Page 76 of All Mine

“Mr. Carter, do not move,” a woman said.

“Stay down, bud,” Adrian said, his hand on my shoulder.

A coughing fit took over, wracking my chest. I was powerless to stop. The EMT placed the oxygen mask back on my face and added the clip back to my finger.

“Where’s Lauren,” I croaked out once the cough subsided.

“They’ve already taken her to the hospital,” Jonah said. “Her sister went with her, and the other ladies are on their way there now.”

“Stephen was here,” I said before another cough took control.

“We know,” Adrian said once I’d stopped coughing. “Connie from dispatch called me and said you called in reporting a fire, and it sounded like someone jumped you before you could hang up. You were on with 911 the whole time, so Jonah and I ran over here. You’d already gotten in the house, and we found Stephen trying to sneak off, grabbed him, and held him down. I just handed him over to the Sheriff before you woke up.”

“You grabbed Stephen?”

“We got your back,” Jonah said.

I’d never had anyone who had my back before, and now an entire group of people did. Several of them I considered friends. If only I could convince Lauren to love me and take a chance on us, even though her ex burned down her business.

“Found your phone on the ground,” Adrian said, holding up a shattered screen.

“Is he awake?” a man’s voice asked.

“I’m still monitoring his vitals, Sheriff,” the woman said.

An older, balding man in a sheriff’s uniform came into view. “I still need to speak with you, Mr. Carter, about whatever happened here tonight.”

“Of course. Whatever you need,” I said, then turned to the EMT. “Is Lauren going to be alright?”

Twenty-Nine

Lauren

If sleep is essential to healing, then why won’t hospitals let people sleep? They’d poked and prodded me at all hours of the night. Then, my sisters and parents fussed over me the other half. They’d returned from their trip in time to catch wind that Stephen burned down the bakery, and Camden had rescued me, then collapsed. I had some explaining to do about who Camden was, but the rumor mill had already taken care of that.

Even if my brain hadn’t hurt before, it would have then. And somewhere in-between, I had to tell the Sheriff everything I could remember about the day, which wasn’t much in the way of helpful. I’d curled up in bed miserable that I’d lost the town vote when an unusual sound caught my attention, and I decided to investigate. Then everything went blurry when I got to the back staircase, but I’d swear someone shoved me from behind, sending me tumbling down.

But even if everyone had left me alone, sleep wouldn’t have come easily. I wanted to go home, and yet it didn’t exist anymore. The sun rose outside my window, casting golden stripes across Lucy, sound asleep and snoring lightly while stretched across the sofa in the room. I might be homeless, and I’d lost the vote, but I was alive and in a hospital bed nursing a concussion, smoke inhalation, a ripped tendon in my foot, and various bumps and bruises, all because Camden risked his life to get me out. I owed my life to the man who’d also hidden the buyer was my ex-husband. If he’d only told me his client’s name, we could have avoided all this, right?

Would he leave town now that it was all over? A wave of nausea washed over me. The dull ache behind my eyebrows remained steady and may have intensified a touch. How does one process all of this?

A man in scrubs pushed through the door carrying a tray of food. Breakfast. Food held zero appeal. But the doctor had instructed me to eat. The kitchen guy dropped the tray of food onto the bedside table and wheeled it in front of me with a precision that told of the number of times he performed the identical move multiple times a day.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice still hoarse even though a nurse had replaced the oxygen mask with a nasal cannula in the middle of the night.

“What gourmet dish did they bring you?” Lucy asked, yawning.

I lifted the lid on the plate. “Looks like scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast.”

“It could be worse,” she said, sitting.

“You know you didn’t have to sleep here,” I said. “There’s no point in two of us losing sleep.”

“I slept perfectly fine. Besides, if I didn’t, then mom would, and it would ruin her back to sleep on this couch. And she’d spend all night telling the nurses they’re doing it wrong. So, think of it as a service.”

“True,” I said, pushing the scrambled egg around the plate. “Thank you for your service.”

“Eat that while it’s hot, cold eggs are gross.”

---