28. Gabriel
Chapter Twenty-Eight
GAbrIEL
I was shivering all over, so hard that my teeth kept chattering.
My leg throbbed. I tried to cling to some sense of control, but it was eluding me.
I was accustomed to being the one who kept my shit together in an emergency.
I hated feeling as if my control was slipping through my grasp, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Nora.
“Can you let me call her now?” I asked Nathan between rough shivers.
He was climbing into the ambulance where I was, telling the crew he was going to ride with me because he could talk to any family once we got there. He glanced at me. “You don’t sound good. I think you’re gonna freak her out,” he said flatly.
I couldn’t even reply when a shiver struck me so hard, my teeth clicked loudly, jarring my jaw with the force.
One of the med techs moved to wrap a heated blanket around me.
I was wearing an old pair of Nathan’s sweatpants and a T-shirt.
They’d used an emergency blanket on the boat to keep in my body heat, but the shock of it and the gash on my leg made it difficult to stay warm.
“Th-the o-only ad-ad-advantage wi-with be-be-being this cold means I don’t feel the pain as much.” I finally managed to get some words out in full by the end of the sentence.
Nathan dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “You’re gonna be fine. What a fucking day.”
I knew I was in no shape to talk to Nora, but the need to tell her I loved her was a heavy weight. Hell, although I was freezing and in pain, I needed to talk to her. I cleared my throat to get Nathan’s attention. He looked down at me.
“Please tell Nora I love her.”
“Of course,” he said.
Happily married to Tess for several years now, Nathan understood love. While we were friends, he didn’t know me the way some of my friends did. He probably had no idea how much it meant for me to be in love, but he took my request in stride, and his easy acceptance soothed me.
After that, exhaustion overtook me. I was so tired that I didn’t even realize I had fallen asleep, or something like sleep, until I felt the stretcher I was on being moved again. Bright lights blinked above me when I opened my eyes as they wheeled me down the hallway. “I need to see?—”
A nurse interjected, “We can’t have you see anybody yet, sir. We need to clean that wound on your leg and get a better look at it.”
“But—”
A doctor arrived, walking briskly alongside the stretcher as we turned into a room. “Sir, you will be able to see family soon. Based on the EMTs’ report, this shouldn’t take too long.”
They moved efficiently as a team once they got me in an examination room. Before I knew it, the nurse said, “Okay, we’re going to give you something to relax you.” That was the last thing I remembered.