Keith (Hathaway House #11) - Dale Mayer Page 0,26

yourself out.”

“Of course not,” she said. “He’s not answering my knock on his door today, so I’ll just leave him be. I’ll talk to you later.” She walked away. She didn’t really want everybody making too big of a deal out of this, but she was sad at not seeing Keith.

As she got to the end of the hallway she heard knocking and watched as Shane waited at Keith’s door. When he got no answer, he turned the knob and stepped in. She wasn’t even sure what had happened, but the next thing she knew was an alarm sounded through the building. She stood in the corner of the hallway and watched in amazement as several people raced toward Keith’s room, and she realized there must be a problem.

With her heart in her throat, she stood there with a cup of coffee, sipping it, waiting for news, worried that something major must have happened. When others came back out again, they were laughing and talking, so it couldn’t have been all that bad. But she stayed rooted in place until Shane came out.

He took one look at her and walked toward her rapidly. Reaching her, he touched her shoulder. “He’s fine,” he said. “He’s just fine.”

She took several slow, deep breaths. “What happened?”

“It looks like he tried to get out of bed and fell.”

She frowned. “And the door closed?”

“I think he was trying to get into the wheelchair, and it skittered away and likely caught the door and closed it because the wheelchair was up against the door.”

She nodded slowly. “And he’s okay?”

“He hit his head when he went down. When I went in, he was just coming out of it. So he’s completely off the schedule today with orders not to leave the bed, so all meals need to be delivered.”

“Of course,” she said, quietly staring at the room behind him. “Now I feel really bad. What if he was already on the floor at five o’clock this morning?”

“No,” Shane said, “that wouldn’t have happened. He’d probably just fallen back to sleep.”

“Maybe.” Then it wasn’t just her who went to his room. Orderlies and nurses did any number of routine checks all throughout the day and night. “Do you think it’s okay if I go in and see him?”

“I think so,” he said thoughtfully. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

The two of them walked to Keith’s room. The door was open now, and Keith was lying in bed, looking a little worse for wear. He looked up, saw her, and frowned.

“I knocked on the door,” she said, “and you didn’t answer. I was terrified something was wrong.”

“Are you the reason that Shane found me?”

She shook her head. “I did tell him, but he was already at the door, looking for you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Apparently I was trying to walk before I can crawl.” He shook his head and turned to face the window.

“And I forgot to bring you coffee, so I was bringing this one,” she said, “and then I just drank it because it was getting cold.” At that point, she stared lamely down at the empty cup.

Hearing a whisper of sound, she turned to see Shane heading out, talking on his phone as he walked. She looked over at Keith. “Can I bring you another cup?”

He looked at her in surprise. “I was coming down to get a cup. I failed at that too.”

She looked at him for a long moment, nodded, and said, “You know what? The thing is, when we fail, we still have to get up and try again.”

“Not for a day or two,” he said. “Apparently I’m confined to bed right now anyway.”

“I’ll get you a cup of coffee,” she said. “It sounds like you could use it.” And before she left, she said, “Remember that you tried. Even if you did fail, at least you tried.” And, with that, she turned and left.

It should matter that he tried, but somehow the failure seemed to be the bigger part of this. Keith wasn’t even sure how it happened. He had straightened, had slipped off the bed, and had suddenly gotten dizzy, grabbed for the bed rail in order to stop himself from falling, but the chair, the bed, and the table had shifted, and he’d gone down. Even his attempt to save himself had been a disaster, as he caught his own foot going down, and he’d hit his head. The fact that he’d knocked himself out was something he didn’t want to