorry ass again. But a selfish part of him planned on being there to greet her with open arms and a huge apology as soon as dark fell tonight.
He had a mountain of work in front of him, all of it time-sensitive, with Friday’s walkthrough barreling down on him, but he couldn’t focus on anything except convincing the two most important women in his life to forgive him. That and getting some much-needed shut-eye. If he got home by four, h
e could get three hours of sleep, take Haley out for ice cream, and be back in time to see DG if she had the misfortune of getting dumped in his room again. He’d need to have a big lunch, since that didn’t leave any time for dinner, and he’d be damned if he’d eat in front of DG when he knew she couldn’t join him. But he had several emails to address before he could think about lunch.
He leaned forward in his chair and stared at a memo from the project architect. After reading the thing three times, he still hadn’t processed it. He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. When his hands returned to the keyboard, he found himself typing How to help a ghost move on in a Google search.
He had a dozen things he should be doing instead of this, but he couldn’t help himself. DG didn’t deserve whatever was happening to her. He didn’t want to believe she was dead, but in the hour between when she’d disappeared this morning and when he’d left for work, he’d racked his brain for some other explanation. As much as he hated to admit it, there was none. And if DG was truly dead, she deserved to be in heaven, not stranded in some nebulous fog by day and stuck with the likes of him by night.
He browsed suggestions like, Stand up to them, don’t show them fear and have a priest bless your house. He scoffed. The internet made it sound like having a ghost was a bad thing. DG was the exact opposite of a bad thing. Besides Haley, she was the best thing in his life.
And he wanted her to leave. Was he nuts?
“It’s for her own good,” he said, wiping a hand down his face.
“For whose own good, boss?”
He looked up to see Felipe, one of the construction laborers, pulling his paper-bag lunch out of the fridge. He hadn’t heard the squeak of the trailer door.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, nobody. Just talking to myself. Ignore me.” Shit. Now he was missing things and talking to himself? Caffeine. He needed caffeine. And to put DG out of his mind until he clocked out.
“Whatever you say, boss.” Felipe shrugged and headed down the hall.
Derek rolled his chair back and stretched, willing energy into his muscles.
The trailer was a long, narrow, wood-paneled, air-conditioned haven from the California-summer heat and humidity. At one end, he had a plans desk and a work station with an outdated computer and fax machine. At the other end was a bathroom and locker room accessed by a hallway exactly as wide as a man’s shoulders. In the middle of the trailer, a kitchen counter held a coffee pot and a microwave. Across from the counter was a First-Aid station and a chipped, mustard yellow restaurant table some of the guys used for lunch when it was too hot outside.
He grabbed the ground coffee out of the fridge and started a new pot. Then he followed Felipe to the back room to get his Thermos out of his locker and use the john. His personal cell phone rang in his pocket. He looked at the display as he walked down the hall. Deidre. Good.
Haley must be ready to see him. The promise of getting to hug his little girl tonight would get him through the rest of the day. He answered as he rounded the corner into the locker room.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He instantly knew something was wrong from the way her greeting wavered.
“Um, I don’t want to worry you, but Haley had an accident at soft ball camp.”
His heart did a flip-flop. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“I think her arm’s broken. I’m in the ambulance with her now. They’re taking her to Children’s Hospital.”
He heard the siren on the other end of the phone. “I’ll be right there.” He was already pounding down the stairs of the trailer and fishing his keys out of his pocket.
Deidre was silent.
His lungs filled with pressure. If she dared tell him to stay away, he would say many, many things he would probably live to regret.
“Okay,” she said on an exhale. “See you soon.” She hung up.
Normally, her easy acquiescence would make him feel like pumping his fist in victory. Not today. His little girl was hurting. He had more important things to do than gloat.
* * * *
The triage room at Children’s was quieter and more colorful than a regular ER. Not that Derek had been to the ER a lot, but most guys on a construction crew had seen the inside of one or two, and he was no exception. Primary colored curtains divided the triage bays, the nurses wore brightly patterned scrubs and a clown with a big red nose handed out balloon animals to the children.
Derek and Haley had a bay to themselves while Deidre had gone to the cafeteria to get Haley a chocolate milk. He propped a hip on the edge of the gurney while Haley gave the hairy eyeball to the clown across the room.
“Don’t let him come over here.” She tugged on his arm. “I hate clowns.”
He felt the corner of his mouth turn up. “Don’t worry. I never leave home without my trusty clown repellent.”
That earned him a weary smile.
“How’s the pain, kiddo?”
“S’okay,” she said with a shrug. “Ouch.” She winced. “I keep forgetting not to move it.”
She scowled at her right arm, which was horribly swollen from wrist to elbow. He knew it was broken just from the amount of swelling. His stomach twisted into a hard knot at the thought of how much pain his little girl had to be in. But she hadn’t shed a single tear since he’d met her at the hospital. According to Deidre, the coach said she hadn’t even cried when she’d tumbled over the four-foot high fence to rob the hitter of a homerun, and landed on an old ladder the grass had grown over.
They’d given her some Children’s Tylenol to take the edge off her pain, but held off on anything stronger until determining the extent of the injury. “The worst part will be over soon,” he told her. “Look, here comes Dr. Heinz.” The short, dark-haired woman in a white coat marched up with a tablet under one arm and a cheerful smile on her face.
“Okay, Haley,” she said. “Let’s go take some pictures. Ready?”
“We can’t go without Mom,” Haley said.
“Your mom wouldn’t want us to wait on her,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Actually,” Dr. Heinz said, “Your mom and dad both have to wait here. Only patients are allowed in radiology. But we’ll be back before you know it.” She flashed him a smile that somehow conveyed the simultaneous messages “Your kid’s in great hands” and “This isn’t up for discussion.”
“Guess I’ll wait here for your mom,” he said, taking Haley’s good hand for a second. “You okay?”
She nodded bravely, eyeing the clown, who was only one bay away, all pointy black eyebrows and creepy red mouth—he couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten her fear of clowns.
“I’m ready,” she said to Dr. Heinz, leaving him to fend for himself against he of the bulbous nose and skinny-tailed balloon animals.
Deidre found him a few minutes later. “X-ray?” she asked, handing him a coffee and setting Haley’s milk on the empty chair.
He straightened and took a long, hot sip from the foam cup. “Thanks. Yeah. ’Supposed to be quick, but who knows.”
“They’re good here,” Deidre said. “Haley’ll be okay.” She said it to comfort herself as much as him.
“Yeah.” He sipped awkwardly, wondering if he was supposed to hug his ex-wife or anything. What was the protocol when divorced parents met at the hospital for a kid emergency?
“You look like hell,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She smirked, but the look wasn’t unfriendly. “Having trouble sleeping?”
He nodded, sipping some more. The hot jolt of liquid energy was a welcome sensation in his empty pit of a stomach. He could use some lunch, too, but he’d wait to see how Haley was doing.
“You two still need to talk,” she said. “You can’t just assume she’s over what happened Sunday just because she’s dealing with this now.”
His lungs ratcheted tighter with every word. “I know.”
“I’m just saying. You’ll probably s
leep better once you’ve gotten it off your chest.”
He couldn’t tell her why he wasn’t getting enough sleep. “Right.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Deidre kept checking her watch.
“Got somewhere to be?”
She shook her head. “Nothing’s as important as being here for Haley right now,” she said as she looked longingly at the exit.
“But…” he prodded.
She sighed. “I’ve got a showing in Meadowbrook at two. Mark said he’d take it for me, but I don’t trust him to sell the property. He’s not as familiar with it as I am, and I know it would be just perfect for this family.”
Meadowbrook was a ritzy development. He thought for a second she was being protective of her commission, but he knew better. He’d always admired her passion for her job.
“I’ll stay here if you want to go. If you leave soon, you can still make it.”
Her forehead attempted to wrinkle—she must have just gotten fresh Botox. “I’m a horrible mother to even consider leaving.” She gave him a shaky smile.
He might not be the most observant of men when it came to female emotions, but it didn’t take a genius to see she was worried sick about Haley. But she was also smart enough to realize she couldn’t do anything for Haley right now other than dither. And she might not have made the logical leap yet, but if they both stayed, the chances were good they’d get in a fight.
Their little girl needed that like she needed a second broken arm.
“Hey,” he said, slinging an arm around her shoulder. “Come on. She’s taking this like a champ. I’ve got it under control. Go work. Get your mind off all this for a few hours.”
“I can’t ask you to stay. This could take all afternoon. You have to get back to work, don’t you?”
“Fred can handle the site without me. I hadn’t planned on going back, anyway. I’m pretty much worthless as I am. I need a solid eight before going back to the site.” Not that he planned on getting anywhere near eight if DG made an appearance tonight. “It’s just a break,” he said. “It hurts, but it’ll be all healed up in two months. She’ll get a cool cast, and all the kids at school will sign it. This won’t even slow her down.”