Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,228

on her bed.

Ten seconds.

Nothing.

Thirty seconds.

Still nothing.

Clara said you had to work. Just making sure everything’s okay.

Taylor put her head back on the wall and forced herself to wait. Maybe he was eating or not near his phone. Maybe he was taking a shower or doing homework.

After another agonizing wait, she gave up and hit call.

“Hi, this is Greg,” his voicemail said without the phone even ringing. “I can’t get to the phone right now…”

She hit the off button and thought through all of it. Voicemail? Straight to voicemail?

That was weird because Greg always had his phone at least around. Even when he was asleep, which she realized she knew because she had called and woken him up before.

The seconds stretched into minutes, but she couldn’t shake the horrible feelings. Unable to let it go, she tried again, and again, but it went straight to voicemail every time.

Okay, now he was trying to get on her nerves.

She chewed on the edge of her fingernail. He would answer, wouldn’t he? It was only barely nine o’clock. Then again, if he had gone to work today maybe…

The rest of the night would tangle with the questions, waking her up every thirty minutes or so. She would check her phone only to see he still hadn’t texted or called or… anything.

Her dreams helpfully reminded her of him walking away. Walking away. Walking away… Walking…

At two in the morning, she sat up from the dream of the voice singing in the forest, and she just knew it had been the bell on her phone that had startled her. It wasn’t.

She flipped the phone over, still in her hand. “Tay, girl. You’ve got to let this go. It was not that big of a deal.”

But some small part of her kept asking, What if it was that big of a deal? What if…?

The annoying beep, beep, beep, beep didn’t really wake Greg the next morning like it was supposed to. Instead, for a full round of his dream, he simply incorporated it. Not that it made any sense, but…

When he heard it again, he asked without words who was making that awful noise in the middle of the night. They should go to bed and let him sleep. After all he had work at six…

In that second he was fully awake and out of the bed. It was already 6:25. He had five minutes to be at work. And with that, his Friday commenced.

Taylor woke up on Friday morning still asking What if…

Checking her phone, her heart fell. No text. No call. Nothing.

She considered calling someone to make sure he was still alive, but that was silly. If something had happened, she would have heard about it by now. Still…

As Greg ushered one patient out and the next in, he remembered days when he’d been on the outside of that door waiting. Never had he realized just how fast the techs on the inside were trying to keep things moving.

“We’ve got two coming from ER,” Barry said. “I think there was a wreck out on 6th.”

“Great,” Greg said sarcastically. “Hello, Ma’am.” And with that, he brought the woman Barry had brought in the wheelchair into the room.

Sitting in the living area, Taylor did her best to keep her mind on her homework. It wasn’t easy. Every three minutes, she checked her phone again. This wasn’t like him. It just wasn’t.

“Have you had lunch?” Izzy asked at two.

“No,” Greg said, thinking he shouldn’t tell her he hadn’t eaten breakfast either. “Not yet.”

“You need to go eat.”

“What about you?” Greg asked. “You’ve been here the whole day too. You want me to bring you something back?”

Izzy sighed. “Angling for employee of the month again, huh?”

“Just trying to make sure we all live through this.”

“Sure. A sandwich and a power drink would be great.”

“K. I’ll be back.”

“Don’t get lost.”

Greg laughed. “I won’t.” He went out and headed down to the cafeteria. He was so famished, he was starting to get a monster headache. Pulling out his phone as he walked, he checked through his messages. Texts and a couple of missed calls from Taylor. Great. He didn’t have the head space or the time to call her back, and a simple text would surely open up a whole new can of worms he didn’t have the time nor the energy to deal with.

No, right now, survival was the name of the game. Everything else would have to spin on its own for the time being.

Taylor put her head back