Page 80 of The Ripple Effect

“Is that what it takes to make you s-swear?” I hiccup, dazed and lightheaded. He doesn’t laugh.

Brent and Willow pass us, each of them holding two corners of a beach towel with the dog slung across it. Sloane walks alongside, cooing at Babe.

“I never screamed. It must have been Petra.”

“No,” he says, flat and definitive. “It was you.”

“I’m fine.” I close my eyes again. “I’m young and healthy. No way I’ve lost more than 15 percent of my blood volume. I just need a minute for my intravascular volume to compensate, and then I can take over the crisis response.”

“You’re not taking over. You’re in shock.”

“Classoneshock. Mini shock,” I argue, but he’s loading me into the Mystery Machine, sliding me across the nearest bench seat, then arranging my head in his lap before buckling a seat belt across my midsection. Willow drops into the driver’s seat, flipping the visor down and catching the keys with a flourish. Sloane takes shotgun.

“Look in the glove compartment,” Lyle tells Sloane. “Hand me the first aid kit. The instructions for the radio are on a laminated card. See if you can radio the Mounties on the way. Hospital first, then vet.” He unzips the kit and pulls out disinfectant, gauze, tape.

“Vet first, then hospital,” I correct him. “Drowning is more serious than bleeding.” Gingerly, I palpate my arm. It’s reasonably dry, as I would have said when I was in the ER—althoughmaybe it’s time to drop the medical doublespeak and just acknowledge that the bleeding has stopped. I’ll live.

Willow turns onto the near-empty highway, tires humming as we edge up to the speed limit. Sloane fiddles with the two-way radio. Behind me, Brent tells the dog she’s a good girl between Babe’s occasional bouts of deep, wet coughing. Lori and Mitch must be in the back row of seats.

I haven’t been this tired since residency. It would take hardly any energy to turn my face toward Lyle’s stomach and rest there while he strokes my hair. But there are too many problems left to work.

I pitch my voice low enough that the others won’t hear me. “Go with Babe to the emergency vet. She needs you. Sloane can take me to the hospital, then you can meet us there to get your eyebrow glued. Crap, where’s everyone going to stay tonight? I didn’t think of that; does anyone have a pho—”

A warm droplet splashes on my forehead.

“Your eyebrow,” I say, opening my eyes. “It’s still bleeding?” When I look up, a tear falls from his jaw to my neck.

“You screamed,” he says dully. “I’ve never even heard you sayouch. Nothing hurts you, and you were in pain. You cannot fucking imagine—” His voice tightens to a whisper, then stops.

“I’m okay, Lyle. Nobody died. It’s a low bar, but—”

“I left youalone.” His voice shakes with self-loathing. “Everyone was so afraid of me.Youwere afraid of me. And I had to do something to stop chasing Trevor. If I’d gone after him in a boat… I could have. I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But Iwantedto,” he repeats fiercely. “So I just… ran. I took off when theonething you asked me to do was stay. If I’d only stayed, none of this would have happened. And now you’re sending me away, to the vet. You give me what I gave you. Right?”

I’ve never seen him miserable like this, filled with what-ifs instead of calm certainty. My heart aches for the distance between us, though his body is literally cradling mine. My throat stings like it was me, not Lyle, who screamed the scream that broke the world.

But my brain is a mess, full of chaos and fear and problems without solutions. And if I don’t work those problems, I have to confront what everyone knows: Lyle and I were never engaged, not really. Even if I asked, and he said yes. And I’m no kind of doctor. And our “impartial” celebrity endorsement is coming from my sister, who’s hip deep in this mess now, too, about to be publicly tied to the father she’s spent years trying to evade.

And I’d have to think about how Lyle and I let each other down tonight in the worst possible ways. How maybe we’re not people whose strengths complement each other’s weaknesses. Maybe we’re just opposites who shouldn’t have let ourselves attract.

“Can we talk about this later, once we know everyone’s okay?”

“Sure,” he agrees, not meeting my eyes. “Tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t afraid of you, Lyle. I never wanted you to think I was.” I reach my good arm up to his chin to dash away more drops.

“I know you weren’t. Of course I know that.”

I thought he’d given me everything, but I was wrong.

Tonight, for the first time, Lyle McHugh has given me a lie.

Chapter Twenty-three

It’s an out-of-body experience walking back into Grey Tusk General Hospital as a patient.

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