CALEB GASPED AWAKE, then groaned as pain exploded in his ribs. He grabbed his left side and rolled into the pulsing beneath his palm. Right about the same time, a dull throb began behind his eyes. He shut them again. His body felt like he had bounced off a brick wall after running full speed into it. In the distance, in between the pounding beats in his head, he heard someone call for the doctor.
It might have been a minute or several hours later when sure hands rolled him onto his back again. His breathing went from shallow and fast to deep and easy after a pinprick in his arm. The tight muscles of his face eased with the dulling of the nerves sending protests to his brain.
“Caleb,” someone said. “Can you hear me?”
He nodded once. With less pain came more fatigue. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. What the hell had happened that had him feeling like crap?
The numbness allowed for memories to flood in. His birthday party. The argument with his father. The crazy drive down the mountainside. The crash.
Eyes popping open, he sat up without thinking. Just as fast, hands grabbed his shoulders and applied pressure. He looked around at the unfamiliar faces. Two women in green scrubs and a man in a white coat.
“Where am I? Where’s Didi?”
“Caleb,” the man said in a calm but firm tone. “You are in the hospital. Do you remember the car crash?”
Losing patience he didn’t have to begin with, he pushed back against the nurses holding him down. “That’s why I’m asking about Didi.” He gritted his teeth as the doctor ran a penlight over his eyes. “There was a girl with me.” He reached for her full name before it slipped away. “Diana Alexander. Is she all right?”
“Caleb, I’m going to need you to calm down while I finish my examination,” the doctor continued as if his rising panic wasn’t about to rip his heart out of his chest.
He grabbed the lapels of the doctor’s white coat. “Then tell me what happened to Didi!”
“Caleb, chill!”
It was Nathan’s voice that allowed him to let go of the doctor. One of the nurses already had a needle out, no doubt filled with a sedative. Taking deep breaths that ended with a slight twinge of pain, he tried his best not to run out of the private room. The attending physician adjusted his coat and returned the penlight to his breast pocket while the nurse put away the needle.
Caleb turned to where Nathan sat in a corner of the room. He still wore his tux, but the bow tie and jacket were gone and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up. Based on the light slanting in from between the blinds at the window beside Nathan, it wasn’t his birthday anymore.
With a frown firmly in place, Nathan said, “Why don’t you listen to the good doctor before we start talking about Didi? A couple of minutes. Can you do that?”
Of course he couldn’t! He needed to know if Didi was all right. But instead of voicing protestations that would have gotten him nowhere fast, he simply nodded and returned his attention to the doctor. The nurses had left to give them privacy.
The doctor nodded his thanks to Nathan, then studied Caleb. “Besides a couple of bruised ribs and a mild concussion, I can’t find anything else accident related. No internal bleeding or broken bones commonly associated with driving into a tree. Consider yourself lucky.”
“I will consider myself lucky when I get news about Didi,” he muttered under his breath, his impatience rising back to the surface.
The doctor lifted the chart at the end of the bed and started scribbling. “I’m prescribing you a week’s worth of pain meds to help ease your breathing. Your ribs will remain sore for a while. I’m also recommending that you stay overnight for additional tests and observation. If nothing comes up, you’ll be able to go home tomorrow morning at the earliest.”
“Thank you, Doc,” Nathan answered for Caleb, who had a few choice words hovering at the tip of his tongue for the good doctor.
When the man left, Caleb turned the heat in his gaze toward his cousin. “Where’s Didi? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. You were both wearing seat belts.”
Instant relief burst like a water balloon in his chest. “Holy Christ, I thought I was going to die on the spot.”
“Please don’t ever do that to me again.” Nathan shook his head, the stress on his face obvious. “When I got the call that you were at the hospital . . .”
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his eyes. “I was being stupid driving that fast.”
“Consider yourself lucky you had your cell phone on you. Didi was the one who called the accident in.”