Page 26 of For Her Own Good

“I’m more embarrassed than anything else. Really, I’m fine.”

Everything is buzzy, and my head is filled with a rush. My fall must have looked really bad, but I feel surprisingly not terrible. Almost like I could go back to dancing, though this time away from stairs. Or ice. Yeah, not bad at all.

Lowry looks at me like he doesn’t believe a single word that’s come out of my mouth which he’s always been good aboutnotdoing. “I don’t think you are fine. I can call an ambulance. Or grab a cab and we can go to MGH. At least let me look you over before you get up. That was really bad. Did you hit your head?”

Ugh. I have been fussed over and poked and prodded enough for a dozen lifetimes. I know he means well, but I can’t with this right now.

“I’m fine, really. If it will make you feel better, you can do your doctor thing, but after we get back to my apartment. Please, this is already mortifying.”

Spending a lot of your life being “sick” means you always have a lot of people staring at you, examining you, speculating about you. I put up with it because, frankly, it helps keep me alive, but for anything beyond that, my tolerance for being regarded as damaged is bottom-of-the-sea low.

Lowry looks as though he might argue, and I am not having that. I’m a grown woman and I just humiliated myself in front of hundreds of people, not to mention the man I’ve been in love with for as long as I’ve known him. So I push up off the stairs, finding my feet and making damn sure there’s no ice underfoot to send me flying again.

My bones feel out of whack, as though I had my own personal earthquake, which I suppose I did, but otherwise I’m fine. I’ll be sore tomorrow and probably sport some super-attractive bruises for a few weeks, none of which requires medical attention.

I brush myself off with my gloved hands, wincing when I graze the spot I fell hardest on.

Lowry’s still scanning me as though he could actually tell anything of use with his eyes—although how freaking horrifying would it be if he actually had x-ray vision—and he looks so serious, so very intense. To have that attention focused on me is heady, though I’d rather have it focused on me in some other context—not because I’m a foolish girl who didn’t listen to someone I would fucking love to be my daddy, and as a result, I've fallen on the ice. Honestly, who does that?

“Lowry, I am fine. Let’s go, please.”

He clearly doesn’t believe me, so I spread my arms and strike a pose. “See? Fine. Humiliated but fine.”

“If you’re sure.”

God, he’s handsome when he’s skeptical. I mean, he’s always handsome, but there’s something about the way the crease between his brows gets deeper, the way he looks as though he’s this close to scolding me and putting me over his knee for misbehaving and making him worry… Heaven knows why, but that totally does it for me. Stern, caring, would give me a lecture at the drop of a hat for my own good. Yep, would totally be on board for that. If I weren’t so floaty, pretty sure I’d be getting turned on right now, so probably better that I’m feeling exhilarated instead of aroused.

He holds a hand out to me and I tip my head in thanks. Both for the hand, but also for not arguing with me further. Who knows, maybe once we’re back at my apartment, it won’t be so terrible to have him insisting that he wants to look me over. His hands running over my limbs looking for breaks, palms brushing over my ribs to seek out sore spots, his fingers sculpting around my skull to check for head wounds. Clearly I need to get laid if I’m looking forward to this for the sake of some human contact.

Once I have hold of his hand, I take a step, and…

My knees buckle, the world spins, and instead of holding Lowry’s hand, which was sweetly mortifying enough, I’m now clutching at him while I faint. Fuck my life.

* * *

Lowry

I’ve seen Starla unconscious many times. It was part of my job. But that was in a carefully controlled setting, induced by impeccably measured anesthetic, with dozens of medical professionals within shouting distance in case there was ever an emergency, and there never was. This is entirely different and smashes every panic button I have. She went from being insistently saucy to clinging to me as her legs gave out from under her, and now she’s…

She’s breathing, she’s just passed out. Probably as a result of the adrenaline flooding her body draining away. But Jesus, what if she hit her head harder than I thought? It could be a million things.

Once I’ve managed to get us safely on the ground, I tell one of the gawkers to call 911. I know Starla said she didn’t want an ambulance, but it’s not her choice anymore because this is about safety. You don’t fuck around with loss of consciousness, especially not after a fall like that.

Her breathing and her pulse are regular, but I’m still fucking terrified. There are very few times in my life when I have been as alarmed as I am right now. People think doctors are all sorts of stoic, that we’re great under pressure. In fact, I have been. Gave a man on a plane CPR and didn’t think twice. Simply had to be done. All of my calm, professional competence has fled, though, because it’s her. I’d like to say it was different when she was my patient, but it hadn’t been, really. For a while, yes, and then…

I knew I’d lost professional objectivity the night she tried to kill herself.

She’d been a junior in high school, still a minor, which I was at once painfully aware of but could also forget all too easily.

By the time I got to Harbinson after getting the call from Lacey I dreaded most in the world, Starla was sedated—pale with her wrists bandaged in the hospital bed, her father and Lacey talking while they stood in a corner.

When I arrived, her father turned on me, shoved a finger in my face. He’d been a slim man, compact and shorter than I am but rather threatening nonetheless.

“You were supposed to help her. You were supposed to be some fucking wunderkind. Look at what you’ve done.”

He flung an arm to where Starla slept, and my heart squeezed with guilt. I was responsible for her, this had happened on my watch, but at the same time, he was being wildly unfair.

“I’m not the one who put that razor to her wrist. People’s depression changes, it evolves, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Starla—”

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