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 eyes.
“Why’d he go out there?” Emma asked. “Amanda?” Her sister met her stare hesitantly. “What’s up? Why are you acting so weird?”
Amanda sighed and glanced reluctantly at the closed curtain and then back at Emma.
“He went out to the waiting room because Vanni is out there.”
“What?” Emma said incredulously, sitting up straighter on the bed, her skin tingling, her muscles shouting at her to move.
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t want to bother you with it, but—”
“That’s all right, just tell me why he’s here,” Emma interrupted hastily.
Amanda explained about running into him as she left the apartment earlier. “I assumed he knew about you somehow, because of the timing and well . . . I was in shock myself. I told him what hospital you were at before I realized he wasn’t there because he knew about your accident,” Amanda admitted ruefully. “He arrived here just after Colin and me, but of course, they wouldn’t let him back. A couple security guards actually had to restrain him, and they threatened to call the police before Colin and I intervened,” Amanda said worriedly, her blue eyes huge. “Emma . . . he’s a wreck.”
“A wreck?” Emma asked in alarm. She swung off the sheet that covered her lower body and looked around the tiny space frantically. “What did they do with my clothes?” she demanded.
“Emma, lie back down! I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you should have told me. Is Colin—”
“Yes,” Amanda said, her hand on Emma’s medical-gown-covered shoulder, urging her back onto the bed. “He went out to tell him you’d be fine!” Amanda insisted.
Emma grabbed her sister’s wrist, forcing her to meet her stare.
“Amanda, listen to me. Go and get him,” she directed. “Go and get him and bring him back here.”
“But—”
“There’s no ‘but’ about it. You don’t know everything about Vanni. He’s lost a l
ot of people in his life. This must be hell for him. He needs to see for himself that I’m fine.”
“But you’re the one I’m concerned about,” Amanda argued.
“If you are, then you’ll go get him,” Emma said firmly. “Because I need to see that he’s all right, too.”
“But what about—”
“Damn,” Emma said, flipping back the sheet again in preparation to go herself.
“All right, I’ll get him!”
“Hurry,” Emma directed succinctly.
Amanda blanched. She looked highly uncertain as she grabbed her purse and left the curtained-off space, and Emma knew why. She was concerned because Emma had said she would never see Vanni again. Emma and she had both agreed it was for the best, given the situation. But Emma didn’t care about that at the moment. She didn’t care about caution, or Vera Shaw’s threats, or her vulnerable heart.
She only wanted one thing with every fiber of her being: to see Vanni’s face again.
* * *