While I Was Away(43)

“I hate to nag,” he sighed. “But you have got to stop scaring us like this.”

They both chuckled.

“Sorry. I didn't plan on fainting.”

“Understood. But from now on, less self-pity, more hamburgers, okay?” he asked.

“Okay.”

“The doctor said we had to wait because there was some issue with your nurse? That Lund guy?” Ocean asked. He was keeping his voice passive on purpose, she knew, but there was a tremor of unease under it.

“No. No, I think I'm the issue. I think ... god, I think I screwed up, Ocean,” she groaned, dropping her face into her hands. “I screwed up so bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were here a lot, right? While I was away, you came to the hospital a bunch.”

“Yeah, all the time. Why?”

“Did you meet Jo – uh, Nurse Lund?”

“Of course, he was here all the time, too. He and two other nurses had rotating shifts taking care of you – turning you, moving your limbs, making sure you were getting enough food and oxygen, stuff like that,” he told her.

“Do you think he was in my room every day?”

“Yeah, just about. Why?”

“Did you ... did you ever see him alone with me?” she asked. Ocean narrowed his eyes.

“What is this about? Did he do something to you while you were asleep? I swear, I'll rip off his arms and beat him -”

“No no no, nothing like that. I just wanted to know,” she waved his anger away. He glared for a second longer, then swept his hand over his hair.

“Then I guess yeah, there were lots of times he was alone with you. He seemed like a great nurse, he took great care of you. He would yell at all of us whenever we started acting like assholes. From what the other nurses told me, he spent a lot of time with his coma patients, talking to you all before and after his shifts, or during his breaks. I'd catch him babbling away to you all the time,” Ocean told her.

Babbling away ...

“Shit, I really think I screwed up,” she breathed.

“What?”

“C'mon, we gotta get out of here,” she said, abruptly hopping off the bed.

“Seriously, what is going on? The doc said you had to file a report or something,” Ocean told her as he followed her out of the room.

“No, no reports. We just ... I have to leave. Right now. I think I did something really bad, and I just need a minute to calm down and figure shit out, and I can't do that here. This place feels like a grave to me,” she explained.

“Okay, fine. Follow me.”

Ocean was able to successfully sneak her out of the hospital. She was being a coward, she knew, and she'd be getting a call from her doctor, she also knew. But she had to take a step back and really think things over. She was silent during the car ride home, going over everything in her mind.

When she'd first seen him, had first realized it was really Jones, she had figured that meant her coma dream had been real. It had to, right? And if it had been real, then he must remember it, too.

Clearly, that was not the case. Here, in this plane of existence, Jones was Nurse Lund – her nurse. A man who had been at her bed side and talked to her and taken care of her while she'd been unconscious.

The moments that had happened between them in the dream world, were they all in her head? Jones had said she would find him again when she needed him, but he'd never said anything about the how or why or where.

Jesus, what was the point of finding him again if he couldn't remember everything, or worse, didn't even know her at all? The sick feeling was back in her stomach. The most amazing experience of her life, and her other half didn't know anything about it. It was like being stuck in some form of hell.

Well, then. Adele would just have to make him remember. If he could spend a lifetime in her dreams making her fall in love with him, then she could sure as hell spend some time here in the real world making him fall in love with her.

Of course, that would have to be after she made sure he wasn't fired over her psychotic ramblings.





23




“C'mon, pleeeeease?”

Adele pouted her bottom lip out and batted her eyelashes.

“Uh uh, don't flash those violet babies at me,” Nurse Monica snorted. “They don't work on female nurses.”

“Ug! Do bribes? C'mon, what do I have to do?” Adele groaned.

“You have to turn around and go home, that's what you have to do. You've caused enough trouble around here.”

Just as she'd predicted, Adele's doctor had called her almost immediately after she'd snuck out. He hadn't been happy, but she'd managed to postpone any meetings at the hospital until the next day, thankfully. She'd wanted time to calm down and practice what she was going to say to everyone.

What she should say to Jones.

When she'd gone to the hospital the next day, though, he hadn't been present. Early on in the meeting with her doctor and the hospital's rep, she'd been informed that Nurse Lund had been put on administrative leave pending an inquiry into his behavior with her.

She'd assured everyone that she'd been confused. That it had all been fever-coma dreams, or whatever. She'd been disoriented from her faint, she'd thought he was someone else. After all, hadn't she called him Jones? And wasn't his name Johannes or something? No, as far as she knew, and according to all her family members, Nurse Lund had been the sole of propriety. A living saint. Worthy of having whole hospital wings named after him.