Page 20 of Baby By my Best Friend's Daddy

Aaron nodded and helped me up. I hobbled to the passenger seat with Aaron’s arm supporting my weight. I winced and cussed all the way.

Of all the stupid things I’d done in my life, this was at the top of the fucking list.

Aaron turned the car around and drove toward the hospital.

When we arrived at the ER, it was busy. Ambulances whined outside, screeching to a halt, and gurneys with bloodied patients stormed past me. Since my injury wasn’t life-threatening, I wasn’t tended to right away. After a while, I told Aaron to go.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m a big boy. Go on home to your family.”

After making doubly sure, Aaron left, and I settled into a plastic chair in the waiting room. I propped my foot up. This was going to be a long night.

“Oh my God,” a familiar voice said behind me. “Landon?”

When I turned, Rebecca’s dark eyes were filled with shock and concern. “What happened?”

“Uh… I had an accident,” I said. I pulled my pants up and showed her. My ankle had become an ugly blue all around and had swollen to nearly three times its size.

She was leaning in to study my ankle more closely when she frowned. “Are you… drunk?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How did you get here?”

“Someone sober dropped me off,” I said.

Rebecca’s eyes became distant, her voice more professional. Did she have an issue with me drinking? Why was she so off with me?

“Let’s get you taken care of.” Her voice was cold, businesslike.

“I can wait,” I said when another ambulance pulled up, sirens wailing.

“There are enough of us on rotation, and you need to see a doctor. That could be a break.”

I hated the idea that it might be broken and nodded.

Rebecca disappeared, and a moment later, she returned with a wheelchair. I pulled a face.

“I’m not getting in that thing,” I said.

“The doctor isn’t going to come to you out here, and you can’t walk.”

I clenched my jaw. Damn it, she was right, but I hated being treated like an invalid.

I moved into the wheelchair, wincing and scowling, and Rebecca wheeled me down the hallway to a doctor’s room.

I had to go through the motions—a checkup, x-rays, and another checkup. Pills at the pharmacy for the pain, in my fucking wheelchair, and a moon boot for my leg so that it would be stable.

I was sick of the hospital. My drunkenness had worn off, and I was in a crabby mood.

I sat in the waiting room, checking to see if there were any available Ubers on my phone with its dangerously low battery, when Rebecca appeared.

“Doc tells me it’s not broken,” she said. “You’re lucky. You’ll be off your feet for a while, but at least you’ll heal right. What happened?”

“I had a lapse in judgment, and I believed I was a teenager again,” I said. I grinned at her. “It’s tough to accept I’m not invincible.”

“We all have to crash down to earth at some point,” Rebecca said. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

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