Page 27 of Falling for His Best Friend

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‘Kitty, can you hear me?’

Joe?

A bright flash of light startled her but as she lifted one hand to block it out it disappeared, only to reappear again a moment later. She felt her eyelids drop and the light went out again.

‘Left pupil sluggish.’

‘Kitty? Can you hear me? It’s Anna Lewis.’

Anna? She was sure she’d heard Joe’s voice. What was going on?

‘Kitty, open your eyes.’

She opened her eyes and saw the ED doctor squatting in front of her. Why were they both on the floor?

Kitty could hear Anna talking to her and she tried to focus, tried to concentrate on Anna’s words. ‘You fell and hit your head. We’re going to put you on a stretcher and take you to be examined.’

Kitty frowned as she tried to work out what was going on. She felt pressure on her arm, someone was wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around it. She turned her head but the movement made her wince as pain stabbed behind her eyes. She lifted her hand to her head. There was a massive lump at the back of her skull and she had a killer headache.

She closed her eyes as bile rose in her throat. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

Someone thrust a green bowl towards her, just in time, and Kitty retched into the plastic container.

She lifted her head as she finished vomiting but the pain hadn’t eased. If anything, vomiting had made her head throb even more. Out of the corner of one eye she could see someone being restrained by half a dozen men—cops and security guards crowded the ED but she resisted the temptation to turn her head to get a better look, not game to risk more pain. She closed her eyes as the pressure inside her head increased. It felt like her head was on the verge of exploding. The ED was chaotic. Noisy and crowded. People were yelling and moving past quickly. She just wanted some peace and quiet. She just wanted to sleep.

She felt the blood-pressure cuff being loosened around her arm. Heard someone say, ‘BP one-sixty over one hundred.’

‘Kitty? I need you to open your eyes. I need you to stay awake.’ She heard Anna speaking to her. She didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t want to do anything. But she forced one eye open, and then the other. She sensed it was important to do as Anna asked.

Her eyes focussed on a pool of blood on the floor next to her. Where had that come from? Was it hers?

And then she remembered.

The baby!

‘Anna?’ She pointed to the blood as she struggled to speak. Her tongue felt swollen and her mouth was dry. She struggled to form even a simple word. Her heart pounded in her chest and she could feel the accompanying thump in her brain. ‘The baby?’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not your blood,’ Anna said.

‘Whose…?’

‘It’s Joe’s.’

Another wave of nausea engulfed her and black spots swarmed in front of her eyes as her vision blurred. She resisted the urge to close her eyes and give in. Joe’s? What had happened? What had happened to Joe? She needed to know how he was. Where he was. She looked around the ED but moving her head hurt, and moving her eyes wasn’t any better. The nausea intensified and the black spots multiplied and were accompanied now by a ringing in her ears, and as the chaos and noise continued around her she succumbed to the fatigue.

* * *

Images flashed through Kitty’s brain like drawings in a flip book, but instead of evolving into something recognisable the pictures were jumbled, nonsensical and fleeting. Too fleeting to grab hold of and decipher. There were snippets of conversation, flashes of light and a sensation of falling but nothing that made sense. Her head throbbed and her body ached. She felt battered and bruised but couldn’t figure out why.

Her left elbow was sore and when she opened her eyes she could see an IV line snaking its way into her vein.

‘Hi. I was wondering when you’d wake up.’ Lisa stood at the end of the bed, having moved into the line of Kitty’s vision. ‘You caused quite a commotion.’

‘I did?’ Kitty frowned. ‘What happened? What am I doing here?’

‘You don’t remember?’

Kitty shook her head before realising that was a bad idea. ‘No,’ she said.

‘This guy came into the ED, high on methamphetamines, yelling about how “they” were after him. He shoved you. You fell and hit your head and then Joe came in like an avenging angel and—’

‘Joe?’ Kitty remembered someone saying something about him.

‘Yes. He managed to distract the guy, to stop him from assaulting you further, but he was attacked. The guy had a knife.’

A knife! Kitty’s heart rate escalated as she remembered the blood. All that blood. It was Joe’s. ‘Is he all right? Joe? Is he all right?’

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