Page 15 of Chilled and Thrilled

The car that almost hit me is smoking even more now, and its driver is standing on the sidewalk, phone held to his ear. “This sure will teach me, huh?”

They takeone look at me at the ER check-in desk, and moments later, Bram is pushing me through the waiting room in a wheelchair. A pair of nurses meet us in a cramped little room, already wearing gloves and yellow gowns. “She was nearly hit by a car,” Bram tells them, his voice shaking. “I pushed her out of the way, but her head hit the pavement pretty hard.” There’s worry coloring his tone, and something else. He doesn’t feel guilty, does he?

“Hi, Sophie.” An older woman in a white coat slips into the room, offering us a tight, professional smile as she pulls on a pair of gloves. “I’m Doctor Adams. Do you mind if I take a look at your head?”

Bram’s hand finds mine, squeezing reassuringly as she pokes around at the back of my skull, then plops down on a rolling stool to shine a flashlight in my eyes.

“Well, you have about a three-inch laceration on the back of your scalp, and it’s still bleeding quite a bit. We’re going to need to do some sutures, then we’ll get you down for a head CT to check for a concussion. Your pupils are fully responsive, which is a good sign.”

I’m searching for a joke in what she said, something to lighten the intensity of the moment. Nothing comes to mind, though, and to my horror, I hear a sob.

“Is that me? Am I crying?” I demand, turning to look at Bram, who is pale-faced and grave. I blink at him as a startling thought occurs to me. “You saved my life. That’s… the car would have hit me, right? I would have gone full pancake?”

Bram’s throat works, and slowly, he nods.

Oh, hell. Come on. I decide to get over the man and what does he do? Save my freaking life, probably risking his own in the process.

Now that we’ve stopped moving, I can see the blood that’s in his hair, coating the side of his neck and even dripped onto his pants. Fumbling blindly for the purse still slung over my shoulder, I grab my phone and turn the camera on selfie mode.

This proves to be a mistake. I look… Well, I look straight out of a horror movie. Blood is drenching my hair and dripping down my face. It looks like a lot. Too much.

“She’s losing a lot of blood,” Bram barks when the doctor returns, gesturing to me as if she could miss the steady drip of red liquid onto the checkered vinyl tiles. “Shouldn’t she be getting a transfusion?”

“We’ll get her started on a saline IV,” the woman says mildly, as if none of this is even slightly concerning. “Head wounds look worse than they are.”

I sway. “It looks really bad.”

“Then it’s only kind of bad,” the doctor quips smoothly.

The crying starts up again, but I manage a valiant nod in her direction. “I appreciate your humor in the face of my imminent demise. If I live through this, I’ll name my first cat in your honor.”

The doctor, whose name I can’t remember—an issue for my hypothetical future cat—and who is busy opening a bunch of supplies on a metal tray, looks at Bram. “Is she always like this? Or should we be fast-tracking her CT?”

He considers. “She’s always like this.”

I groan. “Am I allowed to kick you out of here after you saved my life?”

“No,” says Bram.

“Yes,” says the doctor.

My bottom lip trembles, and I clutch his hand harder. “I want you to stay,” I blurt out, mortified by my weepiness but totally unable to do anything to stop it. “If you want, I mean. I think you’ve pretty much gotten out of doing anything for me for the rest of your life.”

In response, Bram squeezes my hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”

6

BRAM

There is half a foot of snow built up by the time we make it back to my house, the headlights from my car cutting through a blizzard so intense it’s almost blinding.

It wasn’t a long discussion on where we would go after leaving the hospital. Her apartment is across the city, and my house is only a five-minute drive. One look at the storm raging outside the hospital waiting room had me wrapping my arm around Sophie, guiding her toward the car as snow gathered on our shoulders and in our hair.

The sutures themselves were over quickly, but CT was backed up, and we spent almost three hours watching game show reruns on the tiny TV mounted in the corner of the emergency room.

All afternoon, I’ve been haunted by thoughts of what would have happened had I not come after her at precisely the right moment. She could have died. I might have walked outside and seen this woman who has become so much more to me than she should, just gone.

Now, I can’t let her out of my sight.

---