Page 15

“You can do it,” Brock encouraged.
“I can’t,” she gulped, ‘I’m injured.” Blackness swirled around her, threatening to pull her into a dark tunnel from which there was no escape. Couldn’t Brock see that she was struggling here?She expected him to say something sympathetic, but he just kept looking at her with that dazzling smile that normally drove her to distraction. Right now, however, it was dang annoying. Why was Brock so clueless about her pain? The pungent scent of chlorine invaded her senses. Was there chorine in the pond? Not chlorine, but some sort of sharp antiseptic. She’d smelled this odor countless times before in the OR. Wait a minute. The OR? She was swimming, not working.
Brock dove under the water.
She waited for him to reemerge. One second passed … two … three …
A white-hot panic pulsed through her veins. “Brock,” she shouted, “stop horsing around.” She got the terrible feeling that she’d never see him again. That he would forever be out of her reach. There was no way she could let that happen. She had to push past the pain. Past the fear. Closing her eyes tightly, she jumped.
She hit the water and went down, down, down like a brick hurled from a tall building. She tried to fight her way back to the top, but the water was too heavy. It sat on her like a suffocating weight.
A faint beeping sound drew her attention. Even as she tried to figure out where it was coming from, the beeping grew louder and more persistent until it crowded out all else. Where was Brock? She needed him like she needed air.
Air.
She was underwater and still breathing. How? Every breath hurt her ribs, but she was at least taking in air.
Exerting all of her effort, she tried to move her body, but it wouldn’t budge. Next, she tried to open her eyes, only to discover that her lashes were glued together. Alarm streaked through her. She couldn’t stay like this … in limbo. Unable to move. Unable to see. She had to fight.
She tried again. This time, she managed to get one eye open. Finally, she got the other one open and blinked several times, relieved that she could now open them.
The bright circles of lights beaming down were blinding. Where was she? A moan issued from her mouth.
“Jules,” a woman cried. “Thank heavens you’re coming to.”
Coming to? What was happening to her? It was like her brain was tangled in barbed wire, and her thoughts were too muddled to make sense of anything.
The woman touched Jules’s hand.
Her brain cleared enough to recognize the voice. “Mom?” she croaked, feeling like her throat was coated in sandpaper. She tried to lift her hand but realized it was connected to something. She looked down, surprised to see an IV line secured in the antecubital fossa—the crook of her elbow. Another was taped across the top of her hand. Her gaze followed the tubing to a nearby monitor beeping steadily beside her. Each note was oddly in time, with the pulse pounding against her temples. She felt the faint pinch of a pulse oximeter clipped to her finger.
A dull ache pushed at the base of her skull, radiating down her neck. The tightening of a blood pressure cuff around her arm drew her attention.
“Where am I? What happened?”
“You’re in the hospital,” Mom explained.
Confusion swirled through her.
“The hospital?”
Mom nodded.
Dad stepped up beside the bed, his expression tender. “Hey, honey,” he began hoarsely and then coughed to clear the emotion. “It’s nice to see you awake.”
Mom leaned over and brushed a cool hand across Jules’s forehead. “What do you remember, sweetheart?”
She searched her brain, which was starting to pound. “Nothing. I don’t remember anything.” A creeping sense of panic coiled in her chest. What … what happened to me?” She took in a quick breath and then winced at the sharp pain that stabbed through her. Her ribs were terribly sore, and her left arm was throbbing. She glanced at it, noting that she was wearing a sling.
The room began to spin, causing her stomach to roil.
“Jules, are you okay?” Concern trembled in Mom’s voice.
No, she wasn’t okay. Everything was wrong. Why was she in a hospital bed? And the pain was awful. She eased in a breath and let it out slowly, commanding herself not to panic. She had to think this thing through in a rational manner. She’d mostly likely suffered a concussion, and several of her ribs were probably cracked. Hence the agony when she breathed.
Loss of memory. Disorientation.She’d obviously been in some sort of accident, but how bad was it?
“You were in a car accident,” Dad said gently.