The Affair: Week 8 by Beth Kery Read Free Book Online Page B

contact. Amanda stared at him, shock plastered all over her pale face.
    “Oh my God,
Vanni
. How did you know?”
    Alarm roared into his awareness, making his flesh tingle. He edited himself at the last second from saying
How did I know
what
?
    “Where?” he demanded tautly instead, his buzzing, shocked brain tightening its focus on Amanda’s leggings and T-shirt, haphazard bun, and clutched purse. She was clearly running out the door in crisis mode.
    “North Shore Hospital. She’s in the emergency room.” He stepped back when she walked out and slammed the door. “Colin is coming to get me—”
    “
Emma
?”
    Vanni realized he’d yelled and that he was clutching Amanda’s arm. He loosened his grip with effort.
    “Emma?” he repeated tautly, a cascade of chills going through him. Oh no.
Please don’t let this be happening.
    “Yes. The hospital just called. She was in a car accident. They’ve brought her there.” Vanni’s grip loosened when Amanda gave a desperate lurch. She started to jog toward the stairs.
    Oh, Jesus. He’d dared to care about her. He’d fallen in love with her. Was this the inevitable result?
    “
Amanda
,” he shouted sharply. “What did the hospital say?”
    She turned, still jogging “I don’t know anything, Vanni. I have to go!”
    * * *
    The examining doctor said good-bye to Emma and pulled the curtain closed. She was in some kind of makeshift examining room in the emergency room, a square ten-by-ten-foot space set off by curtains, not walls. She could hear the doctor talking to Colin and Emma on the other side of the curtain, telling them what she’d already told Emma.
    “She’s fine, but we’d like to keep her overnight for observation . . . just to make sure there’s no concussion. There isn’t any observable wound to the head. The airbag deployed, but she lost consciousness for nearly ten minutes following the accident. Her vitals are all good, but we’d like to watch her for the next twenty-four hours for any signs that there might have been a blunt head trauma.”
    “Do you suspect there’s a brain injury?” Amanda asked anxiously.
    “No, the stay over night is just a precaution, I assure you. Your sister is going to be fine.”
    “Can I see her?” Amanda asked.
    “Of course. We’re running a little short-staffed today. She might not be moved to a room for an hour or so.”
    Ever since Emma had regained consciousness, she’d experienced a strange sort of desire for action, an inexplicable restlessness. In fact, when she’d first come to in the ambulance, the first thing she did was swing her legs off the stretcher and start to get up.
    “Whoa, whoa, where are you going?” the stunned EMT had asked her, urging her to lie down again.
    Emma hadn’t been able to reply logically. She only experienced a deep, profound need to be
somewhere.
That sense of an inner push—or an outer pull—continued. She’d almost screamed in frustration when the doctor told her a few minutes ago they’d be keeping her overnight for observation. Her silent reminders to herself that she was being ridiculous, that she had nowhere to
go
with such a sense of urgency, were only minimally calming to her.
    Was she disoriented? Had she hit her head harder than she thought?
    She heard a murmuring as Colin and Amanda conferred, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
    A second later, Amanda was coming around the curtain. She and Colin had been there earlier, but had vacated the space when the doctor came to examine her. She gave Emma a bright smile.
    “Where’d Colin go?” Emma asked when she absorbed that Amanda was alone.
    “He uh . . . went out to the waiting room,” Amanda said, setting her purse down on a chair and coming up next to the triage bed where Emma stiffly reclined. Energy surged through her. The last thing she felt like doing was lying around. Suspicion flickered through her at Amanda’s forced neutral tone and the way she avoided Emma’s