Page 34 of Second Chance Fate (Hope Falls: Brewed Awakenings #5)

Taylor squinted and turned her head to the side as a bright light shone in her eyes.

Something limited her range of movement.

She felt restricted and claustrophobic. She tried to lift her arm, but that was difficult, too.

It was tethered to something. Her vision cleared, and she saw an IV stand about a foot in front of her.

She tried to keep her eyelids open, but that proved impossible.

They were too heavy and closed again. Flashes of memories played in her head like a movie montage.

She was at the book club. She woke up in an ambulance.

She asked the paramedics for her phone. She told them she needed to call her son.

They either hadn’t understood her or maybe she hadn’t communicated any of that. Maybe it had all been in her head.

It didn’t matter; all she knew was she needed to get her phone so she could talk to Owen. She had to make sure he was okay. She needed to draw on super-strength like the mothers who can suddenly lift cars when their children are trapped beneath them.

She opened her eyes once more and turned her head to the side. A nurse was swapping out a bag of clear fluid on the pole beside her bed. “Owen.”

The nurse bent down. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Owen. My son. Owen.”

“I don’t know where your son is. Let me get the doctor.”

“No. My phone,” Taylor protested weakly. “I need my phone.”

The nurse either ignored her request or didn’t hear her. Either way, it produced the same outcome. Taylor blinked, and the nurse was no longer beside the bed.

Taylor’s anxiety swelled as she attempted to reach the nurse’s call button on the bed rail.

This had always been her greatest fear. Well, not her greatest, but it was tied for the first spot.

Her greatest fear was losing Owen. But right up there was something happening to her and Owen being left alone.

Both the tubing from the IV in her arm and the oxygen tube in her nose pulled taut as she tried to reach the nurse’s call button on the bed rail. When her fingertips failed to make contact with the button, Taylor’s panic peaked and pounded against her ribs.

Her eyes scanned the room as she assessed her surroundings.

Dull, lemon-colored walls; dual viewing windows sandwiching a door; and a red sharps disposal container with a white lid hung on the wall.

She knew exactly where she was. She was in an exam room in the E.R.

at Pine Ridge General. She’d been here a handful of times with Owen.

It was the nearest hospital in the city of Pine Ridge, which was thirty miles from Hope Falls.

As she continued to survey, her eyes snagged on the blurred outline of a man walking into the room.

She blinked, hard, once, then twice, before her vision recalibrated and she put a name to the tall, dark, and handsome man in the blue scrubs.

Dr. Dreamy. Well, technically Dr. Davies, but the nurses and some patients had nicknamed him Dr. Dreamy.

He’d treated Owen on more than one occasion, and she was relieved to see a familiar face. It didn’t hurt that the face happened to have a chiseled jaw covered in stubble and very kissable lips.

Whoa, Nelly. Why was she having these completely out-of-character, inappropriate thoughts about her son’s emergency room doctor?

And more importantly, why was she thinking things like, Whoa Nelly?

She didn’t feel like herself at all. Was she loopy because she was on pain medication? What were they putting in her IV?

“Owen,” she said as she struggled to sit up for the third or maybe tenth time; she wasn’t quite sure.

“Owen’s fine.” Dr. Davies walked to the side of the bed and touched her shoulder. His touch was gentle, yet firm enough to keep her in place. “He’s in the staff room playing Minecraft.”

“He’s here?” she clarified, needing to make sure she hadn’t misheard him.

As she stared up into Dr. Dreamy’s gorgeous pair of green eyes, two became four, which became six as her vision began to swim again. She shut her own eyes, hoping to make it stop. Owen was safe, and that was all that mattered.

She heard a squeaking sound and turned her head toward it. When she opened her eyes, she saw Dr. Dreamy was now seated on a stool staring at a monitor on the medical mounting arm as he typed on a keyboard.

How did she get here?

What happened?

Taylor tried to mentally retrace her steps by following the breadcrumbs of her memories.

She was at the book club and not feeling well.

She wanted to get air. Viv asked her if she was okay, and her vision went out.

There were fragments of other things. Hearing people calling her name.

Waking up in the ambulance. The paramedic’s face hovering above her.

His breath, which smelled like Doritos. She wasn’t sure why she remembered that. Then she was in the hospital.

Her head was cloudy, and she had no clue why she’d ended up in the emergency room. Whatever was going on with her, she was sure a good night’s sleep would fix it. And if there was one thing she knew, sleep was not something anyone got in a hospital.

Taylor sat up straighter in the bed, and the minimal effort it required caused black dots to appear in her vision.

She was dizzy and lightheaded. The hot, needling prickle of panicked tears worked its way up from her chest, threatening to break through the armor of willpower she’d spent years constructing for moments exactly like this.

“I need to get Owen. I need to go home.”

Dr. Davies gave her a look that was both kind and unyielding, a look that let her know immediately that she was not going to be winning this argument tonight. “You’re being admitted.”

“No. I’m not.”

“We’re waiting on a room in the ICU.”

“ICU?” she repeated in a whisper of horror.

ICU beds were only given to patients in critical condition who needed constant monitoring.

Am I dying?

Dr. Davies must have picked up on Taylor’s fear, or she’d spoken her fear aloud. He covered her hand with his and, in a soothing voice, reassured her, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You came in tonight unresponsive, febrile, and hypotensive.”

The only word she understood was that she was unresponsive, but she didn’t know if that was because she was out of it or if he was using words she wouldn’t understand on her best day.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I forget that you don’t have a medical background…

because with Owen and you’re so…it doesn’t matter.

” He shook his head. “When you came in, you were unconscious. Your body temperature was over a hundred and four, and your blood pressure was dangerously low. Your CT, MRI, and ECG all came back clear. We’re still waiting for your blood work to come back to be sure, but all signs are pointing to a viral infection.

We started you on fluids and antibiotics, and we’re going to need to keep you here for a few days. ”

A few days . No. She could not stay here for a few days.

Taylor bit her bottom lip and looked away as fear flooded her system.

The fluorescent lighting buzzed above, casting a harsh glare on everything it touched.

The all too familiar soundtrack of the hospital—the whirring and whooshing of ventilators and respirators, beeping and buzzing of monitors and alerts, constant hum of HVAC and air conditioning, squeaking wheels of carts and gurneys, announcements over the intercom system, staff, patients, and visitors talking, TVs, and sliding doors—all quieted in her head.

The only thing she could hear was a high-pitched ringing as her eyes scanned the room, landing on the clock on the wall, mocking her as the seconds ticked by, marking her worst nightmare.

She felt trapped and helpless. The walls were closing in on her.

She stared up at the ceiling, and her eyes blurred with unshed tears.

Silently, she bargained with the universe, God, or whoever was listening to give her the energy to get out of this bed and walk out.

She couldn’t stay here. This couldn’t be happening.

“I have to go. I’ll sign whatever I have to sign.”

Dr. Dreamy squeezed her hand.

“You are very ill. We’ll know more when we get the blood work back, but I believe the infection has turned into sepsis.”

She watched his mouth moving, but nothing he was saying made any sense to her. The only thing she knew was that she needed to go home.

“I have to go home?—”

“We need to monitor you?—”

“I can’t. I have Owen.”

“He can stay with me.” Caleb’s deep voice filled the small, cavernous room, and Taylor felt goosebumps raise on her arms.

She turned her head and saw Owen and Caleb in the doorway.

Taylor forced a smile she didn’t feel and hoped her outsides didn’t look as horrible as her insides felt. “Hey.”

Owen walked inside the room. “The nurse, Sally, said you were awake and asking for me.”

“I was, yeah.”

Taylor’s eyes met Caleb’s. He remained in the doorway, a disposable coffee cup in one hand and Owen’s backpack in the other.

He looked…serious. He also looked really sexy and hot.

His five o’clock shadow was shadowing, and his eyes—there was something about the way he was looking at her that made her feel tingly from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

Either that or the drugs she was on. If she was even on drugs, she wasn’t sure what she was on exactly.

“You’re the pastor over in Hope Falls, right?” Dr. Davies asked.

“I am.” Caleb’s shoulders were back, and he didn’t look…friendly.