Chapter 5
Walker was here. Everything would be all right. He helped her to her feet, one hand on her elbow, the other low on her back. While she knew the gesture was meant to be supportive, his touch branded her as it had all those years ago. Made her flush in a way she hadn’t since she was seventeen.
She sent him an appreciative glance, then stepped away. The last thing she needed to do was show up at the ER with a racing heartbeat to go along with her aching head.
She hated hospitals more than almost anything, but she’d push down her memories and be strong. Because that’s who she was. She was Serena fucking Blackstone. If only her mind wasn’t already beginning to spin.
They moved through the front door, and she stopped with a jolt.
The small parking lot was crowded with emergency response vehicles and big trucks.
The EMTs loitered near the entrance to the lot, and she figured Garrett had sent them a text to stay and transport her to the hospital.
Besides the ambulance, there were two sheriff’s SUVs and Walker's big-ass truck.
On the street she could see three other vehicles and recognized two of them as regulars who’d showed up for their coffee and breakfast. The man who had been standing beside Walker--Kujo, he’d called him--was headed toward his own SUV.
He sure moved like Walker and Garrett. Was he a cop or a soldier as well? And damn, her thoughts were all over the place and she needed to settle down.
The paramedic who’d treated her inside, Mike Ramirez, gave her a grin and opened the side door, dropping into a half bow and as he waved toward the inside of the rig.
“Your chariot awaits, Madam.” Rimrock Creek wasn’t big enough for its own ER or even a clinic, so they’d be going to Cottonwood, eight miles away.
She could refuse, she felt fine after all, simply a bit sore, but then she’d be an ungrateful bitch, and she knew she’d be making excuses. She knew, from a purely common-sense standpoint, that she needed to be checked out by a doctor, especially given how much time she’d been unconscious.
Knowing that her friend Lila Pearson was the attending made the impending doom a little more palatable.
She’d met Lila during one of her rounds handing out free goodies.
In her experience, buttering up healthcare workers was never a bad idea.
She and Lila had struck up a conversation that turned to drinks every once in a while, but both women were busy in their respective careers, and so it hadn’t amounted to more than that.
If there was anything that could make the memories of a hospital bearable, it was knowing Lila would be looking after her. So she stepped up into the rig without argument and only a little dread and settled on the stretcher. “I am not laying down on this thing,” she said with finality.
She looked out the open back door and saw Walker standing there. He looked like he was trying to fight back a smile. “I’ll see you at the ER, slugger,” he said, and Mike swung the door shut.
Slugger? Oh, the candlestick. Damn, she was never going to live that down.
Mike didn’t force her to lie flat but instead raised the back of the bed so she was sitting up. “Putting you on the stretcher is for insurance purposes,” he said. “Same with us getting a pulse and all that good stuff before we roll into the ER.”
She leaned back and tried to concentrate on what had happened rather than what was about to.
What she wouldn’t give to have seen the face of the guy who assaulted her. Or better yet, gotten in a lick of her own. It chilled her to think of what had could have happened. Her happy place, her sanctuary, her home, had been violated.
What could the burglar have possibly wanted? And now her thoughts were scattered to the wind again. Maybe she really did need to see Lila.
It didn’t take them long to get to the ER and when they pulled into the ambulance bay one of her afternoon regulars, a nurse by the name of Adam Scott, was waiting for her at the doors with a concerned look.
“Rumor has it you stopped a robbery with your head,” he said as he and Mike pulled her out of the ambulance. “I want to hear all about it.”
As soon the doors opened she felt the panic attack closing in on her like a rogue wave regardless of her efforts to push it back, tamp it down, stomp it into submission.
Memories crowded her brain, narrowing her vision until she could barely see beyond the foot of the gurney. Ghostly antiseptic smells assaulted her senses and made nausea churn in her stomach.
“Whoa there,” Mike said, looking at her with concern as the monitors went crazy. “What’s wrong?”
She panted, hating the knowledge that her symptoms had nothing to do with the drama this morning and everything to do with staring at those ER doors. With the image of her mother’s face as she finally, finally faded and the monitors went quiet.
“Panic attack,” she gritted out as her vision started to go gray. She grasped the sides of the gurney in a death grip.
“Take a deep breath in. One, two, three, hold it, now let it out,” Adam said, as he and Mike demonstrated.
She breathed with them and the sensory overload began to abate and she got her breath back. She’d known this might happen, but she’d hoped she’d outgrown it.
God, how she hated hospitals, even this one, though it hadn’t been the one she’d watched her mother die a slow, excruciating death in. That had been in D.C. the year she turned fifteen. She’d avoided hospitals ever since.
As soon as she nodded, indicating she was through it, they hustled her inside and into one of the ER bays, where Dr. Lila Pearson waited, her eyes and expression professional, but concern showed through nonetheless.
“What do we have here?” her friend asked as she clucked over the wound on Serena’s temple. “Any dizziness, nausea or anything like that?” she asked, her voice brisk, though Serena knew she was dying to ask what had happened.
“Nothing I can’t attribute to having a freakin’ panic attack,” Serena said, embarrassed now that it was over, leaving a lingering feeling of disconnection. At least she hadn’t fainted.
Lila looked at her with sympathy, her hazel eyes kind. “You okay now?”
“Yeah, it’s fading. Now my head just hurts like a mofo.”
“Any idea what he hit you with?”
“Pretty sure it was a flashlight,” Serena said. “It knocked me out, that much is for sure.”
“That’s the part I like the least,” said her friend. “You were unconscious about an hour?” At Serena’s nod she continued. “After I get this flushed out and generally cleaned up, we’re going to run some tests, work through concussion protocols. I also want a C-SCAN. You were out for a long time.”
When Serena would have protested, Lila leveled her with a look. “Let us take care of you,” she said softly. “I know how much you hate being here, so we’ll make it as fast as we can.”
Oh. Serena’s heart tipped. Like with Walker, for Lila, she’d do just about anything.
“Okay,” she said.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Serena stared at her. Granted, her brain still wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but she had exactly zero idea what Lila was asking.
“Do I need to do an exam and rape kit?” Lila’s voice was quiet, oh-so quiet.
Serena rocked back in horror. “No!” Then she took a breath and did a quick run through of her own body and found nothing.
She shook her head. “No, nothing feels off or…used.” God, the words coming from her mouth were awful on so many levels.
She wondered distantly why she’d felt the need to use euphemisms rather than simply say she hadn’t been sexually assaulted.
Lila gusted out a sound of relief. “Thank God.” She met Serena’s gaze. “I was terrified you were going to say yes, or that you’d be less than sure. Now, do you have any questions for me before I send you up for the workup?”
“No,” Serena said, her voice as quiet and small as Lila’s had been.
The shock of her friend’s question was still ricocheting through her mind and had completely banished her disquiet with being in the facility.
She didn’t know quite what to think, would need some time to process the fact someone could have assaulted her while she’d been unconscious, but hadn’t.
They ran what seemed like a thousand tests and anxiety continued to cramp her stomach as they wheeled her back to the ER.
“Everything looks good on your CT, thank goodness,” Lila confirmed when the results came back.
“Normally I’d want you to stay overnight for observation, but given your aversion to hospitals, it’d probably stress you out more than help.
So instead I want someone to stay with you in case you begin to experience other symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury.
I don’t see anything like that on your scans,” she hurried to clarify.
“It’s a standard protocol. I’d invite you over to my place, but my sister and the man she’s dating are in their getting-to-know-you phase and even I don’t want to be there most of the time.
” Iris had moved in with Lila a few months ago to reacclimate herself to the States and take a well-deserved break after living overseas as a project manager in Dubai.
Serena snickered at the imagery, as intended, and felt as if a weight had been lifted from her chest, and it had nothing to do with the fact her head was all right. “I’ll be fine. I wouldn’t have even come in, but Walker made me.”
Lilah waggled her eyebrows. “That man and his friends,” she waved a hand in front of her face as if warding off a hot flash. “If I wasn’t in my ‘men suck’ phase, I’d lasso one of those morsels.”
Serena raised her eyebrows, pleased that the only thing that hurt was the goose-egg on her head. “Well, we need to get together soon so you can give me all the details which of the ‘morsels’ is catching your eye.” Was it wrong that she hoped it wasn’t Walker?
“It’s a date.”
“Thanks, Lila. I’ll give you a shout soon,” she promised and pushed through the curtain, then walked past the desk and into the waiting room beyond.