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)
It started at the bridge of my nose and curled around my eye, stopping just above my eye socket on my left side. I had no eyebrow, though you couldn’t tell really since the stitches were now acting as a temporary one.
“Does it hurt?” she whispered.
I shook my head.
“No.”
I was lying. It hurt like a motherfucker.
I didn’t want her to feel worse than she already did, though, so I kept silent on how much it was throbbing.
Since I couldn’t take any pain meds while I was at work, I was stuck with feeling the sharp ache despite taking both Tylenol and Motrin.
“It looks like it hur…”
“Naomi, I’ll smack your ass if you ask that again,” I growled.
I’d fallen.
Oh, boy had I fallen.
And not gracefully, either.
I’d just helped Naomi over a fallen log, and had put my weight on it to hop over myself.
The weight of my body had been a lot more than Naomi’s, and seconds after my full body weight had been on it, it collapsed out from under me.
I fell, face forward, straight into a stump and split my eye open.
“You could’ve lost your eye,” she continued.
I sighed.
“I really, really don’t want to talk about this right now,” I grumbled. “So, if you’d please shut up, I’d appreciate it.”
She started to snicker, and I narrowed my eyes at her.
“I’m not eating Taco Bell again,” she declared once she’d managed to compose herself. “I haven’t tried it since I got my colostomy reversal, but I just don’t think my belly can handle it.”
I hummed in approval. “I think that’s acceptable. So you either have Subway, which happens to be on the way home. Or Fanny’s.”
Fanny’s wasn’t really on the way home, but I could make it on the way home. They’d never notice if I stopped in and grabbed the food.
“Fanny’s,” she said excitedly. “I’ve never had it, but I’ve heard that it’s good.”
It was. “The best,” I promised. “Call ahead. Tell them you want two specials.”
“What’s the special?” she asked as she took her phone out of her pocket and started googling the number.
She’d just gotten on the line with them when the tones dropped.
“Medic 33, child sick and lethargic at 777 Pointy Grove Lane.”
My stomach dropped.
“Oh, God,” Naomi echoed my thoughts. “Never mind.”
Naomi hung up the phone and I swung around a slow driving car, flipping on my lights at the same time.
The drive to the house was silent and tense, and by the time we arrived, the sick feeling in my stomach had turned to a deep ache that resonated in my bones.
It took three minutes and thirty-seven seconds to respond to the call.
This was going to be very bad. I knew it before I’d even gotten out of the medic.
“Shit,” Naomi said, seeing the parents standing in the street. “I’ll grab the doors.”
I didn’t wait to see if she got them or not. The minute I had the ambulance in park, I was running toward the front of the house as fast as my legs would take me.
My head no longer hurt, and my eyes were focused on my target.
The little baby in her mother’s hysterical arms.
I’ll remember the sight for the rest of my life.
The little girl was nearly naked, the only thing covering her tiny body was a white diaper with a little yellow stripe up the middle.
One tiny leg and one tiny arm were flopping loosely in the near freezing night air. Likely when she’d been holding her, the blanket had been swaddling her little body. Now the hot pink blanket only accentuated how very pale the baby was.
The minute I was in reaching distance, I took the limp child from her mother’s arms and ran to the ambulance.
It took me less than twenty seconds.
I placed the little girl down on the backboard, listened to the doors slam behind me, and started CPR.
***
I dropped down to my knees after leaving the ER’s trauma bay, put my hands behind me head, and hunched my body in on itself.
I couldn’t find any breath in my lungs. They were burning, right along with my eyes.
Tears threatened, and the only thing that was holding them back was the fact that I had an audience.
Had I been alone, they’d be flowing freely down my cheeks to disappear into my beard.
Even now, I wasn’t sure whether I could make it back to the medic without breaking down.
Hell, I was in the middle of the damn ambulance entrance to the ER, and I couldn’t find it in me to move.
“Sean,” Naomi whispered. “Look at me, baby.”
It took me a minute, but I finally managed to look up at her.
The harsh brightness from the lights lighting the ambulance bay hurt my eyes, but I looked anyway.
“She’s going to make it,” Naomi promised me again.
I swallowed, nodded, and then cleared my throat.