I lasted about three minutes sitting before I got up to pace again. I made sure to stay in the nurse’s line of view so she wouldn’t forget about me. When our eyes caught, she let out an exaggerated sigh and shook her head before looking away. I didn’t give a shit if I pissed her off. I only cared that she didn’t forget I was here.
About a half hour after I’d walked in, another nurse opened the door. “Family of Ireland Saint James.”
I walked to the door, and the woman looked at me. “You’re a family member?”
I didn’t even have to think about lying. “Yes.”
“And you’re her…”
I thought they might have asked her marital status when she came in, and I didn’t want to contradict her. “Brother. I’m her brother.”
The nurse nodded and opened the door wide for me to come into the back. “Right this way. She’s in bed four. The doctors just finished examining her.”
I followed her to a corner of the large, open room, and the nurse pulled the closed curtain open. “Ms. Saint James, your brother is here to see you.”
Ireland’s face was confused for a half a second, and then she smiled and nodded. She had a bandage on the side of her head and looked pale. But she was in one piece.
I went to her side, took her hand, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Jesus Christ. You scared the shit out of me. What happened? Does anything hurt? Are you okay?”
The nurse shut the curtain behind her.
“Yeah. I’m okay.” She pointed to the bandage on her head. “Just butterfly stitches on my head from where I hit something, I guess.” She lifted her left arm and winced. “They think I might have broken my ulna. I’m waiting for x-ray to come now.”
“What the hell have they been doing all this time if you didn’t even get any x-rays yet?”
Ireland smiled. “A nurse came back a little while ago and told me I had a very anxious visitor waiting. I can see you must’ve been a joy to keep in the waiting room. They did some lab work and examined me. But I’m fine, really.”
I dragged a hand through my hair. “Are you sure? County’s not the greatest hospital. I can take you over to Memorial.”
“I’m fine. They’ve been really great so far.”
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I was driving, and the fog made it hard to see, so I was switching back and forth between my high and low beams, and the last time I flipped on the brights, I found a deer standing almost right in front of my car. I hit the brakes, but the ground was wet and slippery, and I lost control. Remember in Driver’s Ed class when they told you to turn in to a spinout instead of away from it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I didn’t do that. I just reacted and didn’t even remember that until I got here.”
I brushed the hair from her face. “You acted on instinct. It’s normal.”
Ireland sighed. “I think my car is totaled.”
“Who cares about the car?” I began to pat down her body. “Is anything else hurt?”
She laughed. “No, Dr. Lexington. I’m really fine.”
A few minutes later, the nurse came back in. She looked at me. “Can I ask you to step back into the waiting room for a few minutes.”
“Are you taking her down to x-ray?”
The nurse shook her head. “Not yet. The doctor’s going to come back in and do another examination and would like to speak to your sister.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why? What’s wrong?”
The nurse frowned and looked over at Ireland. “Nothing is wrong. It’s just our policy to have visitors wait in the waiting room during an examination.”
Ireland smiled. “I’ll be fine, Grant.” She looked at the nurse. “Can he come back in after the doctor is done?”
The nurse nodded. “Sure.”
I leaned down and kissed Ireland’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon.”
Then, begrudgingly, I went back to the waiting room.
Sitting down, I leaned back in the chair and scrubbed my hands over my face. Why didn’t I insist that she not drive from the damn restaurant? This was all my fault. I don’t know what I would’ve done if anything had happened to her. My insides twisted at that thought. Ireland didn’t know what she meant to me. Hell, I’m not sure I even knew before tonight. But now that she was okay, I was going to make damn sure to show her from now on. I knew all too well that sometimes life changes in the blink of an eye.
Chapter 32
* * *
Ireland
Dr. Rupert, the emergency room doctor treating me, looked like Penn from the magician duo Penn and Teller. At least I thought it was Penn—I could never remember which was which. In any case, Dr. Rupert bore an uncanny resemblance to the shorter, older one. Since I was pretty sure he was in his late seventies, I figured it wouldn’t insult him to mention it.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like someone famous?”
He smiled, reached into his lab coat sleeve, and pulled out a bouquet of plastic flowers. “Does this answer your question?”
I laughed. “I guess so.”
He tucked the flowers headfirst into his lab coat pocket. “No relation, but patients are disappointed when I tell them that. So I find it’s at least a consolation prize to perform a trick.”
Dr. Rupert picked up the chart hanging from the foot of my bed and flipped through some pages. As he started to speak, the closed curtain opened and another doctor came in, drawing the curtain behind him.
“Good timing. This is Dr. Torres. He’s an orthopedic specialist.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Normally we don’t call in ortho for a consultation until after x-rays, but I wanted to have him examine you now, so we can give you all of your options.”
“Okay…”
Dr. Rupert pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. He had an old school way about him that doctors didn’t have much anymore. Reaching out, he touched my arm.
“The reason we wanted to do an ortho consult before the x-ray is because we found something in your bloodwork.”
I sat up in bed. Oh, God. The first thing that came to my mind was cancer. Some blood cell count must’ve been elevated, and now they don’t want to radiate me unnecessarily. My heart started to palpitate. “What? What’s wrong with my blood work?”
Dr. Rupert squeezed my hand and smiled. “Nothing. You’re pregnant, Ms. Saint James.”
I blinked a few times. “What?”
He nodded. “I had a feeling the news might come as a shock to you. I noticed on the intake sheet that you said your last period was a month ago, and you answered the Is there any possibility you might be pregnant question no.
“I can’t be. Are you sure?”
He nodded. “A blood test can pick up hCG as early as six to eight days after ovulation. Urine tests generally can take a bit longer.”
Panic set in. “I can’t be. It has to be wrong.”
Dr. Rupert’s smile fell. “Are you saying it’s not physically possible for you to be pregnant? There are rare cases of false positives in blood work, such as when you’re taking certain medication for seizures.” His brows drew together. “Are you on any medications? I didn’t see any listed.”