I sprint around to the passenger-side door, and with Leigh in my arms, I run inside, calling out for help.
The staff come at me with a stretcher. I set Leigh on it and give the nurses the story. “Gash to the back of her right thigh. Might’ve swallowed bad pool water last night.”
They wheel her into a room and pull the curtains closed. Leigh moans, and her eyes flutter open.
“Seven?”
“I’m here.” I step around the nurse and lay my hand on Leigh’s shoulder.
Worry lines stretch across her forehead. “My clothes—”
“You decide what comes off.”
“Sweatpants and sweatshirt only.”
The nurses listen and help her out of her clothes. They get Leigh into a gown two sizes too big for her skinny body. One nurse puts an IV in the back of Leigh’s hand. Another hooks Leigh to a heart monitor and gets her vital signs.
Other people come into the exam room and ask a bunch of questions. I find out Leigh doesn’t have a middle name, she’s on birth control pills, and she’s allergic to strawberries of all things.
“Leigh, I should step out.”
“I’d like for you to stay if you don’t mind.”
Do I mind? Hell no.
After the nurse draws blood and starts a bag of fluids in her IV, the doctor comes in. He gestures for me to sit. I pull up a chair. Leigh reaches for my hand. I grasp her hand in mine. Her skin is hot, and her grip, weak.
“Miss Kim, I’m Dr. Anderson. The nurse showed me your vital signs. Your blood pressure is low, your heart rate is over one hundred, and you’re running a fever of 101.3. They said you have a gash on the back of your leg and that you swallowed pool water. We’ll get a chest x-ray. Make sure you don’t have pneumonia. May I see your leg?”
Leigh rolls onto her stomach. Streaks of red go up and down her leg.
“When was the last time you ate or had something to drink?”
“Toast for breakfast, but I couldn’t keep it down. Same with water.”
“Miss Kim, you’ll need to be admitted for antibiotics, something for the fever, and hydration.”
He instructs the nurse help Leigh onto her back. The nurse lifts the head of Leigh’s gurney. The doctor shines a light in her eyes. Asks her to open her mouth. He listens to her heart and her lungs. Zones in on her face.
“May I ask what happened to your temple and your lip?” He shifts his attention to me.
“Seven stays,” she says, preempting the doctor’s intention of asking me to leave. I get it. He thinks I gave Leigh the injuries.
“I heard a dog whimpering in the middle of the night last night. I thought it was hurt. I went after it, tripped, and hit my face on the tractor.”
I cry bullshit.
“And the gash on the back of your leg?”
“The dog ran past and scared me. I backed up and scraped my leg on something metal.”
Double bullshit. The doctor looks as skeptical as I’m feeling, but he doesn’t question her further.
The door opens, and the curtains part. A guy wheels in one of those portable x-ray machines. The doctor and I step out. He thanks me for bringing her to the ER.
“You saved her life, son. Had you waited any longer, she could’ve gone into septic shock.”
I don’t want to minimize how sick Leigh is, but that girl has as many lives as a cat. The x-ray guy backs out of the room. A nurse rushes past me with another bag in her hand. I’m guessing it’s Leigh’s antibiotic.
“We’ll work on getting her a room. I’ll check on her again before they take her to the unit.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I head back inside the room, grab a chair, and bring it to the side of the bed.
“Should I text Hannah? Or Thomas? My dad has his number.” In case of an emergency.
“Can we keep this between us?”
“They’d want to know.”
“Please, Seven.”
Again, she’s begging. The bastard in me wants to pounce on her fear, but I don’t have it in me to kick her when she’s down. What’s the fun in that?
“Fine, but this is your one pass. Don’t ever beg or ask for a favor again unless you’re willing to work for it or give up something in return. Deal?”
She closes her eyes and smiles. “No mercy. I like that. It’s a deal. Thanks, Seven, for not making it easy for me.”
A girl thanking me for giving her grief?
Doesn’t happen, and that’s how I know Beautiful Defiance plans on wrecking my world, smashing to smithereens my bastardly heart.
9
SEVEN
I stay with her, leaving the room only to use the bathroom and to get something to eat from the cafeteria. The next evening, they discharge her with a week’s worth of antibiotics.
The color is back in her face, but she isn’t steady on her feet. What’s also returned is her defiance. Leigh put up a good fight, not wanting to be taken out in a wheelchair to my truck.
But when she swayed as the nurse helped her dress, she conceded. Thank fuck she cooled her defiance long enough for me to get her ass in my ride.
When we arrived at the Stevenson’s place, I opted for the shorter route to Leigh’s place. I park my truck alongside the property line, carry her in my arms, and carefully get us over the low-lying fence.
She buries her face in my hair, and every cell in my body comes to attention, same as it did last night. Last night, she’d tossed and turned in her hospital bed. Sometime around two in the morning, she broke her fever. The nurses were kind enough to change out the damp sheets for fresh ones.
While they did, I held Leigh in my arms. Her breathing was rhythmic, a sign to come that she’d fall fast asleep, hopefully more soundly this time. Me, on the other hand, my breathing was shallow and labored. It was sheer torture holding Beautiful Defiance’s body close to mine.
I make my way down the hill, careful not to run into the whimpering stray dog, the sharp piece of metal, or the damn tractor. The things that attacked Leigh in her imagination. Yeah, I’m being sarcastic as fuck.
“Doing okay?” It boggles my mind that a man as smart as Thomas would have a guesthouse built at the bottom of two steep hills.
“Yes, thank you.”
Before Leigh went to the medical unit, the emergency room doctor delivered the double whammy. Not only did Leigh have a festering infection in her leg, but she had the beginnings of pneumonia from aspirating pool water.
Finally, we’re at the front door. I pride myself in not huffing and puffing from carrying her the distance. Not that she’s a load of bricks or anything. Leigh is light. Skinny. Needs more meat on her bones.
“Where to? Bedroom? Couch?”
“Bedroom,” she says, her voice scratchy.
I walk us inside the bedroom.
“Are you up to eating something?” It’s after six.
By the time I ran down to the hospital pharmacy for her medicine, only to wait for Leigh to be done with defying the nurse’s suggestion she be wheeled out, her discharge was delayed by two unrelated things.
One, a patient in the next room spiraled downhill and a code was called overhead. Soon after, there was a fuck load of commotion. Fifteen minutes later, a patient across the hall from us went bonkers, and security had to be called.