Page 93 of The King of Halloween
“RAJ…?”
There wasn’t any blood on the pavement, thank god, but Raj didn’t move. The float carried on without Adam. He tossed the pumpkin head off, where it rolled around until hitting a shin. People were advancing, everyone concerned about the man who had appeared out of nowhere and screamed at Adam.
He’d feared he wouldn’t take his help well, but he didn’t expect this. “Give him some air. Is anyone a doctor?” Adam shouted.
A sliver of brown peeked between Raj’s eyelids. Then he groaned.
“You scared me half to—” Adam began to chastise him when two people grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him back.
“We’ve got this. Sir, can you tell me your name?”
The crowd pulled in around Adam, tugging him farther away from Raj while the two medics attended to him. All he could do was watch and hope that everything was okay. By the time they got Raj to his feet, a lot of the crowd had dispersed. The parade was over, and there wasn’t a lot of fun to be found in testing a man for a concussion.
After hefting Raj off the ground, the two medics moved his limp body toward the nurse station near the fairgrounds. As they were able to use a golf cart, and Adam had to rely on his feet, it took him an extra ten minutes to get there. And so he stood outside the tent, nervously watching the people celebrating Halloween, uncertain of what to do.
“Hey, aren’t you the Pumpkin King guy?” a younger man called out, then he mimicked having the huge pumpkin on his head.
“That’s me.” Adam forced on a smile while doing his best to not panic.
“Where’s your hat?”
Probably trampled by hundreds of tourist feet. The Jaycees were going to drain him dry once they found out.We managed to keep that head for over ten years. You destroyed two of them in one month! Rabble, rabble, rabble.
Adam glanced through the white canvas. There was no door, so he could just make out a privacy screen and a silhouette of people crowded around the bed.What if I killed him? What if he was so mad at me that he had a stroke right in front of me?
He hadn’t even been sure his plan had worked. He’d been bracing for either an angry or ecstatic call from Raj for a week. But time kept passing. He was always busy, and nothing really changed.
“I missed you. Help me, it sounds so trite to be this needy, but my world was empty without you. Just…be okay. Please. I don’t care if you hate me as long as you’re okay.”
“Mr. Stein?”
He jerked up, shocked to feel moisture lingering on his eyelashes. “Yes?” Adam blinked, and a dark-haired woman came into focus. It took a few more seconds before he recognized her as one of the nurses who’d helped with his dad in the end. “Sorry, hi, Poppy.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yep. I just, was worried about the guy who came in here. Is he…? That was a hard fall.”
“I’m sorry, Adam, but that’s—”
“I know, you can’t tell me anything. I was just hoping…”
She smiled, then pulled on the gap in the privacy sheet. “Why don’t you go on in and say hi?”
Just say hi. Like it was that easy. How could he be so stupid? Raj told him not to help. He knew better. Private people didn’t like others getting involved in their business.
Adam took another peek through the curtain. The nurses had all left. With no one by his side, Raj looked as lonely as a polar bear on a floating iceberg. “Thanks,” he said to Poppy.
“How’s your mom?”
“Active in everyone’s business as always,” Adam said with a laugh.
“Her mission always seemed to be to make everyone’s day brighter. I guess that’s where you get it from.”
Do I?If anything, Adam was an instigator, a troublemaker, a man of mischief who couldn’t stop prying where he wasn’t wanted.He’s gonna be so mad at me.
His steps were so heavy that he nearly dragged them on the ground. No ominous beeps or an intercom were cutting in with a threat of someone coding, but he still felt the same throat-clenching fear of a hospital. So help him, if Raj had hurt himself, he’d…he’d stew for days, then call him a name.
At the curtain, Adam raised his fist and took a deep breath.What do I do now? Should I knock? There isn’t a door, so…
