“Maddie.”
Smiling gratefully, I unlocked the screen and read the message. Unfortunately, I was still hooked up to the heart monitor, which started racing when I read the words in it.
“Sienna, what’s wrong?”
Just as the door opened and the doctor came in, looking at me with concern, I croaked, “She told my parents and grandparents what happened. They say they’re giving me a week to sort it out, and then they’re coming to visit.”
Jordan threw his head back and burst out laughing at the same time that the doctor shook his head and walked over to press some buttons on the machine.
“I think it’ll be enough to turn this off for now, and just keep the pulse Oximeter on your finger to make sure your oxygen levels don’t drop still.” Smiling weakly at him, I tried to think of a way to delay the visit. Maybe even forever. “Is this visit really all that bad?”
Rolling my head on the pillow to face him, I tried to gauge his age. He was a good looking guy, with a sprinkling of gray at his temples like Dad had. “Do you mind me asking how old you are?”
“Not at all,” he snickered, checking the placement of the device on my finger that was giving him the readings he’d just mentioned. “I’m fifty.”
“Did you grow up here?”
He was writing something down when I asked the question, but he lifted his eyes to me after it. “I did. Why?”
Perfect. The likelihood of him knowing either one or both of my parents and having heard about my grandparents before they moved away was high, then.
“My Dad is Sinclair Blake, and Mom’s Shelby Conrad—well, until she got married, that is.” At the recognition on his face, I nodded and added, “My grandparents are Arnold and Rose Conrad.”
Closing his eyes slowly, he shook his head before opening them again and glancing over at Jordan.
“You’re screwed, man. I went to school with both of them and when they got together, it was one of the biggest romance stories in the area. After Arnold and Rose’s, that is.”
Shrugging, Jordan said glibly, “I don’t get what the big deal is? I’ve lived here my whole life and was in the same grade as Sienna at school. I used to see her parents around all the time, and I’m sure at some point I’ve come across her grandparents, too.”
One side of the doctor’s mouth lifted in a smile. “Oh, you’ll have heard about them. When you were at school, did they ever tell you the story about the boy who set fire to the science block?”
This story had haunted me at school. Every time I’d had Science, they’d made me sit at the back and my science partner had to handle the chemicals.
“Yeah, there was even a sign on the wall about it.”
There was. In fact, it was still there to this day.
“So, you know the boy got bored while the teacher ran out to go to the bathroom and mixed all the chemicals he could find together?” When Jordan nodded, the doctor pointed at me.
“It was over fifty years ago, so can you imagine the kind of first responders who had to go and help air out the place?”
Jordan gaped at me. “That was your grandad?”
Picking at the blanket covering me, I mumbled, “It was fifty-two years ago.”
“Did you also hear about the woman who got stuck in the revolving doors that used to be at the entrance to the bank?”
Jordan narrowed his eyes at me. “That was your grandmother, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe?”
“They couldn’t get them to move again, so they had to get a crew in to remove the doors altogether.”
Glaring at the doctor, I snapped, “That could have happened to anyone.”
“It could,” he nodded. “But that wasn’t the first incident like that, was it?”
“So they have bad luck.”
“Darlin’, your grandmother was in a fire in what used to be the butchers. When the fireman carried her out over his shoulder, the local newspaper got a shot of her spanking his ass.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but there was a framed copy of it on their wall.
I did a double-take when I raised my eyes to look at Jordan, expecting to find him looking disgusted, and found him smiling down at me. “I can’t wait to meet them.”
He said that now, but he’d change his mind once he did. I just knew it.
Looking back up at the doctor, I begged, “Please don’t tell him anything about my parents. Sometimes it’s better to approach it like a Band-Aid. If you build up the tension before it, you feel the pain of it being ripped off more. But if you do it without the person knowing, it doesn’t hurt so much, right?”
“Right,” the doctor snickered. “Like I said, I went to high school with both of them, so I have a lot of tales to tell if you’re ever interested.”