“Sorting souls if he gets called away to help with something else.” I slumped in my chair a bit. “I apparently have a throne of my own, as the twin sister of the devil.”
“Explains a lot,” came a mumble from the bed.
Linc and I were out of the chairs and over to Paige in the blink of an eye. She had one eye open, and the other swollen shut, red and purple.
“Don’t move, Paige,” I said, carefully lying a hand on her good shoulder. “You’re a wreck.”
“Reid…”
“He had to go home and sleep,” Lincoln said.
“How…”
“Fischer was called into consult on your head.” I pointed to the gauze covering the wound. “You have a brain bleed they need to monitor.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “The baby…”
“Fine,” Lincoln said. “Just fine. Fischer pulled strings to make sure that everything went well. You’re fourteen weeks and the baby looks good.”
She sobbed and hiccupped and cried out in pain all at the same time. “I’m an asshole…”
“No, Paige. You aren’t.” I smiled at her. “You’re here. We have a temporary restraining order on Alain, so you’re safe for now. I’m not going to tell you what all went on, Fischer will be in later to do that. I’m also going to avoid all the legal shit, but we have just one request for you. Can you make one of us your emergency contact. I don’t care if it’s me or, Linc, or hell Fischer, but…”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I want the legal shit too. How do I keep him away from me? And the baby. He’ll try to make me miscarry.”
“Do you trust one of us enough to grant power of attorney?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes, any of you.” She tried to nod, but I put my hand on the side of her face to stop her. “Any of you.”
Lincoln nodded. “I’ll take it. And I’ll have someone in here before we leave to draw up the papers. I’ll get the restraining order permanent, and I’ll handle all the other legal stuff, like getting Alain off of everything. We’ll make Wren your emergency contact.”
“Divorce.” She stared straight at Lincoln. “Get me a divorce. I don’t want him associated with me at all. And under no circumstances is he to be on the baby’s birth certificate.”
“Done,” Linc said, patting her hand. “Consider it all done.”
“She is up,” Fischer said, walking in. “Excellent. The nurse said her vitals picked up.” He smiled at her. “How do you feel?”
“Like my soon-to-be-ex-husband threw me down the stairs. Oh, wait.” She let out a sigh. “Tell me what happened to me, Dr. Skillman.”
Fischer took the chart at the end of the bed and after a moment of looking at it, he put it back and stuck his hands deep in the pockets of the lab coat. “Hang on, Paige. This is quite a bit.”
By the time Fischer finished with everything that had happened on the way to the hospital and in the emergency room, Paige looked even more pale and terrible than she had. She probably would have been trembling if there had been any energy left in her.
Instead, she just stared up at the ceiling, swallowing once in a while.
“So, another MRI tomorrow and possibly a cast.”
“Best case scenario.” Fischer nodded. “And the most likely. You did good getting to the phone, and getting help. And I hope that you’re on the path out of that marriage?”
“I can call Lily any time you’re ready and get whatever else you think you need.” I pointed to the small bag that Reid had rescued. “But I think that has most everything.”
She flicked her one-eyed gaze at each of us for a moment. “Why do you care?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Fischer asked.
“I constantly fuck up your family,” she answered. “I let Ben slip away, I revealed where Ellie was—”
“And they’re both home now, doing homework, safe, and sound. Don’t worry about that.”
“But I do…I screwed up. My pride screwed me up. It made me put children in danger. It made me stay with a man who doesn’t even remotely love me. It made—”
I put a hand over her mouth to stop her. “And now? You know all that. You’re going to fix this. Just let us handle everything while you heal.”
“I can’t stay here…I don’t have the kind of insurance that will let me stay.”
I leveled a look at her. “Really, Paige? You’re worried about that?” Turning a bit, I glanced at Lincoln.
He waved me off while never taking his hands off the phone, fingers flying. “Done.”
“And where do I go after this?” she asked, her voice growing tired. “I have nothing…”
“We have room,” Fischer said. “You’re welcome to stay with us. In fact, we insist you do.”
Her good eye focused on me. “Are you really the devil’s twin sister?”
I chewed my lip. “You did hear that.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
She looked back up at the ceiling. “I need to sleep for a while.”
Fischer nodded. “Good idea.”
“I’m going to head out and get all the paperwork going,” Lincoln said. “As soon as we have the POA, we can work on everything else. Wren?”
“I’m going to hang for a little while.”
“You don’t have to,” Paige said.
“I want to,” I snapped.
“Don’t feel sorry for me.”
Fischer leaned into her ear. “Quit it, Vanagloria. This isn’t the time or place for you to show yourself in all your glory. Just sleep for now.”
Paige blinked at him. Once, then again, then closed her eye and sank back into the bed a bit more. She was asleep in just a few minutes.
Paige
“You hate me.”
Wren’s head snapped up from the tablet she was staring at. I’d been watching her for at least ten minutes. She was clearly reviewing patient files and working on something else. I just watched her for as long as I could keep myself from saying anything.
Putting the tablet to the side she shook her head. “I don’t hate you.”
“I screwed up.”
“Mistakes happen, Paige.”
“These were nearly the lives of children.”
“Stop, please. I don’t hate you. I don’t want you to hate yourself.”
I looked back up at the ceiling. “What do you want?”
“What?”
I desperately wanted both of my eyes open so I could stare at her, but I was probably a good two solid days from that. It still hurt, and involuntary blinking was sheer Hell. Everything still hurt like fuck. My face, my hair, my shoulder, ribs, leg, back.
Fischer had cleared the brain bleed this morning—it had been nothing more than a pin prick and healed on its own. He also went with me to get the cast put on, and make sure that my shoulder was healing well.
Lincoln had come through with the POA, the permanent restraining order, insurance paperwork, and the divorce papers. He whipped through them with efficiency and told me that he already had a docket spot for the preliminary hearing for the divorce.