“Dirk,” Brynn whispered.
“None of those things came out of her mouth,” Raina said, sounding distressed.
“Well, maybe they would if you’d give her a minute to talk.” Olive frowned. “Except she’s clutching her chest and looking like she’s going to hyperventilate. Honey, are you in pain?”
If by pain she meant the feeling that her ribs were being cracked open by a sledge hammer, then yeah. She was in pain.
Raina crouched in front of her. “On a pain scale of one to ten, where are you at?”
Fifteen sounded about right.
Raina whirled to Olive. “Oh my God, I think she’s having a heart attack!”
“No, I’m not.” Brynn pulled off her glasses and dropped her face into her hands. “But everything else is all true. The not working thing. The coming home to stay for a bit thing. The asshole boyfriend thing.”
“I’m going to kill Dirk,” Olive murmured beneath her breath.
Brynn managed a mirthless laugh at her finally getting his name right.
“Oh honey,” Raina whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“The school I was working at closed its doors. And the Dirk thing, it’s for the best.” Understatement . . . Brynn shook her head. “But I’m okay. Really. I’m just . . .” Bonkers. Completely unhinged. Homeless . . . “A-okay.”
“She’s whiter than you,” Raina told Olive. “And clammy but chilled.”
“I see it. Sweetheart, breathe,” Olive said calmly to Brynn. To Raina, she said, “Call 9-1-1.”
“No!” Brynn said. Or tried to. But of course now she really was hyperventilating.
Raina was on the phone with 9-1-1. “Hi, yes, my daughter’s having a heart attack.”
“I’m not!” Brynn wheezed as little black dots danced behind her eyelids.
Olive held both of Brynn’s hands. “Breathe,” she said again. “Breathe with me.”
She was trying. But she couldn’t seem to draw air into her lungs, which was now intensifying the sharp throbbing in her chest. Ripping her hands from Olive’s, she pressed them against her ribcage, trying to ease the pain.
“Oh my goddess,” Raina whispered helplessly, and ran to the door. “What’s keeping EMS?”
A few minutes later, two uniforms stood over Brynn, helping her onto a gurney, putting an oxygen mask over her face. She no longer had her glasses and couldn’t see past her own nose.
“Honey,” Raina yelled as Brynn was stuffed into the back of an ambulance. “We’re going to be right behind you, okay? I’ve got your glasses.”
Brynn held out her hand, but couldn’t reach them.
“Just relax,” one of the EMS said. “Your only job here is to keep breathing.”
“I’m fine!” Brynn tried to yell through the mask.
But no one was listening. So she gave up and stared up at the interior roof of the rig that was a blur and did the only thing she could. She breathed.
Forty-five minutes later at the hospital, a doctor and nurse were standing at her cot.
“Looks like it was a panic attack,” the doctor said.
Brynn sighed. “That’s what I tried to tell everyone.”
“We had to be sure. Your moms were adamant.”
This was true. They’d been unbudgeable. Brynn had finally made them go to the waiting room because they’d been driving the hospital staff nuts. She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. They needed an excuse to cry because I’m home and they missed me.”
The doctor looked confused. “It’d have been a lot cheaper to just say that to you.”
“Yeah.” Like the entire five grand of her insurance deductible cheaper . . .
Half an hour later, she was cleared from her little cubicle in the ER. Her moms had been told the good news and were in the waiting room while she changed back into her clothes. Finally she was winding her way down the white hallways toward the waiting room when she stopped in front of a candy machine, catching sight of her reflection in the glass.
She was clutching the bag the nurse had provided for her to stow her personal belongings like her glasses, phone, and ID. Everything was pretty blurry, but even she could see that she was very pale, and her eyes seemed huge in her face. Embarrassment and humiliation did that to a person.
A freaking panic attack . . . Gah. She now needed a chocolate bar more than she needed her next breath, and considering she almost died from lack of oxygen due to panic, that was saying something.
A tall, lanky, lean guy stood in front of the machine, hands on either side of it as he gave the thing a hard shake.
A candy bar came loose and he caught it, shoving it into one of his cargo pants pockets.
Pockets that looked already quite full.
She couldn’t see well enough to know which kid of candy bar he got, but it didn’t matter because she liked all the candy bars in all the land. “Hey,” she said. “Save some for the paying customers.”
He turned to face her, his light brown wavy hair falling into his eyes, and . . . something made her fumble into her plastic bag for her glasses. Self-preservation, maybe, because her instincts were screaming. Clearly not a common occurrence for her, or she wouldn’t always be able to detonate her life so thoroughly. When she got her glasses on, the world came into focus again and she breathed a short-lived sigh of relief.
Short-lived because though she hadn’t seen Eli Thomas since they were both fifteen, she did indeed know him.
“I put money into the machine,” he said. His expression was tight, as if he was highly stressed. And given where they were, in the ER hallway, he in all likelihood was highly stressed. “Lots of money, in fact . . .” Stopping, he cocked his head, recognition crossing his face. His eyes softened and he smiled, flashing white teeth and a dimple in his left cheek. “Hey.” His voice was different now. Lower, quiet, like the one you used with people you knew. It was also filled with emotion. “It’s been awhile.”
True story. It had been awhile. But not long enough. And in the bad news department, the dimple and smile were still attractive and charismatic as hell, but the good news was that she’d learned how to shut her heart off. She gave him a vague smile, like she didn’t remember him.
He arched a brow.
Ignoring this because they so weren’t going there, she gestured that he should stand back because it was her turn at the vending machine. She pulled a wrinkled dollar from her pocket and tried to shove it into the slot. She could feel the weight of his stare. He wanted her to recognize him. She was still going with no thank you.
The machine spit her dollar back at her.
“You have to straighten it out first.”
Grinding her teeth, she slapped the dollar against her thigh and ironed it flat with her hand before once again attempting to thread the dollar in the machine.
It immediately spit it back out.
Seriously, was it a Monday? Was the universe out to get her?
Eli took her dollar and calmly fed it to the machine.
And of course, the machine accepted it.
Eli started to say something but she held up a finger to stop him, then punched in the corresponding letter and number for the candy bar she wanted.
Nothing happened.
No. Gripping the machine the same way Eli had, she shook it.