Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) by Kelsie Leverich Read Free Book Online Page B

especially given the case of memory loss he was apparently privy to having—but it wasn’t looking like that was going to happen.
    “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to give you specific updates, but we will make sure to contact your battalion as soon as he’s out of surgery.”
    The depth of anguish that folded over his face sent her heart into her stomach. This man was truly concerned for his soldier, and there was nothing she could do to ease his worry—and even with the loud warning sirens blaring in her mind, she hated seeming him like this.
    She internally sighed and pulled out her phone. She wanted to pout and hold a grudge against him, but dammit, he was making it difficult. “What’s your number? I will call you directly and let you know when he is out of surgery, but that’s the best I can do.”
    A grateful flash skimmed over his eyes. Yes, he was making this grudge thing extremely hard.
    He reached forward and slipped the phone from her hand. His fingers made contact with hers, and she cringed inwardly at her schoolgirl reaction, that giddy flutter that pricks in your chest for half a second. Not long enough to get worked up about, but long enough to notice.
    “There,” he said, placing the phone back in her hand. “I texted my phone, so now I have your number too.” He smiled, and it was one that was attempting to be real, but an emotion that was embedded in the creases of his eyes weighed down the small tilt of his lips. Was it fear, or sorrow? Maybe a little bit of both, and whatever it was, Meagan instantly wanted to take it away. She wanted to wrap her arms around this man that she didn’t know anything about and hold him against her.
    “Okay,” she replied, not really knowing what else to say at that moment.
    “Thanks,” he said, and then he turned around and left.
    Meagan made her way back toward the nurses’ station. She looked at the clock. She’d been there for four hours already. She had forgotten how quickly time could pass with an ER full of patients. The health clinic she worked at on post at Fort Drum wasn’t exactly a hustle-and-bustle environment.
    She knocked on the slightly ajar door to one of her patients’ rooms before she pushed it the rest of the way open. A woman in ACUs, probably around Meagan’s age, was sitting on the hospital bed, her tan boots kicked up and crossed at the ankles as she cradled a sleeping toddler in her arms.
    His little face was flushed and blotchy from apparent crying. His head was full of tight little curls, and his tiny bare feet were dangling over his mom’s lap. His Thomas the Tank Engine sandals were on the floor next to the bed, along with a blue blanket that looked like it had been dragged through space and back, washed and repeated about a million times.
    Meagan smiled as she eyed the blanket, she had one of those growing up too. The stinkier and dirtier the better.
    “Would you mind handing me that scrap of disgusting fabric before he wakes up and has a meltdown?” the woman whispered. Her body was frozen like she was afraid to even breathe, afraid that he would wake up.
    “Sure,” Meagan whispered back, picking up the blanket and handing it to her. She tucked it up next to his cheek and his little face instantly nestled into it.
    “I just want to make sure Braden’s temp has gone down.” Meagan was instantly grateful to whoever invented those handy little forehead thermometers. She didn’t want the little man to wake up either. She had been the one to get his temp when he first arrived to the ER screaming in agony—it was 105. She had almost started crying for him too, he had to have been miserable.
    “Looks like the Motrin has kicked in. 99.2.”
    The woman kissed the top of her son’s head. “Thank god. I don’t know how it spiked so quickly like that. He seemed fine this morning, other than that constant runny nose of his. When the daycare called me, his tempt was 101. By the time I got there not even thirty minutes later