Part 5 (2/2)

”Is this Bayleigh?”

My heart stops cold. The voice on the other end of the line is not my fiance. ”h.e.l.lo?” he says. ”Bayleigh?”

”This is Bayleigh.” The words don't even sound like they're coming out of my mouth. ”Who is this? Why are you on Jace's phone?”

”Bayleigh, it's Bobby. From the track.”

Chills. Fear. I don't know what comes first. Bobby isn't just from the track. He's the on staff as a full time paramedic. He's the guy who's always hanging out next to the ambulance, watching the races and diving into action when someone gets hurt.

”What's going on? Where's Jace? Why are you on Jace's phone?” A million other panicked questions flow through my mind but I'm too choked up to get any of them out.

There's shuffling on the line and I can hear road noise and movement on the other side. The next three seconds of silence are the longest of my life. Becca watches me with worry, her eyes flickering from me to the road and back.

He takes a deep breath. I can hear the sirens of an ambulance burst to life in the background. I'm going to throw up and this time it won't be from the hormones.

Bobby's words are slow and carefully chosen. ”I'm taking Jace to St. Mary's. You need to come quick.”

All of the background noise disappears. ”Is he okay?” I ask, knowing as I say the words that I won't get an answer. Bobby has already ended the phone call.

Chapter 10.

After fifteen minutes of agony and begging my best friend to drive more than ten miles over the speed limit, Becca pulls into the u-shaped emergency room driveway. I throw open the pa.s.senger door before her car comes to a complete stop. ”Meet me inside,” I call out before slamming the door closed. My feet feel numb as I run through the automatic gla.s.s doors.

I've never been to St. Mary's Hospital before and the overwhelming emotions flowing through me makes it hard to figure out where I'm going. A maze of beige chairs line both sides of the aisle, some with people and most of them empty. I wander through the chairs of the ma.s.sive room, looking around for a sign that will tell me where to go.

The triage desk is to my left, after three rows of chairs and two ma.s.sive potted plants. My heart thuds in my chest. By some miracle, I'm not crying. Shaking and stumbling over my own feet, yes. But not crying. I will not allow myself to cry.

I stop just short of cras.h.i.+ng into the triage counter and the nurse on duty doesn't even look up at me. ”h.e.l.lo,” I say loudly to get her attention. This is a freaking emergency room. People come here for emergencies and this b.i.t.c.h needs to do her job. My head could be hanging onto my spine by a thread for all she knows, but she doesn't know because she's not looking at me. ”Hey! I need help.”

She looks up from her computer screen, her expression unfazed by my yelling.

”Fill this out,” she says, sliding a clipboard toward me. I shake my head. ”I'm not here to check in. I'm here to see my fiance. He was just taken here by ambulance.”

”What's his name?”

”Jace Adams.”

She types something into the computer. I peek over her shoulder at the area behind her that leads into the rest of the hospital, but I can't see anything. My phone sits silently in my fist. I haven't stopped looking at it, wis.h.i.+ng and hoping that Jace would call me, tell me he's fine and that he just broke his pinky or something. ”You need to take a seat,” the nurse tells me. ”We'll notify you when there's information.”

”What!” It is not a question. ”What the h.e.l.l does that mean? I'm not going to take a seat. I need to know his status right now. I need to be back there with him.”

”Have a seat please. We'll be with you shortly.”

”You've got to be f.u.c.king kidding me!” I kick the potted plant next to me but with its enormity, it just sits there, unaffected. ”Jace could be dying right now and I need to be there. I need to be with him.”

Her eyes narrow. ”You will see him when the doctor approves it but if you continue to be disruptive, you'll be escorted out of the building.”

My back straightens. She might be glaring at me as if she's won this round, but I have too much at stake to keep b.i.t.c.hing about it. ”Fine,” I mutter, turning around. I choose a chair closest to the wide double doors that lead into the emergency patient rooms and sit, only to stand back up two seconds later. I can't sit at a time like this. I check my phone again. Pace. Try sitting and then stand back up. Pray. Look at my phone.

Becca appears at my side. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes since she found a place to park and walked inside, but it feels like it's been an eternity. I catch her up on what happened with the rude nurse and Becca snarls. ”What a b.i.t.c.h.”

”I can't do this,” I tell her. My voice cracks but I blink back the tears and force them to stay put behind a wall that I can't possibly allow to break.

”Bayleigh!” I whirl around and find Ash Carter jogging across the emergency room, decked from head to toe in motocross riding gear. His boots drop dirt onto the s.h.i.+ny hospital floor. Ash is Mr. Fisher's son-in-law and one of Jace's good friends. His shoulder-length brown dreadlocks are pulled back in a ponytail.

”What happened to Jace?” I ask. Ash crashes into me, hugging me tightly. He smells like exhaust fumes and sweat. I appreciate the gesture, but I kind of just want to shove him off of me and demand that he tell me every detail right this freaking second. When he does pull away, his face is stricken with grief.

”He's going to be okay,” Ash says, squeezing my arms.

I sigh. ”Please tell me what happened. I haven't seen him. I don't know anything and it's driving me crazy.”

Ash takes a deep breath. His eyebrows draw together, making me think for a terrifying second that he's not going to tell me what happened. ”We were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around after practice because the track was closed so we were the only two people out there.”

”And?” I fold my arms over my chest. He's deliberately taking longer than necessary to tell me what happened.

”And, well...we were freestyling a bit?” I don't know why it sounds like a question when he says it, but the guilt that falls over his tanned features tells me he's embarra.s.sed to be admitting this to me.

”What exactly do you mean when you say freestyling?”

He stares at the floor. ”We were doing tricks and stuff. Jumping over the ninety-foot finish line double.”

”And he crashed?” I actually manage to say the words without bursting into tears. I've never seen Jace crash, exactly. I've seen him slide out in a shallow turn or b.u.mp into another bike at the starting line and lose his balance. He's never crashed. ”How bad was it? Where did he crash?” My questions fly out a mile a minute, faster and more detailed with each time Ash doesn't answer. ”Is he unconscious? Is his bike okay?”

The last one makes Ash laugh. He shakes his head. ”His bike is toast. Probably needs a good three grand in repairs. Knowing Jace, he'll ditch it and buy a new one. And yeah...he's unconscious.”

”Unconscious?!” My palms slam against Ash's chest. ”You should have said that first!”

Becca calls my name and says things that mean nothing to me because I'm not listening. Oh, and those tears I held back earlier? They burst through my tear ducts like water through a broken dam. Dropping to my knees into the chair in front of me, I lay my forehead against the backrest and curl in on myself, kneeling backwards in the chair. Someone's hand pats my back while I cry ma.s.sive embarra.s.sing sobs.

I can't stop picturing Jace, my Jace, lying unconscious on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. Is he awake yet? Will he wake up? Does he miss me as much as I miss him?

”Bayleigh, I know you're upset,” Ash says, in what I a.s.sume is in the middle of a monologue he's been saying for the last few moments that I haven't been paying attention. ”But getting knocked out on a dirt bike is pretty common. It's happened to me a dozen times and it's probably happened to Jace, too. He might have some broken bones, but he'll be fine.”

I sit up and wipe the wall of tears off my face with the back of my hand. ”Broken bones? Did you see him up close? Was he hurt? Did you see blood?” Again, images manifest in my mind of Jace's unconscious body, now covered in bodily trauma with severed bones sticking out of his arms and legs.

I catch the sounds of a whisper and turn toward Becca, who snaps her mouth shut and smiles at me. She was probably telling Ash to shut up and stop making things worse for my overactive imagination, but I glare at her anyway. h.e.l.l, I'll glare at everyone and everything until I'm sure that Jace is going to be okay.

It really says a lot about the structural integrity of St. Mary's flooring when, after half an hour of pacing the small area in front of the emergency room doors, I haven't worn a hole through the tiles. My friend Hana is here now, snuggled next to Ash in one of the waiting room chairs. Becca has called her mom asking for prayers and I called my mom, but didn't get very far into the call before bursting into hysterical sobs.

I'm rounding past the stupid overgrown fern in the corner when the emergency room doors swing open. A nurse in baby blue scrubs with her hair in a severely tight bun on top of her head steps out and surveys the room. ”Adams?”

”Me!” I shout, running over to her. ”Is he okay?”

<script>