Page 52 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

Phil

I hadn’t meant to leave Amy behind. At least, it hadn’t been an intentional choice.

All I’d done was focus on putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as possible.

For the first half of the journey to the hospital, I didn’t even notice she wasn’t with me, because the only thing I’d been thinking was I should have been there .

When I realised she wasn’t with me, my initial reaction was relief, because it meant I didn’t have to worry about explaining things to her when I still didn’t know anything myself.

My second reaction, of course, was to feel guilty about being relieved.

But I had to focus on what was happening, because I’d had too much to drink to go back for my car.

Which meant I needed to get there on foot, and fast.

All Anil had said was that Ethel had fallen, and she was conscious and mobile, but he was taking her to the hospital in his van because something didn’t feel right.

I wished as I ran that I’d asked more questions, but Anil’s phone went to voicemail when I tried to ring him again en route.

And it was probably for the best, given that I was so winded from running for the first time in years that he would have struggled to understand me.

By the time I arrived at A Amy had been dropping them in my pockets all week.

I knew it wasn’t the same one as earlier, either, because I’d been piling them on my bedside table.

I knew I should look them up to see what they meant, maybe figure out what she was so desperate for me to feel or not feel, but I’d had too much on my mind to remember.

I woke my phone screen and saw a slew of texts come through, mostly from Amy.

AMY

Where did you go? I’m coming

Seriously, where are you? I’m at the house, but it doesn’t look like you’re here?

Are you at the hospital?

Phil please let me know that you and Ethel and Anil are okay when you can.

There were messages from Chloe, Fatima, and Morgan, too, all in the group chat, similar to Amy’s, asking where I’d gone and hoping everything was okay. Jack chimed in too, seeing the activity, and he must have been with Patricia, as he was offering any help we might need on her behalf.

But none of the messages were from Anil, and the line was moving painfully slowly, so I took my chances grabbing another person in a uniform as they walked past. I barely registered the tied-back blonde hair before I grabbed their arm.

“Phil?”

“Oh my god,” I said, wrapping Poppy in the biggest, sweatiest bear hug. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

But she pushed me off her. “What are you doing here? You’re not sick, are you?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s Ethel. Her carer said she’d had a fall and they were coming here. I need to find her.”

“Oh, I can help with that,” she said, pulling me out of the queue.

The person in front of me groaned. “Not fair,” I heard them mumble as I walked away.

Poppy took me through the triage area and ducked into a room, motioning for me to wait in the hallway, before emerging with a tablet. I tried to look over her shoulder, but she glared at me until I backed off.

“It’s Ethel, right?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“Surname?” she asked.

“Same as mine.”

She stared at me guiltily, and it took me a moment to realise she actually didn’t know my surname. If it had been any normal circumstance, I might have teased her for not remembering it. But I didn’t have it in me.

“Owen,” I offered. “No S.”

Poppy flashed a thankful smile at me then finished typing in her search.

“Damn, that carer of hers must know somebody.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she’s been here less than half an hour and she’s already having scans done,” she said. “Here. I can walk you.”

* * *

Ethel’s back was broken.

After waiting hours for the CT and X-ray scans to come back, it turned out that the “arthritis” we’d been treating in her back for the last month hadn’t been arthritis at all, but an S2 fracture they’d missed in their initial scans.

“It’s a good thing I ordered that angle,” Dr Mulling said, “and that Mr Agha here told me about her back pain.”

I nodded gratefully at Anil, but I was cursing myself.

I should have noticed something bigger was wrong.

I’d made it my life’s mission to make sure Ethel was comfortable and cared for, and yet, whilst I’d been making googly eyes at Amy and playing silly games, she’d been hobbling around with a broken back.

I would never forgive myself for missing it.

“I’m not surprised it’s been painful, Ms Owen,” Dr Mulling continued, directly to Ethel this time. “That must have been really uncomfortable.”

“The jab helped, I think,” Ethel said. “Can’t I just have another?”

“You’ll get painkillers, yes,” Dr Mulling said, nodding, “but those shots were because we thought the problem was your arthritis. We wouldn’t prescribe it for a fracture.”

“So we’ve been missing this for years, since her hip?” I asked. “Why after all this time is it just now giving her pain?”

Dr Mulling frowned. “Oh, this isn’t from that fall. It’s far newer than that.”

Anil and I exchanged an alarmed look, and I racked my memory for when she could have hurt herself that badly.

“When, then?” Anil asked, but he didn’t need to. Realisation sank over me.

“About a month ago,” I said, looking up at Dr Mulling for confirmation. She nodded. “She fell out of bed at night. Then she started having that pain. I just thought it was the arthritis like they said. I figured the fall must have made it worse.”

And it was the first and only time she didn’t know who I was , I thought. At least her CT scans had come back clean, so I knew she hadn’t acquired a spinal fracture and a traumatic brain injury all in one night.

“Now, Mr Agha,” Dr Mulling said, turning to Anil, “you’re specialised in home adaptations, right?”

Anil nodded. “I’m two weeks off my certification.”

She nodded. “Then as far as I’m concerned, you’re the best person to advise Ms Owen and her grandson on some changes that may help prevent this in the future.”

I frowned. Changes? Like, to the house? Anil and I had worked hard to make sure the house was as safe as possible without making Ethel feel like a patient. I was worried anything else would make it start to feel like a hospital, which I knew she didn’t want. And frankly, neither did I.

But Anil nodded back. “I think there’s a lot we can do.”

* * *

I was nothing if not a master compartmentaliser.

And as hard as I’d worked to let Amy build little doors between my compartments, as much as I’d invited her into each one, I knew I’d have to go through and lock those doors one by one.

There would be too much to keep track of: changes to Ethel’s medication, new physio routines to implement, adaptations to discuss with Anil; hell, the binder would need a complete overhaul.

And if I thought too much about Amy, if I left those doors open, I was afraid the whole thing would crumble.

So I tried my best not to think of her as we discussed referrals, went through the discharge process, and loaded Ethel and her new wheelchair into Anil’s big van.

But as we pulled up to the house and I saw Amy on the bench beside the hawthorn tree, it was clear my compartmentalisation was doomed to fail because of one crucial thing I’d failed to consider: just how persistent my girlfriend was.

She snapped her head up as soon as we’d pulled onto the street, watching us as we pulled up at the end of the drive.

“Talk to her,” Anil said as he put the van in park. “She’s a good egg.”

“I know she is,” I said, more to myself than to him. And I did know. But that was part of the problem.

Anil unloaded Ethel and wheeled her up the path whilst I walked directly through the grass. Amy didn’t stand up from the bench to greet me, she just scooted a couple of inches to the right so I could sit down beside her.

“I’m glad to see you’re all alive and accounted for,” she said, and I didn’t miss the bite in her words. “It was hard not to think the worst when you didn’t even text to tell me she was okay.”

It was as if an elephant had sat on my chest. I hadn’t even realised what she must have thought, though I was sure I would have if I’d spared her even a moment’s consideration. “I’m sorry,” I said weakly. “She’s okay. But she has broken her back.”

Amy’s eyes went wide. “What? How?” The alarm in her voice matched mine from earlier, and I felt a surge of affection for her at how worried she was for Ethel.

But then I felt my own fear sneaking in the door behind her, and I couldn’t have that.

There was no space for me to let fear and emotion creep in if I was going to do a better job of keeping Ethel safe.

“She fractured it a while ago, but they only just found it on the scans. It seems today’s fall didn’t really do anything.”