Page 139 of That Last Secret

Why can’t I move?

A light shining on my face causes me to squint and slowly open my eyes. When I see a doctor with a penlight and Brooke standing over my bed, the realization hits me and my eyes fly open.

I’m in the hospital.

“What happened?” I ask, feeling my heart rate pick up. “How long have I been asleep for?”

“You’re in the hospital, Em. You passed out. You’ve been out for maybe a half hour,” Brooke says. Her words are reassuring, but her tone leads me to believe something else is worse.

“Why am I here?” I ask, slowly pulling myself up in bed.

I scan the room and see it’s just her and the doctor. She’s still wearing scrubs and her hair is a mess. It almost looks like she was just part of…

A code.

My hand flies to my face, and my eyes widen as I stare at her.

“Brooke.” Her name comes out like I’m gasping for air. Like I’m reaching for the truth of a terrible dream I remember having just moments ago before the light and her voice woke me up.

Then it hits me like a brick wall.

Logan.

Accident.

Flatline…

I snap my attention toward Brooke, but she looks at me with a void look, her lips sealed shut as if she doesn’t want to tell me that my dream is real.

That it really happened.

That Logan is fucking dead.

A strangled sob escapes me, and the upper part of my body falls into her arms. She catches me as she sits on the edge of my bed. My shoulders shake, and I feel her rubbing my back to comfort me.

He’s gone.

How the hell am I supposed to go forward after this?

“Emiline,” the doctor says. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this right now. But while you were unconscious, we ran some blood work to make sure there wasn’t an underlying condition to you passing out.”

I pull away from Brooke and use the hospital blanket in my lap to dry my cheeks. I need about a hundred more of these full-size blankets for what’s coming, and this doctor here—who I’ve never met before—wants to discussmeright now. When all I want to know is what the hell happened to Logan?

I nod anyway so he can get this over with, and we can talk about more important things.

“When someone your age who is healthy passes out, we like to run a quantitative blood test.”

“You mean a pregnancy test?” I ask, shocked. “There’s no way.”

“As I’m sure you know, the test measures the exact amount of HCG in your blood and can even give an estimate of how far along you are,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Yes.” I nod repeatedly. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because you’re about six weeks pregnant, Emiline,” she says without missing a beat.

As if saying her reveal isn’t flipping my world upside down.

I don’t move from where I sit.

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