put families in when they have something terrible to tell them.
‘How long had he been in the water?’
The chairs make the back of my thighs itch through my jeans. I try not to squirm, but as I raise my head, I’m struck by the full force of Rhett’s gaze. I’d never really noticed before, but his eyes are grey, a potent mixture of gunpowder and broken glass.
‘We don’t know. What we do know is Hénri took him to the marina a little before one a.m., and that he was found floating face down by one of the deckhands around twenty minutes later.’
Oh, God. I think I’m going to be sick. People die from being in the water for that kind of time, or suffer life-altering brain injuries. What if he—
No, I refuse to consider the possibility that anything other than a full recovery is waiting for him. Rhett said he’d asked for me, so if he’s speaking . . .
‘Did you call his mom?’
‘She’s in the Bahamas. He doesn’t want her called.’
‘Well, thank you for coming to get me.’
‘He’s got a nasty gash on his head,’ he answers, disregarding my words. ‘And a concussion that’s making him talk shit. There was some discussion of brain injuries after he was resuscitated.’
‘Resuscitated?’ The gravity of his words suddenly sinks in. That means he stopped breathing. For all intents and purposes, he died. What if that had been it for him? What if I never got to tell him that I loved him because of my stubborn pigheadedness?
‘Resuscitated, yes. Keep up. They’re worrying about other shit now. He hit his head, stopped breathing, and nearly drowned.’
‘Your bedside manner sucks.’
‘Good thing I’m not a doctor then.’
‘You’re tellin’ me!’
‘Stop crying, Heidi.’ Though his voice is gruff, it’s not a command.
‘I’m not crying. You are.’
‘We’ll all be fucking crying if he doesn’t get well and get his arse out of here soon,’ he mutters with an unhappy huff.
‘He’s not just your boss, is he?’
‘I’m talking about these chairs. Christ, they’re uncomfortable.’
I angle my head and keep my watery smile to myself when the door opens, and a young doctor in blue scrubs steps in. I jump from my seat like a jack-in-the-box as Rhett stands more sedately, the pair shaking hands before he introduces me as Remy’s girlfriend. By his manner, I assume he and Rhett had spoken earlier.
‘The CT scan results are back,’ he begins without preamble, ‘and they are good. No skull fracture, as was the concern. No swelling, and no signs of haemorrhage or a hypoxia brain injury.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I find myself interrupting because I don’t speak doctor. ‘What exactly is that?’ I get the no swelling and a haemorrhage is a brain bleed, both of which I’m super relieved to hear about.
‘A hypoxia brain injury is when the brain goes without oxygen for a period of time. It’s often associated with serious head injuries.’
I feel relief, but more than that, I’m confused. ‘Was he knocked out before or after he fell in the water?’
‘That is the question,’ he say with a very Gallic shrug.
‘How did he fall in the water in the first place?’ My gaze flicks back and forth between the men, my mind brimming with questions.
‘We think he was getting onto the yacht and the railing gave way,’ Rhett supplies. ‘Maybe he hit his head on the way down.’
‘It is possible that he was knocked out as he hit the water from that height, water being an incompressible liquid.’
‘He means it can be like hitting concrete,’ Rhett adds. ‘Except for the gash to the back of his head. That had to have come from something else.’
‘Like debris in the water?’
‘I do not think so,’ the doctor answers. ‘There was some force to the impact to cause that kind of laceration.’
‘Force?’ I feel like I’m wading through glue, yet my thoughts won’t stick.
‘Whatever he hit his head on, or whatever hit his head.’ This from a stern-faced Rhett.
‘Do you think he was attacked, or that he bumped his head? That he almost drowned?’ Do I sound a little hysterical?
‘To the latter, the short answer is yes.’ I can almost feel the blood leeching from my face and reach out to steady myself by grabbing the back of a nearby chair. ‘This, in addition to the initial head injury, could have caused what we term a secondary brain injury from cerebral hypoxia. In other words, lack of oxygen to the brain. It does appear, however, that the chill of the water may