Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
My stomach dropped.
If I’d been standing up, I would’ve swayed on my feet at the sound of the devastation in that man’s voice.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I whispered, unsure what to say.
I was never good at finding the right thing to say. Which was why it was so hard for me to comfort patients’ families. I was a paramedic, not a counselor, and at times I found it hard to say the right things when the right words were all you wanted to hear.
He shrugged, like it didn’t bother him.
As long as you didn’t look at his eyes, you might not know.
“Sorry, honey. Here they are.” She handed them to me.
I looked at the filled prescriptions. “These are filled,” I said dumbly.
Abigail snickered. “Technically, since you’re an employee of the hospital through the ambulance service, you can fill your scripts at the hospital pharmacy at no extra cost to yourself.”
That was awesome, though I didn’t plan on being in a hospital anymore to use this convenience.
“Thank you,” I smiled.
“Hello, Mr. Thorton. Are you on your way home?” Abigail asked, sounding surprised to see the man beside us.
“Hi, Abby Girl,” he said thickly. “And I am.”
“Did you ever find your dog?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “She never came back home. I posted those fliers all over the neighborhood, but haven’t heard a thing back on her.”
Oh, God. The man had lost his dog, too? Only months after losing his wife?
That was freakin’ horrible.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Thorton. How about you ride down with us, keep us company. This one gets to go home today after a week with us,” she chattered along as if I wasn’t even there. “I’m trying to convince her to call her man, but she’s being stubborn. She called a taxi instead.”
I bit my lip.
This woman, who’d been at my side and taking care of me for an entire week now, just didn’t know how to shut up. She’d told everyone about my ‘stupidity’ as she called it.
“That who sent you those flowers?” Mr. Thorton glanced at the bouquet in my lap.
I looked down at the flowers, which wasn’t far since the flowers were so big, and shook my head. “Yeah,” I sighed. “They’re from him.”
“A man doesn’t care, he wouldn’t go to the trouble,” he pointed out. “Looks to me that he cares.”
The elevator doors opened, and I gripped my vase tightly as I saw the man I’d been doing my best to forget this last week standing there, waiting for the elevator doors to open.
He took one look at me, and he shuddered.
“About time,” he rumbled. “Didn’t think you’d ever get down here.”
With that parting comment, he turned on his heels and started walking, not saying another word.
“He’s hot,” Abigail said. “You should really think about apologizing.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, and she smiled.
“Just a thought.”
I didn’t want to hear her thoughts. In fact, all I wanted to do was admire the backside of Sean as he walked in front of us.
The moment he got to the truck, he opened the passenger side and waited for me to arrive.
Which didn’t take long because Nurse Abby, the big busy-body butter-inner, had started pushing me faster and faster until she was practically power walking in the direction of Sean and his big ol’ truck.
A truck that I was fairly certain I couldn’t climb into at this point.
He must’ve realized this as I was rolled toward him, because the moment I was close enough, he started toward me.
“Do you walk?” I suddenly asked the man next to me, rolling only inches from my chair.
Abigail stopped in front of Sean, him only inches away from my knees, and put the brakes on the wheelchair.
I waved Sean off when he went to scoop me up.
“I want to.”
He stepped back, letting his eyes trail over my face to gauge my determination.
Something must’ve registered on my face, however, because he stepped back once more, and turned his eyes to the man at my side.
I stood up, belly smarting as I did, and drew in a couple of deep breaths.
“Hello,” Sean said, offering the old man his hand. “Thank you for keeping my girl company. She conveniently forgot to tell me that she was being let out today.”
The old man smiled, and it transformed his face.
“Nice to meet you. Brady Thorton,” Mr. Thorton answered, turning his attention to me. “I can walk…Why?”
I looked at the wheelchair.
He stood up, shakily might I add, and shuffled away from it a few steps.
My heart pounded in my throat.
Any time I saw someone, I automatically assessed them.
Mr. Thorton was old, but first and foremost, he was a fall risk. He had on shoes that looked like they were too big for his feet, and he had a bandage on his head.
“I mean, do you walk on any trails, like at a park or something,” I amended, clearly seeing that he was proving a point to me. “I was told that I needed to walk to keep my, um, bowels moving. I just had a colostomy reversal, and they want me to exercise, not strenuously though, to help my, errrm, you know, move along.”