Page 53 of Calling All Angels
“Oh,” she replied, not quite meeting Aubrey’s eyes.
“But you’re right. She’d love them. I’ll tell her you brought them. Okay?”
Kinsey held onto the flowers and turned to go.
“You don’t want to leave them with me?”
“Maybe I’ll come back later,” she said without fully turning.
“Hey. How are you doing?” Aubrey asked her.
“Fine.” Then she did turn back. If the dark circles under her eyes were any proof, she didn’t seem fine. Never very talkative, Kinsey was a bit socially awkward and had never seemed very fond of her. Aubrey didn’t know why, since they’d only had a few opportunities to talk in the months Aubrey had worked at Emma’s company over the summer.
“I know this has been hard on all of us. I know you’ve been working overtime keeping things going. Thank you for that.”
“Everything’s done. I did it for Emma.”
“Well, she’d thank you, too, Kinsey, if she could. That will really mean everything to her when she wakes up.”
“Will she?”
“Will she…what?”
“Wake up? I asked the nurses, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
She gestured Kinsey over to a waiting room chair, which she reluctantly took. Aubrey sat down beside her. “They’re hopeful. That’s what I know. They pulled back on the meds that were keeping her in a coma after her surgery. She’s off intubation. They’re trying to wake her. Now it’s just time. Her leg is healing. If her body is healing, then her brain will, too.”
Kinsey picked off a petal from a rose, rolling it between her fingers. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Yeah. No, it shouldn’t have. We’ll find the person who did it. They’ll pay, believe me. Regardless, she’ll have a long recovery. But Emma’s unstoppable. Everyone knows that.”
“If she dies, then it’ll all go to you. Won’t it?”
Taken aback, Aubrey blinked at her. “I know you didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out, Kinsey, because Emma’s going to live.”
Kinsey blushed, but Aubrey’s hackles were up. Emma’s assistant’s “edit” button was quite different from other people’s. While everyone gave her space for that little idiosyncrasy, right now, Aubrey’s nerves were stretched thin.
“I’m sorry.” Kinsey dropped the bouquet to her side. “I didn’t mean it.”
Aubrey stood. “Okay. This is stressful on all of us. I’m going to go in to see her now. Take care, Kinsey. Get some rest. Do you want me to take the flowers to Emma’s home?”
Kinsey frowned and, without reply, stood and hurried away down the hall.
Aubrey couldn’t help feeling upset. Edit buttons aside, there was something about Kinsey that had always rubbed her the wrong way. Emma had hired her eight years ago, and she pretty much handled the contracts department like a pro. Numbers, details were her thing. People were not. Obviously. Aubrey recalled Emma mentioning that Kinsey had asked her about joining the firm as an associate agent. They both knew the problems with that. Now with that comment, Aubrey wondered if Kinsey was somehow jealous of her relationship with Emma.
Would I inherit the company?What kind of question was that? She was twenty-three with no experience in real estate except what she’d done this summer alongside Emma. No one, least of all her, would imagine she could run the firm the way Emma did. Or that even Emma would imagine she could. But all of that speculation was neither here nor there. Emma was going to live. That’s all there was to it.
At the nurses’ station, she stopped to talk to Mary, the charge nurse. “Any change?”
Mary sent her a sympathetic look. “Not really. I’m sorry.”
“Have you spoken with the doctor?”
“She should be here in the next few minutes. You can speak to her then.”
Aubrey went into Emma’s room and sat down beside her. It had been a long three days, and the optimism she was showing the world about Emma’s condition was not exactly what she felt deep inside. Scared was what she felt. Alone. Foolishly, she’d thought Emma would wake twenty-four hours after the accident, then they could move on, putting this whole awful thing behind them. But that hadn’t happened. The longer her coma lasted, the smaller the odds she would awaken at all. A second brain scan this morning showed that her brain was still working, active even, but she couldn’t seem to wake up.
Aubrey took her hand. “Emma. Can you hear me? I need you to come back now. Wake up.”
