When Sparks Fly (First-Responders Book 1) (10 page)

“Oh, holy hell.” I groan as I roll over in my bed and swing my legs over the edge. Gingerly, I place my weight on my feet as I stand up. My legs are wobbly, and my center is beyond tender. Two rounds with Robbie and Seth was more than I bargained for. I duck walk to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. “Well, you did it.” I gleam at my reflection. She just stares back at me as if asking
what have you put me through?

Every muscle in my body is aching, especially my jaw. I didn’t know I could bend like I did last night. I look at my backside in the mirror, wondering if I still have the imprint of the shower button in my ass from Robbie pinning me against the wall. Thankfully, all evidence is gone.

I step into the shower and turn it on as hot as I can possibly take it. Standing under the rainfall head, I let the heat and pressure work some of the stiffness and soreness out of my fatigued muscles. Once it has started to run cool, I step out and towel off, grateful I no longer feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck.

I’m surprised Rachel didn’t wake me up at the crack of dawn wanting all the sordid details of last night. As I’m getting dressed, I see my cell phone light up with a text message. There are also two missed calls.

Rachel’s Dad: Call me. There’s been an accident.

My heart races and my hands shake as I pick up the phone and dial. I forgot that I put it on silent last night when I got home so I could get some decent rest.

“Macy?” Mr. Upton comes on the line, distress very apparent in his voice.

“What’s going on? I’m so sorry I didn’t pick up. My phone was on silent, and then I was in the shower.” I begin to ramble.

“There was a car accident, and Rachel is at Santa Barbara Medical Center.”

I gasp. “What happened? Is she alright?”

“She had just pulled out from the intersection outside the gates as someone came around the corner and blew through the red light. Thankfully they caught her on the passenger side. The paramedics said she wouldn’t have been so lucky if they had struck the driver’s door.”

I’m already running around the house, gathering my things up. “I’m leaving now. What room?”

“She’s still not out of surgery yet, Macy.”

Surgery?!
“It was that bad?”

“She’s pretty banged up, and her right leg is broken in two different spots from the impact.”

“Shit.” I cup my mouth, quickly realizing he’s never heard me curse before. “Sorry.”

Mr. Upton chuckles uncomfortably on the other end of the line. “It’s fine, Macy. I’ll be downstairs, just inside the front doors in the waiting area.”

“Thank you. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I stuff the phone down in my purse as I press the button to open the garage door. I’m so distracted after I pull out that I have to stop and backup to close the door behind me. Slapping it back into first gear, the Jeep and I high tail it to Santa Barbara Medical Center.

Pulling into the parking lot, there is, of course, nothing close. I have to park on the third level of the parking garage that is about a quarter mile away.
Just my luck
. Fortunately, I’m a jogger, so I make quick work of it, even with lugging my purse on my shoulder.

Mr. Upton has his head down in his hands, sitting in a very uncomfortable looking chair when I come through the sliding doors. I run over to him and throw my arms around his neck.

“Has there been any update? Where’s Mrs. Upton?”

“Yes. The doctor just came back and said that she’s out of surgery and that it went flawlessly. She’s still in recovery, sedated. It’ll be a bit before she comes around and gets moved to a room. They were able to repair the spleen damage but did perform an appendectomy. The scans showed that it was inflamed, so they did it as a precautionary measure. Her mother is in New York on business. She’s flying in this evening.”

I sit down beside him in complete shock. Rachel was supposed to be leaving for her month long European exploration at the end of this week. Now she’s going to face months of recovery just to walk again.

We sit together, waiting and wishing for the clock hands to move quicker. Finally, after an hour and a half, the nurse comes out, letting us know that we can go back. She’s still groggy, but starting to come around.

I’m shocked when I walk in. Her right leg is full of pins, screws, and plates and wrapped tightly. The left side of her body looks like it is one giant bruise. Luckily, her face looks untarnished from the accident, and just a little puffy from the anesthesia.

“You were in an accident, Rachel.” I hear her father start explaining things to her as he holds her left hand.

I walk into her line of vision, and she turns her head just marginally towards me. “Go big or go home, huh girl?” I smile. She tries to laugh a little, but I can tell it hurts. A lot.

We make small talk with her, and she starts being able to respond. She tells us things as they begin to come back. She was turning to head into town, and there was a flash of light off the chrome bumper of the trucker that slammed into her. She said there was no time to react. She remembered everything spinning as the car was tossed about, and then upside down into the median. Rachel says she must have blacked out because waking up here, just now is the next thing she remembers.

Thirty minutes later, the orthopedic surgeon walks through the door to update us on her status and estimated recovery time, but I don’t hear a word he’s saying. I look over at Rachel and from the look in her eyes, she’s not hearing him either. He’s probably upper-thirties, maybe even forty. He’s got the whole Mark Sloane from Grey’s Anatomy thing going on with the perfectly sculpted beard and the salt-n-pepper, messy-on-purpose hair. I would totally be hitting on him if I wasn’t already in my current relationship situation.

Six to eight weeks of recovery and then a month of rehabilitation. Rachel is going to be one pissy little thing. She’s way too active for this. Her family and I are going to have our hands full.

I step out into the hallway and call Seth.

“Hey, gorgeous. How are you feeling today?”

“Well, I was feeling pleasantly sore this morning, but the rest of my day has spiraled down quickly. Rachel was in a car accident this morning, and I’m at the hospital with her dad right now.”

“Oh damn. I’m so sorry. How is she?”

“She got banged up pretty good. Her right leg is broken in two spots. She had a spleen injury also, but they were able to repair it.”

“That’s good news,” Seth responds. “A splenectomy would have made her much more susceptible to post-op infection and could cause problems down the road.”

That’s scary. I had no idea.

“Is there anything you need? I’m at the station already, but I can have Robbie bring it up.”

“It’s okay, Seth. I’m about to head home anyway.”

“Be safe. Looking forward to Saturday night.” I can hear the implied
to fuck you senseless
in his lowered voice.

“We’ll see,” I respond playfully and hang up the phone.

I drive home slower and more cautiously than I normally would, acutely aware of how a split second can make all the difference in the world. Rachel was in a good amount of pain so they upped her morphine drip. She was out like a light again before I left. I plan on being there in the morning when she wakes up. The police will be there to get her statement, and I want to know that they are actually going to do something about the asshole that plowed into my best friend and ruined her summer.

“Drunk! At seven thirty in the morning!” Mrs. Upton is fuming at Officer Brooks.

“Yes, ma’am,” he responds, taking half a step back from her.

The two of them are talking, and I use that term loosely since Mrs. Upton is pretty much ripping him a new one just outside Rachel’s room, even though none of this is his fault. We can see the two of them through the glass window, and I think there’s a good chance that Rachel is drooling right now.

Zander Brooks is twenty-seven years old, single, and is in his third year with the Santa Barbara PD. It’s amazing what you can find out with a quick Google search. His steel-gray eyes and dark-brown hair along with that slow, deep voice just drip sexiness. And danger. Real, bad boy kind of danger. Especially with the looks he and Rachel were exchanging.

“Here you are, all screwed together, IV’s dripping, hospital gown wearing, hair a complete mess, and you are still getting flirted with by Officer Bad-boy over there. You are totally and completely incorrigible!”

“Mmm, but he’s so damn sexy, Macy. If it wasn’t for this bum leg, I would’ve jumped him right here in front of my mom. I don’t even care.” She’s staring all starry-eyed, focused out the window again.

Mr. Upton seems to have calmed his wife down now, and they are all talking civilly. Kind of sucks, though. I no longer know what is being said.

Rachel gave a complete recount of what she could remember already. She was making a left-hand turn in front of their subdivision and never even saw the trucker. It’s a really bad blind turn coming into that light, but he would’ve had to be doing well over the speed limit for her to miss him.

From what Brooks could discuss, as Rachel was turning, the trucker came around the corner considerably over the speed limit and caught her right rear quarter. From the streaks her tires left on the blacktop, she spun twice, still being pushed by the rig, before the Mustang flipped onto its roof and slid into the median.

The trucker was drunk. He blew a zero-point-one-two. At seven thirty in the morning. Apparently, he’d pulled an all-nighter and then was running behind on his route, on no sleep. So now because of his piss-poor decision making, my best friend is laid up for who knows how long and is missing her summer trek through Europe. Judging by the smile curling up from her lip as Zander walks back into the room, none of that even matters.

“Miss Upton, I think I have everything I need for now. Here’s my card. ”His fingers linger on hers a few seconds longer than necessary before he leans in to whisper, “and my personal cell is on the back.” Leaning back to a professional distance, he finishes, “Call me if you need anything.”

He turns to walk out and both our heads follow his perfectly toned ass in his starched uniform pants. Rachel starts fanning her hospital gown. “Oh. My. God. Can you believe those eyes? I mean, not that you probably even noticed them as hard as you were staring at his ass.”

I poke her non-bruised side. “So were you.”

“Guilty as charged. But can you blame me?”

“Nope. Not at all.” I close my eyes and picture him at the gym. Doing squats. In spandex.

“Hey!” Rachel snaps her fingers, breaking my daydream. “Get your mind off my man’s ass. You’ve got two of your own already.” She smiles a dazzling white, full mouth smile at me.

“Oh, so you’ve had like an entire thirty minutes of interaction with Zander, and he’s already
your man
? I think that morphine drip is still up too high. You’re delusional.”

I lean back and laugh at her as she gives me the finger and sticks her tongue out at me.

“Babe, the way he said ‘Call me if you need anything,' girl, we’re already married with two kids.” It’s her turn to close her eyes and daydream.

“Okay, Suzie-homemaker.”

Once our cackling finally dies down, Rachel asks, “So when do you see Seth and Robbie again?”

“On Saturday.” I think back to how sore I was and start to tingle just imagining it all over again.

Rachel takes her cell phone and starts typing out a message.

“They promised the three of us would do things I couldn’t even imagine.”

“Mm-hmm.” Rachel continues tap-tap-tapping away.

“Robbie said there would be a tennis racquet, a Chihuahua, and barbecue sauce involved.”

“That’s cool.” Still tapping out a message.

“Rachel!” I bark out. “You’re not even paying attention to me.” I grab for her phone and knock it out of her hands. It slides down, screen side up and I can see the name,
Officer BB.
“Seriously?” I cock an eye at her.

I begin to read through the message and give her a shocked,
I can’t believe you wrote that
face.

“He said if I needed
anything.
”

I toss the phone back at her, and she presses ‘Send.’

Just then, a nurse comes into the room. “Time for your sponge bath,” she says to Rachel.

“Alright then, I guess I’ll check in on you later, or tomorrow.” I kiss her forehead and then gather my things.

Walking out into the California sun is a much welcome relief after how cold they had it in that hospital room. I sit in the sun, thinking about all that is encompassing my life right now. The upcoming semester as a first-year teacher, my best friend laid up in the hospital, the need to get back out on my board on the waves, and of course, Seth and Robbie.

I smile at the people coming and going from the front, hoping their loved ones are no worse off than Rachel. Digging the keys out of my purse, I head back to the Jeep. Since it was fairly early when I arrived, I was able to grab a spot in the main parking lot this morning.

I pull out and decide I need to run to the house and grab my surfboard.