Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
“I’m fine, honestly,” Shaun argued through clenched teeth as the paramedics lifted her on the gurney that she’d been placed on.
“Yeah, you said that earlier, and then we found you knocked out on the concrete floor for nearly five minutes, Shaun,” Ben snapped to her right, near her feet.
He was standing with his legs braced wide, arms crossed over his chest angrily.
“You’re going to get checked out whether you like it or not.
You fell over that tire jack and cracked your skull on the damn floor. Stomach bug or not. Company policy.”
Her head ached abominably, admittedly, and she’d gotten nauseated by the sight of the blood that had pooled on the floor beneath her head, throwing up wretchedly over the side of the gurney.
But it was the constant, burning pain in her left side that she was trying to conceal.
Breathing carefully, because even breathing hurt, she nodded. Vomiting made it almost unbearable.
Nate had been nowhere to be found when she’d come to.
According to the other guys, he’d left in a hurry, before any of them had found her on the ground.
After telling Ben and the paramedics what had happened, Ben was furious.
Nate was fired, whenever he showed his face again.
Ben also wanted her to press charges, but she’d insisted on waiting until her head cleared a little before making that decision.
“She probably has a concussion and I suspect broken ribs, but we need to do X-Rays and an MRI,” the paramedic said to Ben as they hoisted her up and into the back of the ambulance that had been called. How embarrassing.
“I called your parents, they’re meeting you at the hospital,” Ben called into the ambulance and she groaned, then immediately regretted it, the sound and motion hurting everything inside her.
By the time they reached the hospital and transferred her into the ER, her parents, and Jodi and Free had convened upon the ER staff.
“Can you have them wait out in the waiting room, please?” Shaun asked, her eyelids heavy, her sight still fuzzy.
“If that’s what you want,” the triage nurse said gently. “They’re just worried about you.”
“I know. I just… my head hurts,” she admitted weakly. The nurse nodded and placed a new, heated blanket around her legs, then set the overhead light to low. She’d had blood drawn and an IV started in the back of her right hand. “Thank you.”
“We can give you something for that headache, and for the pain in your ribs. Is there any chance of pregnancy?” she asked, wiggling the mouse on the rolling triage cart with a laptop perched on it.
“No,” she said. “I’m not pregnant.”
“We’ll run a blood test just to be sure,” the nurse said and typed away on the computer. “Just so we know what we can give you for pain.”
Settling down into the warmth of the blanket, she just nodded. “Am I allowed to sleep?”
“We’d prefer if you stayed awake, but if you do fall asleep it won’t hurt,” the nurse murmured, glancing at her from where she stood at the cart.
“I’ll be back as soon as I know what we can give you for pain management, and then we’ll get you taken down for X-Rays and that MRI.
Doctor will probably want to do some sutures on that laceration on the back of your head, too. ”
Fifteen minutes later, a man in a white lab coat knocked on the door, then entered with a kind smile. “Hello, I’m Dr. Hudson. I hear we had a bit of a fall earlier?”
Nodding, she shifted on the uncomfortable hospital bed and winced as the pain in her ribs stole her breath.
“Well, we’re going to probably skip those X-Rays today. Fairly safe to say we’ve got some broken ribs, but I’m just not comfortable doing those this early,” he said as he washed his hands across the room.
Frowning, she asked, “What do you mean, this early?”
Dr. Hudson dried his hands on a paper towel, using his foot to lift the lid of the little garbage can by the door and turned to her, smiling. “This early in the pregnancy. It’s just good practice to wait until a little further along before doing any kind of X-Rays that close to the abdomen.”
Shaun felt like her head was about to explode. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re pregnant, Miss Kendall. Approximately three weeks.
Still very early,” he said kindly, patting her knee.
“So we can give you some Tylenol, but nothing stronger, unfortunately. You’ll probably be pretty uncomfortable for a little while.
I wish there was something stronger that we could give you.
I’ll be back after your MRI, and I’ll send the nurse in with that Tylenol. ”
She nodded dumbly, her hands dropping to her stomach that was buried beneath the blanket and the thin hospital gown they’d made her change into upon arrival. Tears burned her eyes and she blinked rapidly, but they spilled over her lids and down her cheeks.
The nurse returned a few minutes later and Shaun tried to stem the tears to no avail. “Here you go,” she heard, and raised her eyes just as a box of tissues was placed in her lap. “Are you sure I can’t bring someone in for you? Is the baby’s father here?”
“N-no,” Shaun mumbled through her tears, shredding a tissue between her fingers. “I don’t want them to see me like this. And he’s not here.”
The nurse nodded, her kindness making Shaun cry all the harder. She was left alone after the dose of Tylenol. It was an hour before she would be done with the MRI and she received six stitches to close the cut on the back of her head.
Wheeled out to the waiting room in a wheelchair, she grimaced when she saw her mother’s tear-streaked face and felt a flush of guilt that she hadn’t at least let her come back with her.
Seren’s usually unflappable poise was clearly rattled; and more tears welled in Shaun’s eyes that she was unable to stop.
Her father took over pushing the wheelchair, moving her gently out the double sliding doors and out into the cold, dark parking lot.
A fresh layer of snow had dusted the pavement and the vehicles in the parking lot, the tall light poles highlighting the snow as it drifted down.
Jodi and Serenity helped her out of the wheelchair as carefully as they could, but even so, the pain in her ribs was excruciating.
She climbed into the backseat of her mother’s SUV, which was thankfully already turned on and warm on the inside.
Levi closed the door and then assisted her mother into the passenger seat, ever the gentleman, before rounding the hood of the car and climbing in behind the wheel.
Jodi and Free waved from the parking spot next to them in Free’s truck, and off they went.
“Why don’t you come to the house, that way we can take care of you for a few days?
” Serenity said from the front seat. Shaun closed her eyes against the blindingly bright headlights of the vehicles that passed them, but closing her eyes made her dizzy, so she just bowed her head and stared into the darkness at her feet.
“I hate the idea of you being home alone.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom, but thank you,” she whispered. She wanted to go home, to be alone, to cry where no one could see her. She didn’t want to tell anyone, not yet. “I just want to go to sleep.”
“You really shouldn’t be alone, sweetheart,” Levi rumbled, his voice low. “Let Mom fuss over you.”
“If I come over, can I just sleep, please?” she asked. She knew a losing battle when she saw one.
“Of course,” her mother said gently. “I’ll just run upstairs and get your old room ready when we get home.”
By the time they pulled into the driveway in front of the sprawling ranch house, Shaun’s head was pounding again, and every single movement made her want to throw up from the pain.
Levi and Seren helped her up the wide front steps and into the house.
Levi stayed with her while Seren rushed up the stairs and turned down the bedding in Shaun’s old room, then the two of them made their way, very slowly, up the staircase and into her room, which had thankfully been repainted into a pretty shade of olive green from the garish blood red she’d insisted on as a teenager.
“You left Jodi’s room the same color it was,” Shaun pointed out as her mother helped her climb into the bed carefully.
“Jodi’s room didn’t make me think a clown had gone on a serial murdering spree in it,” her mother countered dryly, winking.
A quiet knock sounded on the still open door, and she looked over to see Levi in the doorway with a tall glass of ice water and two ice packs.
He ambled inside, setting the glass of water on the bedside table and lowered his tall frame to the edge of her bed.
He found her knee under the comforter that Seren had tucked up around her waist and squeezed it gently.
“One for your ribs, one for your head,” he said gruffly. His dark, silver streaked hair looked rumpled, like he’d shoved his fingers through it a dozen times, and his dark blue eyes that were so much like her own were crinkled at the corners in worry. “How many ribs are broken?”
“Uhh,” she stammered, unsure how to respond. If she admitted that the doctor had not done X-Rays, they would demand to know why. “Two, I think they said.”
“You poor thing,” Seren whispered, fussing over her again, the crease between her brows deepening. “I swear, those garages are so dangerous.”
“I just tripped, Mom,” she said defensively. “I stood up too fast and got dizzy for a second—”
“Dizzy?” her mother asked, halting in her fluffing of the pillows behind Shaun’s back. “Why were you dizzy?”
“I just stood up too fast—”
“Did you eat today? Have too much coffee on an empty stomach?” Seren asked, sitting on the opposite side of the bed as Levi.
“Yeah, probably just too much coffee and no lunch,” Shaun mumbled, dropping her gaze to her tightly clasped fingers that were resting on her belly. Oh god.
Nausea rolled through her again at the thought, but she closed her eyes, taking several long, deep breaths.
“We’ll let you rest,” Levi rumbled gently, patting her clasped hands. “Call us if you need anything.”
“Okay,” she whispered, letting her head rest back on the pillow that Seren had propped up behind her, as it was too painful to lay flat. “Good night. Thank you.”
“Good night, sweetheart,” Levi said, clasping Seren’s hand in his own and dragging her toward the door. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” she murmured as he shut off the light, closing the door behind them as they took their leave.
Finally, blessedly alone in the darkness, Shaun let the tears track down her cheeks in a relentless flow, soaking her hair and the pillow beneath her head.