Page 28 of Wreck Me

He sat back in his chair, which he must have pulled from her second bedroom, with a relieved-sounding sigh. “You tell me. About an hour ago, I found you on the kitchen floor, practically passed out.”

“Practically?”

“Well, you were mumbling things…” His voice trailed off and an odd look crossed his face.

That didn't sound good. “What things?”

He glanced away. “Oh, it was hard to make out. Didn’t really make much sense.”

‘Much sense’ was different than ‘no sense,’ but Ginny decided to discuss that with him in greater detail later. She had more pressing questions. “How did I get in here then?”

“I carried you.”

She tried to wiggle her feet and was rewarded with a lance of pain. “Oof. My right ankle.”

“By the look of it, it must hurt. Can you remember why?”

The previous evening’s antics flooded back to her. “One of the dogs. I don’t know which one. I was heading to bed, and I tripped over it in the dark.”

His brown eyes widened in alarm. “You were on the kitchen floor all night?”

She shook her head as she wriggled herself a little more upright on the pillow. “No. I fell in here. I think I managed to get into bed. But in the morning, the dogs were demanding to go out.” She wrinkled her nose. “I kind of remember crawling. I had taken a lot of cold medicine and a strong antihistamine, and that combination can make me woozy for hours. I don’t think I fell again, but I must have sat down on the kitchen floor and fallen asleep.”

“You were woozy alright.” He pointed to her foot, his tone earnest. “Your ankle looks bruised and a little swollen, but not too bad. Probably just a sprain, but I didn’t want to test it until you woke up.”

“Test it?”

“In college I did EMT training. Did some volunteering with the hospital ambulance crew. I can check it now if you like, give you my quasi-professional opinion?”

She winced in anticipatory pain. “Will it hurt?”

“I’ll be gentle.” He moved toward the foot of the bed and crouched down, then folded the quilt back, exposing her legs from below the knees.

Ginny got her elbows under her and raised her head for a better view of what he was up to down there, but she soon regretted it. He was staring so intensely at her ankle it reminded her of the way an eagle stares at the fish it’s about to dismember. The pain she’d felt a minute earlier when she’d tried to move her foot was still farm-fresh in her mind. Did he really know what he was doing? She extended a flat palm toward him in a “stop” gesture. “Hold on, Hippocrates. Shouldn’t I see your EMT qualifications or something?”

He looked up at her, brows knitted in confusion. “Like a card? I have my CPR card. Do you want to see that? I’m not planning to do mouth-to-ankle resuscitation.”

She felt silly. He was just going to check her ankle. “Uh…no. That’s okay.”

He hovered his hands over her lower leg. “So, I have your permission?”

She thought fast. “Sure, but maybe the dogs need to go out first?”

“I put them out right after I got you settled in here. They’re in the side yard.” He rubbed his hands together as if trying to warm them, then reached toward her leg a second time.

“But they need to be fed, too,” she blurted, “and you probably don’t know where their food is.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “Cupboard to the left of the fridge.”

She nodded. He reached a third time toward her leg.

She sucked in a loud breath. “Um…how about some tea? Some soothing tea is always nice before medical procedures.”

His shoulders slumped and his hands dropped to the mattress on either side of her feet. “What happened to Ms. I-don’t-have-any-weak-spots? I watched you heft a forty-pound movie projector over your head like it was an armful of cotton candy, and now you’re scared to let someone touch your leg that probably isn’t even broken?”

She let out a nervous laugh. “I…have a phobia of physical pain. Like, pain doesn’t really bother me when I experience it—just the fear of it does.”

He rubbed his chin and nodded, thinking. “Okay. Well, what might make it easier?”

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