34. Teddy
TEDDY
JANUARY
Imake it in four-and-a-half minutes.
I don’t remember much of the drive, I’m pretty sure I stopped at the red-lights, but definitely blew through a couple of yellows too. I don’t care. Indie is in trouble and no force on this earth can keep me from her.
Mimi said she was going to be alright on the phone, and I tried my hardest to let those words settle me. But the part of me that can understand reason goes quiet whenever Indie is involved.
My brakes squeal in protest and I barely remember to turn the truck off before I’m out of it, slamming the door behind me and sprinting through the front entrance.
Every head in the lobby turns toward me.
At the front desk, a short, older woman with graying hair squints at me. Then she lifts a pair of glasses from a beaded chain around her neck, settles them on her nose, and the second she sees me clearly, her face shifts to understanding.
“She’s okay,” she says before I can get a word out.
I recognize her as the voice from the phone call—Mimi. Indie once said Mimi was so much like Phoebe, and as I look at her now, sitting at the front desk like a queen on her throne, I can definitely see it.
“Where is she?!” I bark.
The fear is making my voice too loud in this quiet, peaceful space, but I can’t make it softer. Not with the panic running through me. My eyes keep searching the hallway, the doors, the signs, like one of them is going to flash neon and point me toward her.
“Where’s Indie?”
All I can think about is Indie sick, falling, and smacking her head on the ground, the brutal sound her head must have made against the linoleum. The image makes my stomach turn violently.
It’s also not escaping my notice that it’s January.
How close we are to the anniversary of Nana’s death.
How Nana died from pneumonia that she battled privately. I don’t know if Indie was feeling this sickness for a while and keeping it to herself because she and Nana are cut from the same cloth.
And the horrifying thought slams into me all at once.
If I lose another woman I love in this godforsaken month because she was sick and didn’t tell anyone, because she thought she had to handle it alone, I won’t survive it..
“Come on,” Mimi says, pushing back from the desk. “I’ll take you to her.”
She leads me down the hallway to what looks like an examination room. Mimi stops outside it, glances at me once, and then opens it. I rush in first and skid to a stop so hard my boots squeal against the floor.
Indie isn’t small, not in presence, not in height, but right now, lying back against the pillows with a huge ice pack pressed to half her face, she looks so tiny that it makes something inside of me crack open.
Her legs are stretched out, she’s still in her navy scrubs, and her hair is uncharacteristically messy, coming out of its usual ponytail
When she hears me, she turns her head and lowers the ice pack, giving me a full view of the cut splitting through her eyebrow.
The sight of the wound and stitches has me moving again, rushing toward her and carefully taking her flushed face between my hands like the precious woman she is.
I almost hiss at the temperature of her skin—burning.
“Oh, honey,” I whisper.
“I’m okay,” she says, and then immediately winces because even that small movement pulls at the stitches.
Still, she gives me a small smile that’s meant to soothe me.
It doesn’t.
All I can focus on is the redness of her skin. The darkening bruise that’s spreading toward her temple. The stitches. The dried blood. The way her heavy eyes look glassy and red-rimmed and unfocused.
“No, you’re not,” I breathe, thumb hovering near the bruise because I’m terrified of hurting her.
“It looks worse than it is,” she mumbles, shrugging like it's nothing.
Her voice is scratchy, slightly slurred at the edges with exhaustion. Her skin looks too pale—slightly gray beneath the fever flush. A thin sheen of sweat glistens on her forehead, and she can’t seem to keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time.
She looks so sick.
“And it looks pretty fucking bad,” Mimi says, shutting the door behind her and walking over to inspect the stitches closely, humming in approval. “Dr. Moore’s got good linework, huh? Should still leave a pretty badass scar.”
Indie’s mouth curves faintly. “I’ll say I got it in a fight.”
The laugh that tries to follow turns into a cough. She pulls away from my hands and turns her head sharply away from me, letting out a hacking cough that sounds painful.
The motion is too fast for someone with a concussion. Her body tips sideways off the bed, arms flailing for a second as if she is reaching for something that isn’t there.
I catch her before she can fall, one arm around her back, the other holding her head and neck steady as I secure her to my chest. She makes a soft, happy sound and practically melts into me.
“Hmm,” she murmurs, cheek pressing into my shirt. “You’re warm.”
“Ditto,” I murmur, tightening my arms around her while I allow myself one deep inhale of her hair.
Indie is in my arms, holding onto me as tightly as I’m holding onto her.
I’m dead. This is heaven. I died somewhere in the hallway outside. Or maybe on the drive over here. But I’m definitely dead, and this is heaven because Indie is in my arms again.
After months of just being next to her, minimal contact unless she initiates, this is salvation. God, I have missed the weight of her against me, soft and warm and so goddamn sweet.
I even push my luck and press a soft, barely there kiss to her hair. I think she feels it, though, because she just nuzzles her face against my chest again.
“…you smell nice,” she mumbles sleepily.
A helpless smile spreads across my face. Across the room, Mimi quietly snorts while typing something into the computer.
“I already let Chief Rohan know what happened,” she says without looking at us. “We’ll take care of your patients for the next two weeks. You need rest, chickie.”
“I have Melissa… Peterson tomorrow,” Indie rasps, the words sounding like they’re being dragged with force from her. “Ask her about her daughter’s recital… Swan Lake…”
Affection slips across Mimi’s stern face.
“I will,” Mimi promises.
Then she turns her attention toward me.
Her brow raises, her expression sharpening into something stern enough that my spine straightens instinctively, “You take care of our girl, loverboy.”
Indie snickers weakly against my chest. “Loverboy…”
Mimi smiles fondly at her before looking back at me, expression sobering.
“Her fever was one-oh-one when I checked. If it hits one-oh-four, you take her to the emergency room immediately. Not urgent care. Emergency room. Jefferson is closest to her apartment, right?”
I nod.
“Go to Jefferson and tell them Mimi Manning—no goddamn relation to Peyton—sent you.” She smirks like she knows her name carries weight. “They’ll take her right back.”
I nod once more, memorizing the words. “Jefferson. Manning. Not Peyton. Got it.”
“She really just needs rest,” Mimi continues, gently brushing Indie’s hair back from her damp forehead. “Lots of fluids. Water, broth, soup, whatever she can keep down. She’ll probably throw up at some point, and the concussion won’t help. Just keep her hydrated.”
“What about sleeping?” I ask, my voice cracking despite everything I do to keep it steady. Indie is dead weight against me now, her breath warm through my shirt. “After a concussion, I mean. Is it safe? I always heard you had to keep someone awake.”
“No, what she needs is sleep. We did a CT, and everything looks okay. She’ll have some bruising and a nasty headache for a bit. Wake her up every few hours to get her to hydrate.”
“Her stitches will dissolve. But if you need anything,” Mimi scribbles something down on a sheet of paper that I see is her phone number. “Call me. If you have any questions. Day or night, I don’t care.”
“Thank you,” I say, pocketing the number while holding my girl close. “Really. Thank you.”
Mimi’s eyes soften as she looks down at Indie.
“You’ve got a special one here, kid,” she says softly, patting my shoulder. “And she’s just head over ass for you.”
My head snaps up.
“You think?”
She rolls her eyes like my question is offensively stupid, and it makes something bright bloom inside my chest just as a nurse wheels a wheelchair into the room.
“Let’s get her in the chair, loverboy.”
“Shh…” I murmur against Indie’s uninjured temple as I balance her against me and unlock the front door with my free hand. “It’s okay, honey…”
I brought her here for a couple of reasons, most of them selfish.
I can take care of her better here than in her apartment.
I know the layout of the house. It’s quieter here because the neighbors are all elderly and somehow watch television at maximum volume during daylight hours.
There are fewer germs. The clawfoot tub upstairs can help cool her down if the fever spikes.
And the selfish part of me wants to see Indie in this space, even though she’s sick and concussed.
Also, I’m going to need to stay with her, and sleeping in her apartment without permission somehow feels like crossing a line. I know I’m justifying myself. I don’t care. I’m too worried about her to care.
A strange ache settles in my chest as I carry her over the threshold. I picture doing this for real next time, with that moonstone ring on her finger. When I carry her upstairs to the bedroom, my eyes go to the bedroom closet, where my fire safe is.
Where the ring is.
As I lay her on the bed, she still feels too hot and sweaty, so I gently rouse her, getting her to crack open her eyes to look at me.
“Indie?”
“Hot,” she whines softly, face scrunching.
The sound nearly kills me.
Throughout our entire relationship, Indie almost never got sick. Outside of her celiac attack or bad periods, she was basically invincible. She stayed up to date on vaccines, washed her hands obsessively, and sanitized every surface in her apartment.