Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95393 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95393 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
“Okay, Mommy.” I sit next to her and see Luna lying on the couch, her cheeks pink and her eyes drooping closed.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says to the phone and then hangs up.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“She has a fever of one hundred and two. Her throat hurts, and she has a little cough. I think it’s probably strep.” She puts her phone to her ear. “I’m going to see if I can get her taken into the emergency pediatrician.” She listens to whatever is being said on her side. “Shit, they are full for today.” The worry fills her face as she presses something on her phone. “I have to make an appointment online.” Her fingers go crazy over the phone. “Got it. Tomorrow morning at ten thirty. It’s the earliest appointment I could get.” I nod at her before I grab my phone and call my sister Abigail. “What are you doing?”
“Calling my sister. She’s a nurse,” I reply, and before she has a chance to say anything, Abigail picks up.
“Eww,” she hisses, “why are you calling me naked?”
“I’m not naked,” I say in my defense. “Listen, Luna has a fever of a hundred and two, her throat is sore, and she has a cough.”
“Okay,” Abigail says, confusion on her face.
“What can we do?”
“Well, for one,” she states, “give her acetaminophen for the fever. Then you take her to the doctor.”
I roll my eyes. “Could it be strep?”
“It could be, but you won’t know unless she gets a throat culture.” I nod.
“Okay, bye.” I hang up the phone on her as she’s about to ask me a question. I know what she’s going to ask me, and I’ll get back to the gossip later. It takes her a second to send the text, and I think about not answering it, but I know it’ll just get worse if I don’t.
Abigail: Are you on vacation with Koda, or did she call you?
Me: Later.
Abigail: I’m calling Mom and Dad.
Me: Snitches get stitches.
Abigail: I’ll tell my husband that, and you can deal with him.
Me: I’m more scared of Gabriella than I am of Tristan. I’ll call you tomorrow.
“What are you doing?” Koda asks from beside me as I start to implement my plan.
“I’m getting us a plane, then I’m getting us a doctor who is going to go see her now,” I say, pulling up the phone number to the private plane we took down here.
“What?” she asks, her eyes wide.
“You aren’t going to be able to relax here when she’s sick,” I tell her, “and frankly, neither will I, so we’ll cut the trip short.”
“You would do that?”
“I don’t see any other option, do you?” I ask, and she shakes her head. “It’s a good thing we didn’t unpack.”
She laughs while I get on the phone with the private plane company. It takes an hour to get everything situated. We are strapping ourselves in when I look over at her. She’s wearing exactly what she wore two days ago and so am I. “We should land at around nine,” I tell her, and she nods.
“It’s my mother,” she announces when her phone rings right as the flight attendant closes the plane door. “Hey.” She puts the phone to her ear. “Wait, what?” Her eyes fly to mine. “Okay, we will be home in five hours,” she tells her mother. “Kiss them for me.”
She hangs up the phone as the plane starts heading down the runway. “Did you send a doctor to the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Just yeah,” she says breathlessly, “just like that?”
“Well, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.” I look into her eyes. “I may have overstepped, but the thought of her being sick and not getting help until tomorrow is unacceptable. So I called the team doctor, who knew a friend who did me a favor.”
Her hands come up to cup my face. “I’m going to need you to stop being so perfect.” She sniffles back tears.
“I’ll try, baby,” I say as she kisses my lips.
For five hours, she sits beside me with her head on my shoulder. “I owe you two days,” she whispers.
“You owe me nothing,” I tell her, kissing her head. “If anything, I owe you.”
When the plane touches down, we rush to the truck and head straight to her house. Her mother comes out of the living room. “Hey,” she greets us, “they are upstairs sleeping.” She points upstairs, so Dakota rushes up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
“I can’t believe you flew back so fast.” Her father comes out of the living room.
“It was easy to get a plane,” I lie to them. I had to beg a pilot to take us back home and pay them double. But I would have done whatever it took to get her home.
Her parents go to the door, grabbing their jackets. “We are going to head home.” Her father helps her mother put on her jacket.