Meredith would never make anyone feel like that.
“I don’t know,” the surgical nurse said. “Did she come in with you?”
“Yes,” he said. “In the ambulance…”
Her eyes returned to the paperwork in front of her, done with the conversation already. “She’s probably in the waiting room.”
Gray wanted to ask to see her, but he knew the answer would be no. And he definitely didn’t want Meredith to see him now, lying on a rolling bed wearing nothing but a hospital gown.
But if he could just look at her, he wouldn’t feel like this. Like he was going to suffocate, even in the cold sterility of the pre-op room.
Gray closed his eyes and tried to draw in a deep breath, but the tension in his stomach made it impossible. So much could go wrong. In minutes, he could be dead or worse.
With that thought, Gray forced himself to picture Meredith. If he was going to die within the hour, he didn’t want the last thoughts he’d ever think to be ones of fear.
If he was going to die, he’d die thinking of her.
Love, he realized, could distort time and even memory. He could remember the years in his life when he didn’t know Meredith, but he somehow couldn’t conjure a time when he didn’t love her. Now that he knew her, it seemed like he’d always been waiting to love her. Like the solitude he’d built in his life had only been a way to create a space for her to claim.
The thought of losing that life — and thus losing her — forced a wave of grief to surge in him.
“I’m giving you something to relax you,” his nurse said, manipulating his IV. “Then we’ll wheel you into surgery.”
A moment later — or perhaps it was years later — figures approached his bed, and the walls of the pre-op room slid away. Pieces of the surgical theater came at him in flashes. The shocking brightness of the lights above the operating table. The size and faintly medieval aspect of the three-pointed clamp that would hold his head in place.
The bed beneath him seemed to hover beside the operating table, and someone told him to move onto it. Gray obeyed without response or question. He found himself staring up at the blinding lights when a mask was placed over his face.
“This is just oxygen,” a voice said. “Just breathe normally.”
And then…
“Dr. Cates is ready to begin.” The air in his mask changed, and his throat grew warm.
Picturing bayou brown eyes and the feel of her fingers in his hair, Gray faded to nothing.
“DON’T TRY TOtouch your head, Mr. Blakewood.”
Words came from a long way off, and the tightness around his head needed to go away.
“I’ll have to restrain you if you don’t stop.” This time a hand around his wrist accompanied the distant voice.
Okay.
He tried to say the word, but the sound that emerged was more like a half croak, half gurgle. His eyes felt greasy. The world blurred above him.
His lids drifted closed, and he disappeared.
GRAY BLINKED AGAINSTthe fluorescent light. Where was the sun? He needed to get up and feed the dogs, but his muscles held no strength. Maybe he was coming down with something. He still had six chapters to go on the novel, and not being able to work today would suck.
His room was freezing. And why did his sheets scratch like that? Flu. It might be the flu. It was December after all.
Is it December?
GRAY WAS NOTin his bedroom.
He glanced down at his chest to find himself wearing — unmistakably — a hospital gown. He scanned the space around him. Monitors. A bay of patient beds with half-drawn curtains. Nurses.
An ICU.