NICE GIRL TO LOVE (THE COMPLETE THREE-BOOK COLLECTION)(72)

“Hey Sky-bug, how’re you feeling today?”

She shrugged and stared off at the wall, mumbling, “Fine.”

His heart cracked right down the middle. “What’s going on, munchkin?” He tried infusing as much normalcy into his tone as he could. “Is it the meds?” Right, as if this were a normal conversation for them.

After a brief headshake, she quietly repeated, “I’m fine,” before turning over and closing her eyes, shutting him out completely.

For the next ten minutes.

Just when he was about to try, yet again, to engage her in conversation, he sighed in relief when he saw Abby pop her head in. “Look, sweetie, Abby’s here to visit.”

Skylar’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open all the way.

Abby shot him a worried look and he shook his head helplessly. He had no idea what was going on.

“Hey kiddo, want to talk about it?”

The quiet ‘no’ was filled with tears. And Brian felt his legs grow weak under him. His little girl was suffering and he had no clue how to help her.

Abby pulled up a chair next to Skylar’s bed and held her good hand. “Is the finger bothering you? Do you need us to call the doctor?”

“What’s the point?” she bit out in harsh, broken whisper. “It’s not like I’m going to need it.”

A sad look of understanding washed over Abby’s expression, and she shut her eyes for a brief second before directing a calm, stern look at Skylar. “Of course you need your ring finger, silly. Where else is your future groom going to place your wedding ring?”

Skylar’s body stiffened and Brian felt rage at the universe start to boil in his veins. His daughter thought she didn’t need her ring finger because she thought she’d die before she ever got a chance to get married. His hands fisted when he saw the tears running down Skylar’s cheeks, and he barely checked the impulse to punch a hole through the wall.

“I’m never going to be able to get married, and we all know it,” cried Skylar into her pillow.

Brian saw instant tears fill Abby’s eyes a second before she blinked them back. “Honey? Are you under the misguided impression that your seizure last night was something like the ones your mother used to have?”

Skylar stilled for a second and then peeked up from her pillow slowly, almost as if she were afraid to look. To hope. “Wasn’t it?”

The sheer fear infused in those two words was enough to make Brian want to bawl like a baby. His daughter did not deserve to be going through this.

“Kiddo, there was nothing in the tests that showed your seizure was at all connected to a Huntington’s symptom. Yours was labeled unexplained, so it could very well just have been a seizure caused by growth spurts during adolescence because of how it affects cortisol levels and blood sugar.”

All completely factual truths.

“Really?” Skylar sat up. “We learned about blood sugar in health class. The doctors wouldn’t tell me anything last night. Not really. So you mean it could be because I skipped lunch yesterday?” Skylar sat up even more, hope brimming in her eyes.

“That could actually have a lot to do with it,” agreed Abby. “Seizures have also been linked to gluten, being overtired or stressed, and—brace yourself, babe—video games.”

The look of alarm on Skylar’s face would have made Brian laugh if he weren’t so busy worrying over her.

Abby patted Skylar’s hand reassuringly. “But since you didn’t play any video games yesterday, we can safely rule that one out.”

Christ, the woman was incredible. She actually had his daughter close to smiling already.

Skylar sighed with relief before she ventured quietly, “So you guys are sure that this seizure wasn’t a Huntington’s seizure?”

Thank God she didn’t know the mechanics of the disease well enough. “Nope,” replied Brian, answering the question she worded, not the one she asked. And he made sure to fill his voice with all the confidence he didn’t feel when he added, “Abby’s right. I talked to the doctors and though it’s not common, apparently, it’s not all that rare for kids your age to get unexplained seizures. The doctors aren’t even considering testing you for HD, kiddo. They said we shouldn’t even be thinking of it as a possibility.” This, again, was all true, in some shape and form.

The first hint of a smile he’d seen all morning lit Skylar’s face then. “Ohmigosh, I totally thought—” She shook her head and closed her eyes, falling back against the hospital bed with a look of utter relief settling across her expression.

Abby glanced up at Brian and nodded in a ‘hooray-we-did-it’ sort of way.

Brian wanted to grab her and kiss her and never let go of her. He’d never had this before. Taking care of Beth had been a singular mission for him. There had been no one fighting the disease alongside him, not really, not like this. No one to cheer her on, cheer him up. No one to assist him when he was too broken down to fight at a hundred percent. He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that Abby loved Skylar the way he did, and would fight just as hard as he would if that wretched disease sank its claws into his little girl.

That’s when it hit him.

Did he really want to put Abby through this? The unbelievable heartache that he’d already had to go through once in his life…the unbearable pain and loss that a part of him already feared was going to become a reality? He knew he didn’t want that, not for Abby.