After getting a negative shake of the head, she did some fancy things with the iPad on the bedside table and scanned the antibiotics barcode followed shortly by the hospital bracelet I’d gotten at the doctor’s office earlier that morning.
She then hung up the meds—that had to have been in here waiting for me since I hadn’t seen her carry anything back with her—and got me started.
Once I was hooked up, she directed me to lay back.
“You can go to the bathroom. You can get up and walk around if you so please. You can also come to the nurses’ station if you need something to drink—but I really don’t have any time to spare. I have thirty patients and four nurses so…”
I was understanding exactly what she was saying.
I’d been fit in, and by being fit in, I’d have to make do with the accommodations.
“Fine with me,” I shrugged.
Tiffy nodded once. “Good. If you start to feel poorly, or you think something’s wrong, you’ll have to call the cell number that was given to you. Or yell. Yelling will likely get you a slower response though since we can’t really hear you all the way back here. Any questions?”
“No, ma’am,” I denied.
She narrowed her eyes. “All right, well, see you in about four hours, hopefully.”
With that, she turned and left, but came to an abrupt halt when she nearly ran face first into Landry.
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there,” Tiffy said to Landry.
Landry gave her a small smile. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to sneak in or anything.”
Tiffy waved it away. “These floors they have down to keep the ones beneath from being ruined are magical. I need to get some put in at my own place to keep my dog’s wanderings in the middle of the night from waking me up. Bye.”
With that she skirted around Landry and left, leaving us both watching each other in surprise.
“Abrupt, isn’t she?” Landry teased.
I grinned. “A little bit.”
I wouldn’t ask what she was doing here.
I knew why she was there, just as well as I knew why I’d wanted to ask her to come with me and didn’t.
I loved her, and I wanted her to be with me.
It didn’t matter whether I was at home watching TV, at a club party, or in the damn hospital getting IV antibiotics. I wanted her with me, and I wouldn’t apologize for that.
“Come here,” I ordered.
She did, walking farther into the room.
Stepping over the large extension cords and tools that were piled up in the middle of the room—it looked like the nurses had done a cursory effort to clean the room up before they’d allowed me in here—she came to my side.
Her eyes automatically looked around the room, and she frowned.
“I was going to stay, but there’s not a chair to sit in—not even one of the uncomfortable ones.” She looked so forlorn that it took me a lot longer to come up with a solution than it probably should have.
“Sit with me,” I said. “The bed’s big enough.”
She looked pointedly at the really small bed—at least it was ‘small’ when I was in it.
I was not a small man by any means, but we’d made it work before.
“Come on,” I urged, scooting over until I was on the very edge. It left her about ten inches to lay her body—and even more, if she draped herself over me. “We’ve done this before.”
Her eyes lit, and a smile curved up the corner of her mouth. “We have, haven’t we?”
Yes, we had.
It’d been one very memorable camping trip.
As she dropped all of her stuff on the table next to mine and shed the t-shirt she was wearing that left her in only a camisole, I started to talk about my memories.
“My favorite thing about that night was your hair…”
***
“Omg, this was the worst idea ever!” Landry cried from the seat behind me.
I turned and looked at her over my shoulder, nearly choking when I saw what she was referring to.
Her hair had been wet before she’d left the house, and since the helmet had covered the top of her head, it was still damp. The bottom of her hair, however, was not.
Now, looking at her without the helmet on, I nearly laughed.
The top of her hair was curly from about her ears up. Now, the bottom? Well, it was straight as a board from the wind whipping through it on our five-hour bike ride.
“Don’t laugh,” she growled.
I held up my hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again.”
She rolled her eyes and tried to smooth the hair into something presentable, but ultimately decided that she would just put it up into a bun on the top of her head. Which, I had to agree was likely the best option at that point in time. Without a way to wet her hair down and start over, it was going to stay in its weird state.