Page 31 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I repeated my words from the kitchen, finding her face in the rearview mirror. She had her eyes closed, but the tension was written all over her face.

“No,” she breathed.

I kept one eye on the road, one eye on her. Maybe it was the street lights at night, but she looked paler. The fuck was I supposed to tell the doctor if she fainted?

“Are you in pain?”

“Can you please shut up and drive,” she snapped, “you’re making me insane.”

Damn. This was the first time she’d raised her voice at me. And she’d told me toshut up, not to be quiet, or to stop talking, or any other polite phrase she could have used to cotton-wrap her intentions.

So I shut up, and I drove her to the women’s health clinic she’d chosen.

Inside, Cordelia handled the talking and the paperwork, and if I hadn’t spent the last seven weeks with her, I wouldn’t have picked up on all the nervous fidgeting. Her hands were constantly moving, but it was slow and almost deliberate. A tug to her sleeve. A brush through her hair. A wipe down her shirt.

Each hallway they took us down, every waiting area we passed, I did a quick scan. The people, the cameras, the exits. Then my eyes went back to Cordelia. Until she was eventually led into an exam room, where I was about to follow until she leveled me with a glare that would have felled a weaker man.

Fine.

I tried to sit in the waiting area opposite, but my feet wouldn’t stay still. Eventually, I just started pacing up and down, my eyes trained on that damn closed door.

“You need to relax dude. First kid?” Some bald guy with a huge grin piped up from one of the cheap plastic seats.

“What?”

“First time father?”

“Sure,” I grit out before I turned back to the door. He said something else, but I tuned him out. I hadn’t made use of that particular skill in a while, but you needed it in the octagon. When you were fighting, you couldn’t focus on anything but your opponent. Right now, that meant focussing on the door that kept me away from Cordelia.

After forty-seven minutes, that door finally opened back up, and Cordelia stepped outside. I automatically did another sweep of her, not finding any new wounds or cuts or bandages, or godknew what the hell I was looking for. Her hands were balled into tight fists around the ends of her sleeves, and her shoulders were shaking.

Shit.

That had to be bad news.

“What do you need?” I asked, stepping up and wrapping one arm around her back before she’d keel over. Where was that fucking doctor?

“Take me home please.”

I swallowed the urge to question that decision. “Of course.”

I opened and closed the car door for her this time, but by the time I got into the driver’s seat, she’d not moved a single digit, just sitting and staring and trembling. This seemed like something those doctors with their fancy medical degrees should have been taking care of.

“You need to-” I cut myself off. She didn’t look like sheneededto do anything. I twisted around, kneeling in my seat to lean over the center console. It was a bit of a stretch, but I managed to grab the seat belt and buckle her in. She didn’t even react when I fumbled with her hair to free it from the seat belt across her chest. “Want to try a different clinic? Get a second opinion?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine medically,” she stuttered, “this is a panic attack.”

“You’re having a panic attack right now?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes again, and I could watch her trying to slow her breathing, trying to get a control over her trembling limbs, but it would only work for a short moment before the tremor was back.

“What can I do?”

“Home.”

“Okay.”

It was a wonder I got us home in one piece. My attention wasn’t on the streets, but on the girl in my rearview mirror. The further we got from the clinic, the less she stirred. By the time we pulled into the garage, her lips were the only thing still quivering.

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