I still couldn’t open my eyes, but I managed to say, “I have to, or you’ll kill me.” My voice sounded as hoarse as a hundred-year-old chain smoker.
“Hud. You’re awake!” I felt hands cup my face and lips that I hoped were hers kiss my forehead, my cheeks, my entire face, which was now damp from her tears. I tried to lift my arm, to touch her, to tell her I was okay, but the searing pain that shot through me wouldn’t let me.
“Don’t. Don’t move your arm,” she rushed out. “I’ll go get a doctor. Don’t die!”
With that instruction, she kissed me again and then I heard her yelling that I was awake and for someone to get their asses in here.
That’s my girl.
I heard footsteps and the next thing I knew my eyelids were being pried open and a piercingly bright light was blinding me. I flinched.
“Do you know your name?” the doctor spoke quickly.
“Hudson Reed.”
“Officer Reed, do you know where you are?”
“In a hospital.”
“Do you know what day it is?” He continued as he pried my right eye open.
Ummm…
I’d left Harmony’s house this morning and my parents’ anniversary party was last night so it was… “Sunday.”
As he moved on to checking my throat, and heart rate, my eyes adjusted to the overhead light and I looked over to see Harmony standing, or actually pacing along the wall.
Holy shit.
She looked like she’d just stepped out of the Dukes of Hazzard, which was my favorite show growing up. Nick at Nite was on constant play at my house. Harmony was wearing short shorts that put her legs on display, cowboy boots, and a red tank top, and her hair was flowing over her shoulders. She was the spitting image of Daisy Duke, who I’d had posters of on my walls until I was thirteen.
I was barely paying attention when the doctor said my name.
“Officer Reed?”
“Hud, you can call me Hud.”
“Hud.” He smiled. “You are a very lucky man. The bullet went straight through your shoulder. If it had been even an eighth of an inch higher on your neck, the outcome would’ve been much different. It did hit a major artery, but we were able to stop the bleeding. A few weeks of rest and you should be good as new.”
A few weeks… There was no way I could be sidelined for a few weeks. I had to get the camp up and running before the grand opening at the end of July.
“Officer Reed.” His tone turned serious. “You really need to take it easy.”
“Oh, he will.” Harmony was back by my side. “I’ll make sure of it.”
The doctor smiled and patted my hand. “You have quite a fiancée here. Like I said, you’re a lucky man.”
After showing me the IV drip of morphine and explaining how to control it, he made sure I could reach the nurse’s call button, then excused himself, leaving me alone with my fiancée?
“So, when’s the wedding?” I asked when the door shut.
Harmony, sat in the chair beside me and took my hand in hers. “I know you’re kidding, but it’s going to be in August. I think that is enough time not to steal Cara and Trace’s thunder.”
I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. Also, I was on drugs, so maybe I was imagining the whole thing. The Daisy Duke getup. The doctor calling her my fiancée. The August wedding. All of it.
Her lips pinched together and I could see the toll my getting shot had taken on her. Her eyes were red rimmed and her cheeks were stained with tears, which from the moisture building in her bottom lid, it looked like they were about to start up again.
“I’m okay. Don’t cry.”
“You scared the shit out of me.” She sniffed and wiped her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. “I thought you were supposed to be faster than a speeding bullet. What happened to that?”
“I’m sorry.” I squeezed the hand that was holding mine, which was pretty much the pinnacle of physical comfort I was capable of.
“You should be. You ruined my whole plan.”
“Your plan?”
“Yeah. I was at the station waiting for you—”
“Waiting for me?”
“Yes. And I had it all planned. A speech and everything. You were going to walk through—”
“I’m sorry…you had a speech?”
She sighed and spoke in a stewardess-like voice. “Please save all questions until the end of the presentation.”
I smiled, which was saying something. I was pretty sure only Harmony could inspire that response considering the amount of pain I was in.
“So, as I was saying, you were going to come in and I was going to walk up to you and tell you that I lied to you.”
She paused. I wasn’t sure if that was the end, but I had a feeling she was doing it for effect.
“I know.” Her eyes widened. “Dramatic, right?”
Yep. Effect.
“I had a few responses you might’ve used, but they all led us back to”—she gasped and clutched her chest—“what I lied to you about, dun, dun, dun.”