Page 94 of The Dangers of Daydreaming

“Now?” I asked hopefully.

She chuckled. “Okay.”

It was only a few minutes—one or two of them rather painful—before I was in the wheelchair headed down the hall. I looked up over my shoulder at Gram, who was walking beside the nurse. “Can I have my phone?”

Gram’s mouth was twisted in an unrecognizable expression. She looked almost mischievous. “Left it in your room, sorry. But you can have it tonight.”

I narrowed my eyes on her but agreed to the plan. “Do we need to shake on it? By your expression, I’m a little worried you’re going to go back on your word. And I’d really like to call Lucy.”

“Do not question my word, Finn Harrison,” she said as if I were thirteen again, and in need of scolding.

I lifted my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay.”

The nurse stopped in front of Pops’ hospital room; he’d been moved to a new one after waking from the coma, or so I’d been told. Gram stepped inside, holding the door wide for me.

If I had been walking, I would have frozen in place. But since the nurse was pushing me, she pushed me all the way up to Lucy’s side.

She was sitting beside Pops’ bed, seemingly deep in conversation with him. But now she turned to me, her smile wide.

“Alright, which of my pain medications causes hallucinations, and can I have more?” I asked, my eyes greedily taking in each of her features that I had missed so much in the last week.

She pressed her lips together, but the laugh escaped her regardless. “Harrison, you look terrible.”

I grinned. “Well, you look fantastic, so hopefully it makesup for me.”

Lucy glanced up at Gram, who had come to stand on the other side of Pops’ bed. “He’s not really high on pain medication, is he? Is it safe to have a conversation?”

Gram chuckled. “He’s in his right mind. Anything he says is his own fault now.”

“I understand it’s the first time you’ve seen your grandpa in a while, I’m sorry to interrupt. I can wait out in the waiting room?” she asked.

“No,” Pops, Gram, and I said at the same time. The nurse may have said it too, it was that unanimous.

It was Pops who spoke first, though. “I’m glad to see my boy alive and well, but you could take him away for a while.”

I grabbed Pops’ hand, squeezing it and gratefully having an equally strong squeeze given right back. “It’s good to see you. You gave us a scare.”

He nodded. “Don’t keep the pretty lady waiting.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Lucy looked up at the nurse who had tucked herself into a corner by the door and the computer. “Can I take him for a few minutes?”

“Several minutes,” I amended. A couple of people laughed. I didn’t see what was so funny, I was completely serious.

“Keep him on this floor, and that should be just fine. You can go back to his room, or there’s a surgical waiting room a few doors down that’s usually fairly empty.”

We knew the room. I think seeing how Lucy had interacted with my Gram and distracted us from our concerns and fears during Pops’ surgery might have been where I first started to fall in love with her. Or maybe that had happened all the way back in junior high.

She pushed me down the hall to the room in question, and I leaned forward to open the door into an area that was blessedly free of people. I could already tell this wheelchair was about to get in the way of just how badly I wanted to hold her, touch her, kiss her.

“You scared me to death when I heard what happened,” she said, as she set us up in a corner, her in a chair and me in my mobile one.

I grimaced. “I’m sorry.” My hand grabbed her wrist, and my fingers played their way into hers.

She watched our hands, a small smile growing on her lips. But then she took a deep breath, eyes still down. “I’ve been thinking aboutAnne of Green Gableslately.”

“Yeah?” I could tell this was just the start of a conversation. Her version of dipping her toe into the water. My eyes traced the way her hair fell in front of her face.

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