Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
My finger froze on my phone screen when I realized what I’d just thought—until we moved in together. Holy shit. Six months ago, if a woman left her umbrella at my place, it freaked me out. It meant I had an obligation to see her again, if only to return it. And now, I wanted Sloane’s shit in my place. Was I nuts that I wanted her self-help books piled on my nightstand, wanted her wedding magazines strewn all over the counters, wanted her gentle snore to be the first sound I heard each day when I woke up, even wanted her—
Thump.
A sound echoed from down the hall.
“Sloane?” I stood and started toward the bathroom. “Babe? Was that you?”
No answer. A sick feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. When I got to the door, I knocked.
“Sloane? Are you okay?”
But that feeling in my belly didn’t have much patience, and I didn’t wait more than two seconds for an answer before I busted in the door. My heart stopped.
“Sloane!” She was on the floor, slumped into a ball, eyes rolled back into her head as her body twitched—short, jerky movements like someone kept shocking her with bursts of electricity. I ran into the shower, water pouring down on both of us, and lifted her. It dawned on me as I stepped over the lip of the tub that maybe I shouldn’t have moved her. Was a seizure like a fall, and you should leave the person exactly where they are? I had no fucking idea, but she was in my arms already so I kept moving—out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Setting her on the bed, I didn’t want to take my hands off of her but I needed to call 911.
Thirty seconds into talking to the operator, the twitches stopped. “She’s not seizing anymore!”
“That’s good. Medical attention is on its way. Has your girlfriend ever had a seizure before?”
“Not when I was with her.”
“Do you know if she hit her head recently?”
Fuck. Was I too rough this morning and it smacked against the headboard? “Maybe? I’m not sure.”
“Is she a diabetic?”
Oh shit. The alarm! In my panic, I’d forgotten all about it. I hadn’t even led with that information when the 911 operator asked me if I knew what happened. “Yes! And her pump alarm went off this morning.”
Sloane’s eyes fluttered open. I held my breath while she stared into space for a solid minute. Eventually her vision came into focus, and she tried to lift her head. “What happened?”
I held my hand up. “Don’t move. You had a seizure.”
“Where am I?”
“Home. You were in the shower when it happened. You fell.”
She reached up and rubbed her wet hair. “My head hurts.”
“You probably banged it on the tile when you went down.”
“My cell. Can you get my cell?”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“It controls my pump.”
I’d completely forgotten I was still on the phone with 911 until the woman on the other end spoke. “Sir, the paramedics are pulling up now. Why don’t you stay with your girlfriend? You can grab her cell when they get to you.”
“Okay, yeah.”
A minute later, there was a knock at the door. I was glad the paramedics let themselves in because I wasn’t leaving Sloane’s side.
“We’re back here,” I yelled. “In the bedroom.”
As footsteps approached, I realized for the first time that Sloane was still completely naked. “Shit.” I ripped the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her just as two paramedics walked in, followed by a half-dozen firefighters. I was confused as to why there were so many people, until one of the firemen knelt next to the bed.
“You’re Will’s little sister?”
Sloane nodded.
“You’re going to be fine. Your brother’s on a call, so we didn’t let him know because we don’t want his head elsewhere when he’s fighting a fire. But we got you now.”
One of the two paramedics working on her tore open the Velcro blood-pressure cuff. “Low but stable.”
The other guy pricked Sloane’s finger and tapped a dot of blood onto a testing strip before sticking it into a handheld machine. The number fourteen came up. I had no idea if that was good or bad, until the guy frowned. “Let’s give her a gel pack orally now. We’ll start an IV with fifty-percent dextrose in the bus on the way to the hospital.”
Less than a minute later, they were carrying Sloane down three flights of stairs on a stretcher and loading her into the back of an ambulance. I went to climb in with them, but one of the guys held his hand out. “You’ll have to follow to the hospital in a car or taxi.”
The older fireman rolled his eyes. “It’s the captain’s little sister, jackass.”