A Holiday Temptation - Tiffany Patterson Page 0,53
anything until we reach the front part of the office lobby where my desk resides.
“What happened?” I demand, turning to him.
“This morning, Jackie called in. She was hysterical, according to our assistant.”
“You didn’t speak to her?”
He swallows, and fear moves into his eyes. Probably from the lethal tone in my voice, but I don’t stop to consider his feelings too much.
“What happened?”
“Her mother had some sort of accident.”
“Some sort? You didn’t bother to ask what the hell happened?”
“We were all busy getting ready to come over to Townsend.”
“And take all the credit for a project she’s been working her ass off to complete. Where is she now?”
“The hospital, I believe. She called from the ambulance.”
I shake my head and turn to my desk, grabbing my wallet and car keys.
“Mark, where’re you going? I thought the meeting was still going on?” Suzette asks as I push through the door to exit the lobby as she’s coming through them.
“It is. I gotta go,” I say, not bothering to give her an explanation.
“Must be why Mr. Townsend called me up to the meeting,” she says as I move past her toward the elevator.
In my head, I consider the possibilities. Jase hadn’t said which hospital Jackie was on her way to, but there’s only one hospital with a level 1 trauma center, and it's closest to her side of town. I bet my life she’s at Memorial Hospital.
So, that’s the direction I head in once I get into my Mustang and peel off. On the way, I try again to call Jackie’s phone.
“Mark?”
My heart squeezes in my chest at the sound of her hollow voice. I press my hand harder against the hand lever that attaches to the gas pedal, picking up speed.
“Jackie, are you at Memorial?”
There’s a beat of silence on the other end.
“Jackie?”
“Yes. M-Memorial.”
“I’m on my way. What floor are you on?”
“What? Isn’t the meeting still going on?”
“Screw that meeting. All the hard work is done. Tell me about your mom. How is she? How are you? What room are you in?”
I pepper her with questions, one after the other, because I feel stupidly helpless not being there with her. I want to comfort her, but I need to know how to get to her.
“S-She’s alive.”
“What room are you in? Are you still in the ED?”
She clears her throat. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.” I pause and wait for her to say something stupid like you don’t have to come, but she doesn’t. And that makes me press even harder on the gas.
“Dumbass,” I yell at myself as soon as I hang up the phone. Slamming my palm against the steering wheel, I force myself to calm down. I’m pissed because I knew something was wrong, and I waited nearly this entire day to find out what the hell it was. I should’ve been on top of things.
“Jackie,” I yell as soon as I enter the ED and find her sitting in one of the waiting chairs.
“Mark.” She comes to me, and I immediately see the tears in her eyes.
We move toward another bank of empty chairs. “What happened?”
She swallows and looks at me with the most solemn expression on her face. “My mother tried to kill herself.”
Chapter 17
The words make me nauseous as they come up my throat and out of my mouth, but there it is—the ugliness of what I walked into this morning.
“I walked in on her lying in the bathtub,” I say to Mark as my hands tremble in his. “She’d filled it halfway with water and slashed her wrists. There was so much blood.”
“But she’s alive?”
I nod. “She barely made it. If I’d been a little later—” I break off and wipe my running nose with the sleeve of the silk shirt I’m still wearing. “The paramedics said she only had minutes left. She must’ve done it in the middle of the night or something.”
“You haven’t been able to speak with her?”
Shaking my head, I hiccup out the word, “No,” before pausing and taking a breath. “She’d lost so much blood they had to do transfusions on her. They wanted her to rest, and a few different doctors have been in to see her. They’re trying to decide if they should admit her to the psychiatric unit.”
“What do you think should happen?”
Looking down, I see how tightly he’s wrapped his hands around mine. It’s as if his touch is pouring energy into my body, holding me up. Before he called, I felt as if I were