“I think you should go home and be with him. Take it easy for a while, let him take care of you.”
“Are you kicking me out?”
Caroline sighed. “Chrissy, why do you make simple conversations so hard sometimes? I’m concerned about you. You’ve been avoiding me for days. It makes me sad.”
Christine rubbed her forehead. “I don’t want you to feel that way, Caroline. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I want you to focus on yourself, not running ragged worrying about me and the girls. We have Jack. You need to prioritize your needs for once.”
“Speaking of that,” Christine said. “What is going on between you two now?”
Caroline smiled. Christine would do almost anything to avoid a difficult discussion – especially if it involved feelings – even if it meant pursuing an equally problematic topic.
“It’s good,” she said. “He may have half-proposed to me while I was under the influence of drugs.”
“And what did you say?”
Caroline still couldn’t believe she’d reacted so flippantly. Maybe she’d have her panic attack later, once she and Jack started seriously discussing life-altering decisions and whether or not to make them while high on morphine. But her daughters still had a say in the process. “I told him he had to talk to the girls first,” she said. “It’s not completely my call.”
“That’s gracious of you.”
“If you really want, he could ask your permission too.”
Christine bit back a laugh. “So you’ve made up with him?”
“Yes. He’s been wonderful. We talked for hours after I woke up after my surgery. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. I’ll have even more time during the rest of the recess.”
“I expect you to take it easy the entire month of August.”
“That sounds like an order. Are you my doctor now?”
“God forbid. You’re enough hassle as a friend.”
Christine seemed to be taking their entire conversation in stride. Maybe Jack’s talk of a permanent commitment wasn’t all that radical.
“You don’t appear all that shocked that Jack asked me to marry him,” Caroline said.
“I’m not,” Christine said briskly. “You’re good wife material.”
Caroline chortled. “Most of the men I’ve dated would disagree with you.”
“And there are now at least two who wouldn’t. How does your arm feel?”
“It’s fine,” Caroline said, then felt a stabbing pain and winced. She probably shouldn’t have laughed so hard. Christine picked up on it immediately and gave her a distraught look.
“It really is fine, Chrissy. I just have my moments.”
“Do you want a stronger painkiller? Some sort of muscle relaxant?”
“No, I want to wean myself off whatever I was on. I don’t want to get hooked on anything. Ibuprofen works.”
Christine wrung her hands. “Whatever you say.”
“I want to talk about what happened,” Caroline said.
“I don’t.”
“I know you don’t.”
Christine turned toward the window. “I don’t see what there is to talk about.”
“My surgeon told me I might have been in a lot of trouble if you hadn’t been there. Arterial bleeds are nothing to mess around with.”
“No, they’re not.”
“He would have told you that himself and probably said any number of complimentary things to you. But curiously enough, you kept leaving every time any medical professional came into my hospital room, including the nurses. You also left almost any time I wanted to talk to you.”
“Caroline-”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” Christine said instantly, sounding as upset as she looked. “Please don’t think that.”
Caroline stared at her sling. “I know what I did was stupid. I have no idea what I was thinking.”
“It wasn’t stupid. It was fearless. I don’t know how many people would have had the courage to do what you did.”
“Would you feel the same way if I’d left my children without their mother?”
Christine grasped Caroline’s good hand. “Don’t you ever talk about anything like that,” she said in a reproachful tone. “Ever.”
“It was bad, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t good. You were losing a lot of blood. I tried to help you the best I could. I have no idea why that ambulance took so long.”
A question that would never be answered properly. Jack wasn’t particularly happy about the response time, either. Caroline hadn’t really thought about it, didn’t want to think about it, and knew better than to say anything that would set Christine off. She curled her hand into a fist, feeling her fingernails dig into her palm. Pain was always a good distraction from reality.
Christine swiped her thumb over the bandage covering the spot where Caroline’s IV had been, only withdrawing when Caroline finally let her hand