Kitty Valentine Dates a Fireman by Dodd Jillian

Author:Dodd, Jillian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chick Lit
Publisher: Swoonworthy Books
Published: 2020-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I knew this was going to happen someday. I just didn’t want it to be today or this year or this decade.

I run from the car. Throw myself through the revolving door into the emergency room. Ask where I can find my grandmother.

The girl at the desk tells me she’s been moved to the ICU and then directs me to the elevator. I can barely stand still as I wait to reach her floor, bouncing on the balls of my feet with my heart racing and my stomach in knots. I’m so glad we never took the time to eat at Bryce’s since I would’ve lost it all by now. Probably at the moment Peter told me he found my grandmother on her bedroom floor.

The nurse who greets me when I get off the elevator is sweet, understanding. She speaks in a low voice while leading me to the room, “Your grandmother has been unconscious since she arrived. It appears she suffered a heart attack while at home.”

A heart attack. At first, I thought this might’ve been a bad fall. Peter hadn’t been too descriptive over the phone, and Grandmother is getting up there in years. Older people fall. It can be extremely dangerous.

But a heart attack? Tears roll down my cheeks, and I can barely hear anything else the nurse says because my grandmother had a heart attack and she could have died—and she might still die for all I know.

What am I supposed to do without her?

The room is small, walled off by glass. Easier for the staff to look inside at the patients who need the most help, I would think. It’s crazy, the things that go through a person’s head when they’re fighting against the impulse to dissolve into tears.

There she is. Lying there, hooked up to a million machines. I have to remind myself to move my feet before approaching her bed. Everything takes an effort. Gosh, this is so surreal. Like it’s happening to somebody else. Not to me.

Not to her.

“Grandmother”—her hand is so small in mine, and my hands are already pretty small—“I’m here.”

The only answer comes from the beeping of machines monitoring her pulse, her blood pressure, all of that. I don’t know what any of it means, the readouts on the screens over her head, but I guess it’s okay. There aren’t any alarms going off or anything like that.

Gosh, she looks so frail in the bed. So … old.

It hurts me to think it, and I know she’d hate it if she knew the thought so much as passed through my mind. But it’s the truth. She looks old. Because she is old. Sure, she’s vibrant and energetic and sharp-witted. She has a dirty mind and an even dirtier sense of humor.

But she’s in her mid-seventies, and I can’t forget it. I can’t let myself become complacent, to assume she’ll always be around.

That’s the thing about being in the hospital. All of the little disguises and masks a person uses to conceal what’s going on underneath, they fade away under harsh fluorescent lights.

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