Page 46 of Until You

I start my truck. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one. Buckle up, Mischief.”

“This is kidnapping,” she says.

“Noted. You can file a complaint with the sheriff later.”

It takes approximately eleven minutes to Saddle Creek Memorial.

I drive the way I always drive—both hands, steady pace, eyes on the road. But I’m aware of every sound she makes. Every shift of her hands in her lap. The way she keeps clenching and unclenching her fingers like she’s trying to work something out through her palms.

“This is really unnecessary,” she says. Third time.

“Maybe, but I’m going to get a medical professional’s opinion.”

“I have some medical experience.”

“And I bet you’re great at it,” I say. “Yet, your hands are shaking.”

Silence. I can feel her looking down at her hands. Feel the particular quality of her stillness when she’s caught something she didn’t want caught.

“That’s from the cold,” she says.

I reach over. Adjust the climate controls. Warm air floods the cab. I put my hand back on the wheel.

I don’t say it’s seventy-eight degrees out.

Neither of us says anything for the last four minutes.

Thankfully, the ER lot is quiet. Saturday night in Saddle Creek—a couple of trucks, a security guard working through the end of his shift. I park, come around to her side, and have the door open before she can reach the handle.

“I can walk,” she says.

“I know you can.”

I don’t touch her. I stay close enough that if her knees decide to quit again, I’ll catch her before she hits the ground. She doesn’t wobble. Her jaw is set, her chin is up, and she walks through those sliding doors like she’s walking into a courtroom.

That’s Cora. Even when she’s terrified, she faces the door.

Inside, the fluorescent lights are brutal after the string lights and the stars. A triage nurse named Dolores, whose lanyard badge photo looks like it was taken during a different presidential administration, takes one look at Cora and points to a wheelchair.

“I don’t need⁠—”

“Sweetie, I don’t even know what you’re supposed to look like, but your pallor is downright grassy. Sit in the chair.” Her tone brooks no argument.

She sits.

Dolores wheels her through a curtain. “Y’all are lucky, we’re slow as molasses tonight.”

The triage bay is tiny. Two chairs, a medical cabinet, and standard equipment. I feel like I’m taking up too much space, but I’ll be damned if I’m leaving Cora.

I just cross my arms and stay quiet while Dolores works through the intake questions. Blood pressure. Pulse. Temperature. Medications. Allergies. “Date of your last period?”

“Uh,” Cora says.

“Any chance you could be pregnant?”

The question lands like a dropped wrench.

I don’t move. I don’t change my breathing. I have spent my entire adult life learning to be the steadiest thing in a room when everything else is in motion, and I call on every bit of that right now, because the alternative is letting the thing that just cracked open in my chest show on my face.