Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 132464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“I will. Well, actually, I won’t text you RIGHT after I ask her, if you know what I mean.” He attaches another winking emoji and a muscled-arm emoji.
I chuckle. My brother is such a dork. “Hey, Casanova,” I type. “What’s with all the emojis? I didn’t know you even knew what emojis were.”
“I didn’t until recently, but Sarah uses them all the time. Funny, right?”
I chuckle. What has this woman done to my dorky-ass brother? Jesus God. She’s made him even dorkier than ever.
“Get some sleep, Mr. Emoji,” I write.
He sends me a thumbs-up emoji in reply and I laugh.
“Josh.”
I look up from my phone to find Kat walking into the waiting room, her face stained with tears. I leap up from my chair, instantly twitching with dread. Oh fuck, please God, don’t let Kat be here to tell me Colby’s dead.
Kat beelines to me and, without saying a word, throws her arms around my neck, presses her body into mine, and loses herself to wracking sobs.
Ten
Josh
I wrap Kat in a tight embrace and hold her to me for several minutes, kissing her hair, rubbing her back, my heart pounding in my ears, dreading whatever’s about to come out of her mouth.
Finally, Kat breaks away from me, wiping her eyes. “Sorry,” she says. She pulls me down to sitting. “I’ve been holding it together pretty well for my mom, but seeing your face made me lose—” She suddenly clamps her hand over her mouth.
“Kat?” Holy shit. She seriously looks like she’s about to hurl. “Kat?” I ask again, my skin prickling. I’ve never seen someone react to grief by throwing up before.
Kat takes a few deep breaths and groans like she’s eaten a piece of rancid meat.
“Are you okay?” I ask, the hairs on my arms standing on end.
Kat makes a face I can’t interpret and takes another deep breath. “I’m okay,” she mumbles.
Typhoid Joe across the room lets out a hacking cough and Kat grimaces.
“How’s Colby?”
“The tests came back and it was pretty much all good news, relatively speaking. Broken leg, ribs, and collarbone. Ruptured spleen. Smoke inhalation—but not too bad, thank God. He suffered some burns to his left side where the beam was crushing him, but his turnout gear protected him pretty well. Could have been a whole lot worse. No head trauma at all, thank God.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s gonna be a long road to recovery—lots of physical therapy. But he’s gonna pull through.”
I exhale with relief.
“But the baby Colby went back in to save?” Kat says, tears flooding her eyes. “She just died in her mother’s arms in the pediatric unit.”
“Oh no,” I say softly, my heart dropping into my toes.
“Her parents came to Colby’s room to thank him for what he did to try to save her. He wasn’t conscious so they thanked my parents.” Tears are streaming out of Kat’s eyes and down her cheeks. “They said they were grateful to my brother for giving them the chance to hold their little angel one last time and say goodbye. Oh my God, it ripped everyone’s heart out, Josh. All of us were crying, even Ryan, and he never cries.”
I nod, incapable of speaking.
Kat inhales sharply again and suddenly clamps her hand to her mouth. “Shit,” she mumbles. She leaps out of her chair and sprints to the bathroom across the hall, her body jerking with loud heaves as she runs.
What the fuck? Kat’s puking again? I’ve never seen someone react to grief by puking before—and this is the second time today (the first time being in the locker room immediately after Kat talked to her mom about Colby). Does she have food poisoning?
Typhoid Joe coughs loudly again on the far side of the waiting room, jerking me out of my thoughts, and I share a “this guy’s gonna infect us all” look with the young woman sitting across from me.
After a few minutes, Kat returns from the bathroom, her face pale. “Sorry about that,” she says.
“Do you always react this way to extreme stress?” I ask.
“What way—by crying?”
“No, by barfing.”
Kat twists her mouth.
“Do you think maybe you have the stomach flu or something?” I ask.
There’s a long beat. Kat takes a deep breath and flaps her lips on her exhale.
“Shit,” she says. She shakes her head like she knows she’s about to say something highly regrettable. “Life is so funny. Before today, I thought I had the weight of the world on my shoulders—I really did—or, I guess, on my uterus.” She snorts to herself. “And now, all of a sudden, my supposedly huge problem doesn’t seem like that big a deal.”
Wait. Did Kat just say she thought she had the weight of the world on her uterus? I open and close my mouth, but I’m too freaked out to link coherent words together. Does that mean . . ?