Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
But he hadn’t.
He was still there.
Waiting for me.
“No, really, I’m okay,” I insisted, even if the migraine was making my stomach feel wobbly and the act of just turning to face him made me want to crumple to the ground and cry in agony.
“You’re not.”
“It’s a migraine.”
“Or you are bleeding into your brain,” he said, moving forward and reaching for my arm.
“Really, I don’t need to go.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion, Charlotte,” he told me, and the sound of my name on his lips was doing strange things to my chest. Unfortunately, before I could even begin to analyze it, though, another wave of nausea caught me off-guard as Bael led me around my car and pressed me into the passenger seat.
At that point, I was just too miserable to fight.
I was vaguely aware of my books being tossed recklessly into the back, but I couldn’t even muster enough energy to be upset about them getting scratched covers or bent pages.
All I could focus on was the pain and the way my stomach kept rolling after Bael took my purse off my shoulder, found the keys, and started driving.
The sounds and lights of the hospital assaulted me all at once, making me whimper and press my hands to my eyes.
It was hardly a moment later when I felt myself being whisked up into strong arms as he walked up to the triage nurse and explained the situation.
“You’re going to be fine,” he assured me, sitting me on his lap as we waited for my turn.
I was too pathetic to muster anything but a whimper as I turned my face into his neck and tried to breathe through the pain.
At some point, my head shifted, and my forehead met the bare skin of his chest, finding it overly heated, a sensation that seemed to lessen the pain ever so slightly.
“I’m shit at this comforting thing,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or me. “But the doctors will know what to do,” he assured me. “It won’t be like this for long.”
Sure enough, he was right.
Because the next thing I knew, I was being brought into the back where I was looked over by a nurse, then a doctor who ordered a scan of my head.
I guess I could finally have an answer to that niggling concern about the clumsiness and laughing. As well as the possible brain bleed.
It felt like days in the loud, crowded, too-bright emergency room before my scans came back and I was finally permitted to get some pain medicine for the migraine.
“You are probably going to need to try to sleep it off,” the doctor said, handing me a prescription for more migraine medicine in case it was still going on in the morning, and a recommendation to follow up with my primary care physician.
The pain meds made it, well, slightly less impossible to fill out the discharge paperwork and walk myself back out through the emergency room doors, but it definitely wasn’t doing much by way of making me feel much better.
The idea of having to drive myself home made a whimper escape me before, all of a sudden, there he was. Rising from his seat with a women’s magazine in his hand.
“You don’t look better,” he said as his keen gaze moved over me.
“Gee, thanks,” I grumbled, reaching up to rub my scalp. Somehow, the headache was making each and every hair follicle hurt. Which made no sense, but I couldn’t deny the sensation, either.
“Why didn’t they fix you?”
“It’s a migraine,” I told him, shrugging even though it felt like it sapped what little energy I had left.
“Do they not have medications for that? There was an advertisement for one in here,” he said, waving around the magazine. “Maybe they need to see it.”
“I got medicine. It’s just not enough,” I told him. “I have more for tomorrow when the pharmacy opens,” I added, waving the script at him. “Right now, I just want to sleep.” And hopefully not vomit on the drive back to my apartment. Just the idea of the headlights from oncoming traffic made my stomach slosh around. “Thank you for bringing me here. And waiting. You didn’t have to do that. Let me pay for a cab,” I said, reaching for my purse.
“I’m taking you home. I can get a cab from there,” he said. His tone brooked no argument. And, honestly, I felt so crummy that I didn’t have it in me to argue over what was clearly a nice gesture.
So I gave him my address.
And I let him drive me to my apartment.
Sometime on the drive, though, the exhaustion from the excitement, from the pain, and from the longest day of my life must have gotten to me and made me pass out.
Because the next time I woke up, I was safely nestled in Bael’s arms once again, my face pressed to his overly warm skin, as he carried me into my apartment.