Crash Into You by Cara Ellison Read Free Book Online Page A

chart.  
                  Lauren’s eyes began to flicker open.  The nurse chirped, “Hi Lauren, you’re in recovery.”
                  She shut her eyes again.  
                  “We’ll give you an hour or so before we take you up to your room.”
                  The nurse left and Mark sat down in the chair beside the bed.  Knowing she would be in and out like a bad light, he picked up a magazine on the table and began to flip through it.  The magazines were better in here than the waiting room.  Esquire and Vanity Fair, compared to the celebrity gossip tabs in the waiting room.   He was halfway through one of Christopher Hitchens’ didactic essays when he felt eyes on him.  Her eyes were glassy and she looked disoriented from the powerful sedatives.
                  “Remember me?” Mark asked, putting the magazine down.
                  She nodded.
                  “How are you feeling?”
                  “Don’t know,” she whispered softly.   Her voice was low and scratchy,  the result of the intubation.  
                  Mark took her hand in his.  It was swollen and bruised.  Dirt crusted her fingernails, and a trickle of blood had dried on her wrist from a cut on her palm.    Whatever she had been through, she’d put up a fight.   “Is there anyone you want me to call for you?”
                  Her face remained expressionless for a moment, then she shut her eyes.  
                  “Lauren?”
                  She shook her head.  Tears began to spill from under her lashes again.
                  “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Mark said gently.  He grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and delicately pat her bruised cheeks. 
    “I have to get out of here,” she whispered.
                  “You need a few days of rest at least,” he said, incredulous. “You’ve just had serious surgery.”  It was unbelievable how concerned she was that danger was lurking.   She couldn’t turn it off.
                  “He’s going to kill me,” she slurred softly.   “If he finds me, he will kill me.  He is a police officer.  He knows how to find me.  I have to get out of here.”
                  “Just relax,” Mark said.  “I’ll stay here with you.”
                  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.  But her eyelids were fluttering and the sedatives were pulling her back under.             
                  Mark let her sleep.  He flipped through another magazine, pausing at a photograph accompanying a story about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The graham cracker earth and blue sky were too familiar, the screaming background of his nightmares.  He turned the page.
    Lauren briefly awoke again when the nurse returned to roll her to her room.    She groggily reached out and touched her fingertips to his forearm.    Her eyes again were beseeching. 
                  Mark asked the nurse if they could have a private moment.   As soon as the door was closed, Lauren licked her lips. “Can you get me out of here?  I’ll go to a hotel.”
    The thought of her recovering in some anonymous hotel room was unacceptable.  He wasn’t going to allow that to happen.  “Do you want me to call someone?  Do you have some place to go?” 
                  Tears began to pool in her eyes again.  “No, but I can’t stay here.  Please just take me to a hotel.  Or the airport.”
                  She couldn’t even stay awake longer than five minutes, yet she thought she was able to travel?   To care for herself alone in a hotel room?  He supposed desperation could drive anyone to extremes, but this was ridiculous.
                  “How about my house?  Not the barn,