Page 62 of Loving Lies (Granton University 3)

He didn’t care, though. Today, he was being released from the hospital.

Tapping his new shoes—because the police had even taken the shoes he’d been wearing during the shooting as evidence—against the tile, he waited anxiously for the doctor to come tell him he could leave.

The woman in magenta scrubs who breezed into his room, however, was not his doctor. In her early to mid-thirties, she wore her pale blond hair pulled up tight in a perky ponytail. And she was a complete stranger.

But she smiled at him as if they were great friends. “Hello, Jonah.” Then she paused with a slight frown. “It’s Jonah, right?”

“Yeah,” he said cautiously. “Who’re you? You’re not one of my nurses.” After being here for as long as he had, he’d gotten to know who each and every nurse on this floor was. And none of them had ever smiled at him the way she was.

“No, I’m not. I actually work on a different floor.” She held out her hand for a friendly shake. “My name is Samantha. I was sent here by the friend of a friend…” Then she frowned and shook her head, looking a little confused. “I think.” Lifting her finger as if she needed to revise what she’d just said, she added, “Maybe it was a friend of a friend of a friend. I can’t remember how far back the friend list went, but anyway, that’s beside the point, isn’t it?”

Jonah blinked. “Um…”

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I know I’m confusing you. And here I came to help, not confuse you more.”

“Help?” He wrinkled his nose. “Help with what?”

“Oh, right.” She covered her mouth as she let out an embarrassed laugh. “Outside my day job, my specialty is grief counseling. But I’m kind of kickass because I can actually help people with all sorts of emotional problems. Not just grief.”

Licking his lips as a tremble of panic flittered across the back of his neck, he eyed the strange woman warily. “Who told you I had grief?”

With a secretive smile, she shook her head and waved her index finger at him. “Uh, uh, uh,” she cooed in a warning kind of voice. “That’s not what’s important. The true question that needs to be answered, Mr. Jonah, is whether or not you’re having trouble dealing with your grief.”

Jonah stared at her a moment, looking deep into her clear blue eyes. Christ, why did she have to have blue eyes? Just like Tess’s. They were so open and honest too, as if they held no censor or condemnation. They just wanted to help him.

He swallowed down the ball in his throat and gave a quiet nod. You could definitely say he was having trouble dealing.

“My best friend died in the shooting,” he whispered, his voice gruff and raspy.

Samantha reached out and covered both his hands with both of hers. Her fingers were warm, and that look in her eyes was full of the same warmth and compassion Tess had looked at him with.

“Then I can help you. And I will. Whenever you’re ready to talk, call me at this number.” She let go of his hand to pull a bright yellow business card with a red smiley face on it from her scrubs pocket and held it out. “Just call, and I’ll be there. You don’t have to go through this alone. And I understand. I truly do. I lost my husband recently, and it was like losing a part of myself. It’s not easy to get over this, but eventually you can pull through.”

His eyes went moist. Jonah blinked repeatedly to dry them as he nodded his understanding. He slowly took the card from her, and the smile she gave him was so sweet and honest, he was once again reminded of Tess.

“Okay,” he choked out. His fingers closed around her business card, holding onto it for dear life.

Samantha nodded and patted his hand. “I’ll be waiting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I better check into my shift down in the E.R. Talk to you soon.”

She was gone about as quickly as she’d come, her bright pink outfit disappearing from the room before he could say anything else. Wondering if she’d even been real, he glanced down at his hand and opened his fingers to read the proof of her existence off the card in his palm.

He was still a little discombobulated from his surprise visitor when his doctor entered the room. “You ready to get out of here, partner?”

Jonah lifted his face and took in the wheelchair a nurse was wheeling in behind his doctor. With a single nod, he murmured, “Yeah. I guess.”

“Great.” Still beaming as if happy for him, the doctor glanced at his clipboard. “Well, your release papers are signed, and since you said no one was coming to pick you up, we made arrangements for transportation. There’s a cab waiting outside for you. You’re a free man.”

Joy. Jonah knew he should be happy, relieved, ecstatic. But he just couldn’t summon the emotion. He had nothing, nowhere to go, and no future ahead of him.

He could walk, however. Pushing gingerly to his feet, he tucked his new crutches under his armpits and concentrated on holding himself upright before blowing out a breath and glancing at the doctor. His bad leg twinged, and he hobbled like a crippled old man, but by God, he was walking.

“Except you have to take the wheelchair to the front door. Sorry.” The doctor motioned to the chair just behind him. “Hospital rules.”

Hating the sight of that chair, Jonah rolled his eyes but limped toward it and eased himself down.

He took his one cab ride back to the university. A college representative had shown up last week to let him know they’d removed his things from his dorm room and boxed them up to keep them in storage until he could get out of the hospital. Jonah hoped he could find the keys to his truck in one of those boxes. And he really hoped the bank hadn’t repossessed his beloved set of wheels because he was behind on his payment after his lovely stay at Granton Regional.

Just thinking about everything he needed to do to get his life back in order again gave him a headache.

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