Page 1 of Hold Me Instead
Chapter 1
Charlie
Hisheartattackwasall her fault.
Charlie Harris startled as a muffled alert squawked over the PA system, and then the waiting room was quiet, a cloak of urgency lingering. She crossed her ankles, the squeak of her berry-pink tennis shoes a piercing echo through the chamber of tiles.
She strangled a sob. “Get it together,” she whispered.
Her fingers clenched the crumpled coat on her lap, cool raindrops slipping off the waterproof material onto her palms. She focused on her breath, a rhythmic ticking from the empty nurses’ station outside the room joining the chorus, where a small witch figure on a broom tilted back and forth like a metronome. Her eyes darted around for a distraction among all the beige. A dozen empty burgundy chairs spruced up the small room, cushions dulled from years of concerned loved ones. The only other person in her vicinity was an older woman a few seats down, asleep with her head cranked back on a sigh, mouth open.
Charlie shifted, her veterinary scrubs a staticky scrape against the fabric seat. She contemplated leaving the woman alone versus being the stranger who startles her awake. Considering it might require a physical nudge to the shoulder, the latter seemed too unsettling. Besides, if this woman could manage to rest, surely there was a way Charlie could too.
Leave her alone.
She dropped her face in her hands, elbows to her knees, and groaned softly. She’d believed Daniel that morning—he’d assured her he was fine, despite the sheen of sweat on his forehead and exhaustion etched in his face. She should have insisted he go home, “fine” or not. The week’s busy schedule had clearly affected him, all further hindered by her prearranged personal day. If she hadn’t added time off this week, this could’ve been prevented.
If she hadn’t,if she had,could’ve,should’ve…She could do that dance all day.
Charlie struggled to swallow and traced divots in the armrest with a trim, bare fingernail. It hardly registered that he was here, down the hall, just through the double doors. The dreamlike state of the day had been filled with pet appointments, as though nothing traumatic had happened that morning. As though her boss hadn’t been lying there on that stretcher with an oxygen mask, shockingly frail, rushed out of his clinic by EMTs. God, the helplessness of that moment…
Her gaze fell on the oversized painting in the small room, positioned like a picture window to a meadow. Tall grasses and wildflowers were swathed in golden rays, the colors homogeneous and dulled. It was likely stationed there for years, a totem to clouded hope for anyone seated alongside it.
“You got the time?”
Charlie blinked at her waiting room companion, who smiled back as though she hadn’t been snoring softly a moment earlier.
“Um.” Charlie fumbled her jacket for her phone.Five texts and two missed calls. “Quarter to eight,” she said.
The older woman hummed and shifted in her seat. “Any of the doctors been by recently?”
“Not since I arrived, no.” Charlie quickly scanned the missed calls, one from her mother and one from her cousin, Amber.
“Not even the young hot one?”
Charlie looked up. “Uh…no?”
The woman snorted. “Little bonus I’ve found to hanging around here. He’s a dish. Mint?”
She held out an open tin, a hint of a watch band peeking from the cuff of her shirt. The scent of roses followed her motion.
“I’m good, thanks.” Charlie couldn’t help a small smile as an ache pinged in her chest.
She reminded Charlie of her late grandmother, making friends wherever she went, always finding a way to engage others in conversation. This woman probably agreed with Nana’s motto: “Ask someone for the time or have the chance to provide it.People need one another,Charlie.”
The woman snapped the tin shut with a nod, mints rattling as she stuffed them in her purse, then busied herself with a magazine.
Suspicious to find herself smoothly dismissed—Nana would never wrap things up that easily—Charlie clicked to her texts from Amber.
Amber:Ignore my call, here’s the skinny…
Amber:The Jackass of All Jackasses reached out thru my website. Wants to commission a custom child’s rocking chair.
Charlie frowned, the thought of her ex-boyfriend, Bobby—whose real name was rarely worth uttering—was unwelcome on a normal day, even after four years.
Amber:Should I say no?
Time stamp of twenty minutes later.
