While he took that all in, he was vaguely aware she made a little cry at the sight of him. Then she was at his side, her hands on him.
She was real. As he realized it, he gripped her, so fast and hard it startled her, but he couldn’t ease up. She was real, her softness, her scent. That scent he’d know anywhere. He wanted to bury his face against her throat, her hair, but he was suddenly way too aware of how disgusting he must smell right now.
“I’m here.” She touched his face. He realized he couldn’t open his right eye because water was dripping into it. She took the hem of her T-shirt, wiped it, and he saw the blood stain the fabric. “You banged your head,” she said.
He must look pretty out of it if she was explaining the obvious.
“Yeah.” He coughed, and then the cough took a firm hold, bucking him forward against her. It made his head hurt worse. She held him, moved around him, showing surprising strength as she shifted him into a full sitting position, back straight against the foot board, which helped him breathe better.
She kept her hand on his shoulder as she pulled her phone out of her back pocket. As she lifted it to her ear, she was standing on her knees next to him. He let his face drop against her bosom, kept inhaling her. She stilled, then her free hand lifted to caress his hair, his bearded jaw.
He heard her calm voice as she spoke into the phone. “We need an ambulance.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The EMTs put an oxygen mask on him because his sat rate was low. On the way to the hospital, they checked his head, cleaned it up. They let Daralyn ride with them, and she held his hand.
At the hospital, they gave him a good once-over in the ER. Found a bad pressure sore that had broken open on the back of his thigh, same place he’d had the stitches not so long ago. They said he had the beginnings of pneumonia. The doctor gave him a firm talking-to, bordering on an ass-kicking, which he knew he deserved. He could have told her everything she told him, and in far greater detail.
“Over the past year, your personal physician and PT have been glowing about your management of your disability and self-care.” She had the tired but shrewd eyes of an ER doc, and was a stout, middle-aged woman with a straight shooter personality he appreciated. “What I’m seeing tonight doesn’t reflect that. Have you had a recent setback, emotionally? Would you like to speak to one of our counselors while you’re here?”
He sensed Daralyn’s troubled gaze on him. Without looking, he found her hand, gave it a firm squeeze. He wouldn’t allow her to think she was the cause of this in any way, because she wasn’t. He’d done it to himself.
“No ma’am,” he told the doctor. “But thanks. I’m good.”
She gave him a dubious look and typed in another note. “This report will go to your personal physician. Depending on your condition tomorrow, I’ll be recommending a follow up with him in a week, so he can check the healing on that sore and verify your pneumonia is clearing up.”
Rory nodded, turned his attention to Daralyn. When they’d suggested she could stay in the waiting room, he’d said he wanted her here. He told himself it wasn’t simple, cold fear she’d disappear again. That he wasn’t worried that her showing up was merely because she’d come home to pack, after which she’d head back to Raleigh for a prolonged stay, or even move there.
All sorts of crazy ideas filled his head, with only one sure answer. He really didn’t want her out of his sight.
She leaned against the wall, her mouth tight, gaze worried. He’d gone over a hundred scenarios for her return. All of them had featured him as a guy in charge, capable of handling things. Someone who could support whatever decisions she needed to make for herself, with no need to be concerned about how it would affect him.
So much for that.
She listened so carefully to everything the doctor told him, he expected she could recite it like a parrot. “I’m going to admit you for the night,” Dr. Halford said. “I want to monitor your oxygen levels. If you improve enough in the next twenty-four hours, I’ll discharge you, but only if you have someone at home