Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

The third thing on the list was that I was now in the ER, like I’d jokingly wished to be. Tick, tick, tick.

Lastly, I was also on some hella good pain meds now. So, tick, tick, tick, tick. More items on the ‘be careful what you wish for’ list got ticked off.

“Are you sure she doesn’t have a traumatic brain injury?” Jackson asked the doctor as he stared at me, looking worried out of his mind. “She keeps whispering ‘tick’ and laughing.”

“All of the scans were good, Mr. Townsend-Rossi, but Sasha has a mild concussion and an ostrich egg on the back of her head. We’ll keep her in to monitor her and then reassess it all in the morning, but she’s going to need someone to keep an eye on her and help her out at home.”

Aw, the doctor was such a sweetheart. He wanted to make sure I was okay when I went home. Doctors cared so much these days, it was beautiful.

This made me start to tear up. The emotions of how nice a guy he was getting to me.

“Why are you crying, Sash? Are you in pain?”

I think the question that’d get the shorter answer would have been: Where aren’t you in pain, Sasha? But Jackson was as caring as the doctor, and that just made me feel even more emotional.

“She’s got strep throat and the flu, as well as a slight chest infection,” the doctor listed, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched me.

Then, seeing the tears starting to fall, he leaned over and nabbed a box of tissues out of thin air and passed them to me.

“You’re a magician?” The three words sounded like I was saying them over a sponge lodged in my throat, making both men wince.

Placing his hand on my forehead, Jackson turned back to the doctor. “She feels like she’s got a fever—”

“Because she does.”

“Have you given her anything for it? Does she need antibiotics?”

Moving to join where Jackson was standing, the doctor pointed at some things, but I was too busy trying to tilt my head back so that his big hand covered my eyes instead of my forehead. Why? Well, when you’ve got a concussion, any light feels like someone’s shoving swords through your brain in different places. His hand was so big it stopped the light coming through my eyelids, preventing the blades from going deep into my precious skull.

“—antibiotics, and the painkillers we gave her for her leg and arm will help with the fever.”

“Have you called her dads yet?”

Any aversion to light and effects from the painkillers left the second I heard those words. That didn’t mean I wasn’t in pain or high still, it just meant I became a bit more lucid than I’d been.

My dads couldn’t find out about this.

“Her dads?”

I tried to lift my left arm to knock Jackson’s hand away, but it felt like it was weighted down by lead. The other one fairly flew through the air when I tried it on that side, though, and connected against his with a smack.

More pain. Christ, was the end not near yet?

Both men looked down at me, one frowning, the other one with his eyebrows raised.

“You can’t tell them. Please!”

Looking from me to Jackson, the doctor asked, “Why not? We have two gentlemen’s names down as your emergency contacts. We were just waiting to see which one you’d prefer us to call.”

“They’re both equal,” Jackson told him, reaching up to catch the arm that was aiming for him again. “Stop hitting me, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” I snapped weakly. “My dads have been through enough stress and worry because of me. If you call them and say I was hit by a car, they’ll freak out, and then they’ll have to go through it all again.”

“Sasha, you’ve got a concussion, a broken arm, a broken leg, the flu, strep, a chest infection, and you’re in a hospital,” Jackson said softly as he pulled the blanket up over me. “It’s not exactly a paper cut.”

Grabbing his hand in my good one, I squeezed it as hard as I could. Judging by the look on his face, it was weak as hell, but it was like a Hulk squeeze in my mind.

“Please.” It wasn’t a question, it was a beg.

Sighing, he looked over at the doctor. “What are the chances we can call them when she’s released?”

Shrugging, the doctor looked back over at the screen of the machine I was hooked up to. “She’s awake and lucid, no emergency surgery’s required, she’s over eighteen, and she’s asked us not to. We won’t call them.”

The relief that came from those words meant all the adrenaline that’d been powering my argument and movements left me, allowing the pain to fill in the gaps again.