“I’m Dr. Morgan. You’ve got a nasty cut there. If you were a player, I’d stitch you up, but it might leave a scar.”
“I can live with a scar. I’m more worried about internal damage.” And how to get blood out of this Kate Spade.
He smiled. “The fact you can string a sentence together bodes well. Any dizziness? Blurred vision? Nausea?”
She shook her head, though that didn’t feel so good. “A slight headache.”
“Understandable.”
Outside the room, a commotion was brewing.
“Where is she?”
That sounded like Banks! He was supposed to be out on the ice, for God’s sake.
“I need to see my wife.”
Without dropping his gaze, the doc called out. “She’s here.”
A wild-eyed Banks plowed his way through the crowd. Shouldering the doctor out of the way—kind of rudely, she thought—he cupped her face with both hands and searched her face.
“You okay?”
“I-I think so. The dizziness has passed?—”
“You’re dizzy?” He snapped his stormy gaze to the doctor. “Why isn’t she getting a scan? She has a concussion.”
“Possibly,” the doctor said amiably. “We were just about to send her to the hospital. She’ll need stitches.”
“Is the game … stopped?” Is that what they did when a spectator was injured? She blinked at Banks, not understanding how he was here. He looked like he was about to explode.
“No, it’s started up again,” he gritted out.
She placed both hands on his chest, but it was all padding and not much Banks. Seeing him in his hockey gear up close was doing strange, wonderful things to her, though that might have been the brain injury. “And you’re here?”
“Where else would I be?”
She pushed but it was like trying to move a statue. “No, no, no. You need to get back out there.”
“They already have my goal. And as I can’t rely on my family to keep you out of trouble, I’m going to have to do it myself.” He turned to the doctor. “Now where’s that ambulance?”
27
It was almost two in the morning by the time they made it home. The lights were on in the foyer, but all was quiet. Over the course of multiple calls, Banks had insisted to his family that they needn’t stay up, and Georgia was glad they heeded his advice. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone after spending the last four hours being prodded, scanned, and interrogated.
She felt stupid. Intellectually she knew that it was purely bad luck that she was seated there, and the puck came hurtling her way. But she couldn’t help feeling that this was one more mark in the column of things that Georgia did to make a bad situation worse. Banks had missed the rest of the game because he insisted on accompanying her to the hospital and sticking by her side through every test. The radiologist had to threaten to call security so Banks would remain outside the imaging facility. (Threats to his sperm count didn’t work.)
He’d held her hand in the ambulance. He’d held her hand as they waited to be seen, only letting go to fill out the paperwork (he had to ask for things like her social security number and her date of birth, but he gave his insurance information because “we’re married”). He’d held her hand as the ER doctor examined her and Banks insisted that a plastic surgeon be called in to do the stitch job.
There would be a small scar, the specialist had said. Banks held her hand through that as well, as if worried she was going to break down in tears at this insult to her classically beautiful forehead. The potential for scarring didn’t bother her, but she liked that he held her hand all the same.
She’d take another puck to the head if it meant he held her like this forever.
The CT scan said there was no bleeding on the brain and that everything looked fine. She was allowed to sleep, but if her headache persisted or other symptoms like nausea or vomiting occurred, she should return to the doctor.
Only when they left the taxi that took them to Banks’s front door did he release her hand.
“How are you feeling?”