Page 52 of Fragile Touch (Fragile 1)
Cayden chuckled. “I guess we need to give you some more painkillers, huh.”
“It’s more than pain. I can’t tell what it is.” Suddenly her jaw was exhausted. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Cayden shifted from his kneel to a chair beside the bed. She saw machines around her. “I came over to pick you up for breakfast—”
“I missed breakfast,” she whispered. In her fragile state she was deeply disturbed by this, and her eyes welled up. A tear slipped out. “I made you miss breakfast.”
“You didn’t.” Cayden took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. His gaze was unwavering. “You’re more important than any breakfast. I found you on your bathroom floor.”
“It was cold,” Lillian breathed. “I was so hot.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“I threw up. They were laughing and everything was spinning.” The memory of the laughing started to come back, and she frowned.
“Who was laughing?”
“The people in my nightmare. It was so real, Cayden.” She clutched his hand. “I hate when people laugh at me.”
He chewed his lip. “You’re okay now. Listen, they ran some tests on you while you were sleeping.”
“Am I sick?” Please don’t say I have to stay here again, she cried inside her head.
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Something happened with one of your medicines. It was reacting with another one, I think. Your body couldn’t take it anymore, so you shut down.”
“I felt bad last night, too, right before bed.”
Nodding, he gave her a little smile. “That makes sense. I’m glad I found you this morning, that way you skipped out on taking the reacting medicines. I think the bad one was your pain pill.”
“So what now?”
“They’ll give you a new one that does the same thing, without the side effects. That should solve the problem.”
How did he seem to have the answer for everything? Her brain seemed to have stopped working and she did her best to force it back to life. “You’ve been taking care of all this since you found me?”
Cayden nodded humbly.
“What about work?” She looked at the clock on the wall. “Is it the same day?”
“Yes. You’ve been asleep since this morning; you must be starving.” He shifted in his chair and propped his legs up on the lowest rung of the bed rail. “I cancelled my clients today. They understood why. We’ll do a make-up day this weekend.”
“What about Andrew?”
“I couldn’t unlock your phone to let him know.”
“My fingerprint works, too, you know.” Her mood plummeted. “Where’s my phone? He must be so confused.”
Blank-faced, Cayden handed her the phone. It took her a couple of minutes to figure out the details to include in the message, but she typed as quickly as she could and sent the message. “I can’t just leave him hanging like that, Cayden.”
“I didn’t mean to leave him hanging.” When Lillian gave him a sarcastic look, he took her face in his hands. “I really didn’t mean to leave him out.”
He planted a little kiss on her forehead and her irritation broke. “Okay.”
“Good. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.” Her phone rang as Cayden let her know he was going to find food. The phone felt heavy as she lifted it. “Hello?”
“Lillian, what the hell are you talking about? Passed out and in the hospital?”
