Page 90 of Ellie Hayes and the Himbos
Diego groans, and Maggie shakes her head, turning to Ian and me. “What were you even doing out there?”
The nurse at reception had asked something similar when our disheveled trio stepped up. I couldn’t blame her. Diego’s nose had bled all over my shirt, while Ian was sans shirt entirely, having sacrificed his tee to contain the nosebleed. Maggie found him a blue scrub shirt to wear while we waited. It does not fit him. Atall.
Ian’s eyes flit to mine, and I fight a smile, color rushing to my cheeks. There are several ways to answer her question. We’d started out playing the evening’s activity, which, as per Mark’s breakdown, was essentially hide-and-go-seek in the dark with the addition of the “seekers” being in cars. As one of the hiding pairs, Ian and I were trying to get from the gym to a park about a mile up the road without being spotted and collected by those seeking.
Easy enough. But because there was no telling which cars held seekers and which were simply passers-by, we scrambled for a hiding spot every time we encountered headlights. We dodged countless cars and spent several minutes squatting behind a dumpster to hide from what ended up being a food delivery guy crawling up the street trying to read house numbers.
I give Maggie the basics and shrug. “At that point, Ian’s knee started to bug him, so we decided to wait it out behind a hedge in someone’s yard.”
Ian bumps my shoulder with his. I flush again. Not someone’s yard, exactly. The house had a for-sale sign and a lock box on the front door. And when we realized we hadn’t tripped a motion sensor light, we figured there were more…satisfyingways to enjoy our time in the dark.
I twine my fingers with his. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s one thing to striptease in the privacy of my own room, but seizing the cover of night as an opportunity to solicit my boyfriend with a “How are you?” and promptly going topless was entirely out of left field.
But—I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back—I guess that’s who I am now.
“Sure.” Maggie’s tone is knowing. “And Diego appeared…”
“From above,” Ian offers. I nod. A vibration had picked up in the darkness, accompanied by the bright beat Diego uses for every alert, incoming calls, timers, alarms; the sound has started to haunt my dreams. It was enough to rouse me from, well… my arousal, and that was when I spotted a light outlining a shape among the lower branches of the tree above us.
“He dropped his phone. It barely missed us,” Ian adds. He’dlooked up, too, and as the phone came hurtling our way, he threw his arm over me. A second later, we were rolling, stopping only when we hit the hedge.
“I tried to catch it,” Diego wails. “I’m so sorry! Ellie, I wasn’t watching, I promise. I didn’t see your—”
“Did he even try to break his fall?” I ask over whatever it is Diego is about to assure me he hadn’t seen. Because it was my boobs. And everyone in this room knows it.
“It doesn’t look it,” Maggie says. I don’t know how she’s kept a straight face through all of this. “Probably for the best. The skull is designed to take a certain amount of impact. If he’d put up his hands, he probably would have broken his wrists.”
She nods at her patient. “I’m discharging him. There’s no indication he’s suffered a concussion, but just in case, wake him up every now and then to check for symptoms. Confusion, memory loss, emotional swings. Presuming that’s distinguishable from his normal behavior.”
“Any more paperwork on our end?” Ian asks, approaching the bed.
“Nope,” she says. “Ellie’s got it. You’re good to go.”
Ian looks at me in silent lack of disbelief, and I shrug. “I have photos of all their IDs, insurance cards, and emergency contact information on my phone. It seemed prudent.”
His smile holds that same something I glimpsed back at Firehouse, before Grant interrupted. Something to hang a hope on. He nods at our charge. “Shall we?”
The moment we maneuver him into the hallway, Diego announces in Spanish that he has to go to the bathroom. Ian follows. “I’ll go with him. Make sure he doesn’t drown in a urinal.”
“I’ll meet you out front,” I say, and point to the double doors below the exit sign. Ian nods, giving me the same look, and I remember what he said as everyone had filed into the gym. “So much for not spending a second apart tonight, huh?”
“I’ll make it up to you,” he says, and his eyes go dark. “That’s apromise.”
I’m feeling more than a little lightheaded when Maggie intercepts me at the nurse’s station. “Ellie?”
“Hmm?”
She gestures me closer. I lean in, and she whispers,“Your shirt’s on inside out.”
I look down at my front, the rise of the tank’s seams obvious in the harsh light from overhead. “So it is!” I chirp.
“There were some muddy handprints on Ian’s chest, too. Just a heads-up for later.” She winks. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
“Will do!” I say and continue down the hall and out the doors.
Recognition sends a chill over my shoulders, sapping me of the giddy lightness so completely that I stagger to a stop. It’s not the entrance we’d used earlier, but the main lobby, which separates the emergency room from the rest of the medical facility.
I know it well; countless trips up the leftmost hallway for my gynecologist, then, more recently, traveling down the right for the neurologist. I got to visit a whole separate wing for my MRI, where I pulled up an image of a coyote-proof dog harness for the receptionist; her back patio bordered a nature preserve, and she was concerned about leaving her Pomeranian outside. I wonder if she bought one.
