Page 17 of Only You

Figure the shit out, Brice.

I stood at the foot of her bed, studying her, hoping that she would telepathically tell me the reason why she wasn’t coming around from her surgery. As a last-ditch effort, I left and headed to the lab. I needed to collect a blood sample. When I finally reached it, I was happy that the tech wasn’t present. I was going against protocol. Bloodwork needed to be ordered, but I was about to bypass it all. I looked around the small room, reading the labels on all the drawers and cabinets until I saw the collection tubes.

I quickly searched through the vials, finding the ones I needed while also grabbing a tourniquet, vacutainer needle, and alcohol swabs. I threw them into my coat pocket, and then I headed back to Tayla damn near in a sprint. I swiftly entered her room, washed my hands, and then threw on a pair of gloves. Everything I hadinside my pocket was placed on the bed beside her. I placed the tourniquet above her elbow and waited for her vein to show. Once it had, I used the alcohol wipe, opened the needle, and put it inside the vein. From there, I gathered the two tubes of blood.

I slowly retracted the needle and reached into my pocket for a gauze packet and a self-adherent wrap that I always kept. I bandaged her wound and then headed back to the lab. When I returned, I paused because the attending tech was back at his station.

“What’s going on, Dr. Washington? You ordered some blood work?” Ryan asked. I pondered a moment before deciding he could use some extra ends.

“Not exactly,” I said as I reached into my pocket for my wallet and pulled out five hundred.

“I need you to run a drug test on these vials and look the other way. If anyone asks, I wasn’t here.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now,” I said sternly, handing him the vials. He took them and went through the blood testing routine while I waited. Within minutes, he printed the results and gave them to me.

Morphine, Potassium Nitrate? What the fuck?

The results showed that Tayla had near-overdose levels of morphine running through her blood as well as potassium nitrate. I was sure the potassium nitrate gave her the bluish tint because it stopped the blood from carrying oxygen sufficiently, among other harmful side effects.

“Thanks, man. Also, remember what I told you,” I said, leaving no room for opposition.

“Yeah, I got you. You were never here.” I nodded, then left the lab. I ducked into one of the empty rooms and took out my encrypted phone.

We need to get her out of this hospital tonight.

Steph

Whatever you need.

It was after visiting hours, which meant that someone, a patient or staff member, was trying to finish what Nina had started. I had already lost her on the table twice. I wasn’t about to let this slide. My blood began to boil in anger. Shit like this was precisely why I had trust issues.

CHAPTER 11

Tayla

Icould feel little breaths blow onto my chest. My hand instinctively lifted to place it on his back. My eyes opened and adjusted to the sunlight that filled the room to find Bryson’s little body nestled there. He was only wearing a diaper. I sighed in relief that my eyes had opened and no longer felt weighed down. I was also thankful that I hadn’t left him here without me.

What in the hell happened? I know Nina had the one-up on me, but where am I?

I turned my head to see Brice. He was lying beside me, shirtless and as sexy as he’d always been. His hair was tied in a messy bun, and exhaustion showed in his eyes. I was glad that he was here with me. I thought I’d never get back to this place and was saddened by the circumstances that almost permanently tore us apart.

“Hey,” he said, raising his hand to caress my cheek.

“Hey,” I said and returned his smile.

“Bryson, you did good. You woke up, Mommy. I was hoping that skin-to-skin contact would work. I missed you,” he said, then sprang up and went into doctor mode. I kissed Bryson on his forehead as Brice retrieved his stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. He placed the cuff around my arm and began his procedure. While he did, I took a moment to take him in fully.

When he lifted them to place the ear knobs into his ears, his muscles flexed. I trailed my eyes down, watching his chiseled chest and abs rise and fall with each breath. I finally arrived at his waistline, following the V that led into the bands of his briefs and basketball shorts that hung low on his waist. The bulge of his dick was prominent under the fabric that covered it and ridiculously close to my face from where he stood on the side of the bed. I swallowed the dryness in my throat; I’m sure I would have salivated under different circumstances.

Damn!

When my eyes met his again, he was staring down at me. He winked before he continued lifting the blanket back to check my breathing. It was then that I realized that I was completely naked. I was thankful that my baby lay nestled over one of my breasts. I lifted my hand quickly to cover the other. He looked down at where my hand had gone with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

With the chest piece in his hand, he gently swiped my hand away before placing it gently where it needed to be to listen to my heart. The moment his hand made contact with my skin, my heart began to race. My body was also betraying me because why, at a time like this, were my nipples hardening into peaks? I glanced upat him to see if he’d noticed, but he had his eyes closed with his bottom lip sucked into his mouth, focusing on the sound of my heart.

“Relax, Tay, your heart is beating too fast,” he whispered as his eyes returned to mine. I nodded my head and focused on Bryson as he slept. Then he stepped away to get a pair of gloves and put them on. I never saw Brice in this capacity. This was erotic and something out of a role-play fantasy book because he was doctoring me without a shirt. I resolved in my head that what he was doing, he would only ever do for me.

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