Chapter 80

“Las Vegas! We give you… Viva! Hysteria!” Blowing a kiss to the cheering crowd, Def Leppard’s lead singer turned and strode up the catwalk as the rest of the band played its final notes. The band members bowed, then waved and walked off the stage. The stage lights went dark, but the house lights stayed low as well, letting the audience know the show wasn’t quite over yet.

As we waited in anticipation for the encore, I turned to Dawn, who had sunk down onto the barstool beside me. “How ya holdin’ up?” I asked her.

“I’m having a great time!” she replied, raising her glass and giving me a lopsided grin. “How about you?”

“Yeah… good show!” I agreed and took a sip of what was left of the warm beer I’d been nursing since intermission. Swallowing the bitter taste it left in my mouth, I turned my chair around and set it down on our table, which was crowded with empty cups. By the look of it, Nick and Lauren had also had a great time.

A roar of excitement rose from the crowd as the stage lights came back on. One by one, the band members walked back out to whistles and wild applause before launching into one of their biggest hits, “Rock of Ages.”

“Rise up, gather ‘round, rock this place to the ground!” sang the lead singer, Joe, encouraging the crowd to clap along with him. Having climbed back to her feet, Dawn quickly joined in. “Burn it up, let’s go for broke. Watch the night go up in smoke. Rock on!”

“Rock on!” the crowd echoed along with the rest of the band.

“Drive me crazier! No serenade, no fire brigade, just the pyromania! Come on!”

“What do you want?” the band sang. “What do you want?”

And the crowd responded. “I want rock and roll! Long live rock and roll!” I could hear Dawn, Nick, and Lauren all singing along with the chorus. “Rock of ages! Rock of ages! Still rollin’. Keep a-rollin’. Rock of ages! Rock of ages! Still rollin’. Rock and rollin’…”

I couldn’t help smiling; the lyrics reminded me of the title of the picture book Dawn and Mason had made me for Christmas. Dawn’s mind must have made the same connection because when I glanced in her direction, I found her grinning back at me. Raising both hands with her index and pinky fingers up in the “rock on” gesture, she did a headbanging move that made me laugh as we both turned our attention back to the band.

After playing one last song, “Photograph,” the band members thanked the crowd for coming, took their final bows, and left the stage. As the house lights came back on, I looked around the long, narrow VIP box, which was littered with empty cups and cocktail napkins. The tables were crooked, the bar stools scattered about. Nick and Lauren pushed the furniture back into place, clearing a path for my power chair, while Dawn cleaned up our table, condensing all the empty cups into a single stack for the cocktail waitress to pick up.

“I’ve gotta pee before we leave,” she announced loudly as we joined the small crowd of people leaving the box.

Lauren nodded. “Same, girl,” she said.

As they both got into the line that had formed outside the women’s restroom, I turned to Nick. “I should probably go, too,” I told him. I was starting to feel hot, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from a full bladder, booze, or simply being around so many warm bodies in the concert venue.

“I’ll come with you.” Nick followed me into the men’s room, which had no line. He headed to one of the urinals while I went into the handicapped stall. I was still assembling my supplies when I heard him call, “Meet you right outside, Kev!”

When I finally emerged from the restroom, I found Nick waiting for me with Lauren. Dawn leaned against the wall a few feet away from them, looking dead on her feet.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked them.

“Lo and I thought we’d hit the casino for a bit and then maybe check out one of the clubs,” Nick said. “You guys game?”

I glanced over at Dawn again. She just gave me a half-hearted shrug, as if to say, Whatever you wanna do. But I could tell by her body language that she was tired and just trying to be a trooper, not wanting to be the first one to leave the party.

I, on the other hand, had no trouble admitting when I was ready to call it a night. My disability gave me a good excuse to go back to the hotel room at any time; Nick knew how drained I would get just from sitting up in my wheelchair for hours on end. By the end of a long day, I usually couldn’t wait to lie down. Since I’d taken a nap before dinner that evening, I wasn’t as exhausted as I normally would have been. But, as I watched Dawn attempt to hold back a yawn with her hand, I lied and said, “I would, but I’m beat. I think I’m just gonna head back up to my room and chill for a bit before I go to bed. Do you mind, Dawn?” I gave her a pleading look, pretending to be apologetic.

“Of course not,” she replied right on cue, hardly hiding her relief. “I’ll come with you.”

“Thanks. Sorry to be such a drag,” I told Nick and Lauren.

“No problem, bro,” Nick replied. “We’ll just meet up with you guys in the morning, then.”

I nodded. “Sounds good, brother.”

We walked together from the concert venue to the casino, where we all said goodnight and went our separate ways, Nick and Lauren heading toward the high roller tables while Dawn and I cut through to the hotel towers. As we waited for the elevator that would take us up to our floor, Dawn gave me a grateful smile. “Thanks for giving me a good excuse to go back to the room,” she said. “I really did have an incredible time tonight, but I’m tired, too.”

“I could tell,” I confessed, smiling back at her. “But you could have just said that, you know. You don’t need to come up with an excuse to call it a night.”

She sighed. “I know. But I feel so lame going to bed this early in Vegas. I mean, it’s not even midnight yet,” she said, pulling her phone out of her back pocket to check the time. “Clearly, I just can’t hang anymore.”

“It’s okay. Neither can I. But we’re not as young as Nick and Lauren.”

“Don’t remind me,” Dawn groaned as the elevator doors slid open with a ding. “Getting old sucks.” She stepped back to let a couple of giggly, college-aged girls in short, shimmery dresses and high heels exit before we got on the elevator.

“Yeah. So does having a chronic illness or disability,” I added as the doors closed. “But, once you know your limits, you learn to pace yourself. I took a nap this afternoon, before Nick helped me get ready.”

“Well, that was smart,” said Dawn, punching the button for our floor. “I spent the whole time letting Lauren do my hair and makeup. A lot of good that did.” She made a face at her warped reflection in one of the elevator’s mirrored walls. “I look like a hot, sweaty mess. Hell, even if I’d wanted to go to a club with Nick and Lauren, I probably wouldn’t be allowed in. The bouncer would take one look at me and turn my drunk ass away at the door.”

I laughed. “Stop. You look fine,” I assured her. So what if her frizzy hair was falling out of its fauxhawk or her makeup had started to streak? She was probably just going to let her hair down and wash her face as soon as we got back to the room, anyway.

As the elevator lurched to a stop, she lost her balance for a second and stumbled forward. Instinctively, I reached out to steady her, forgetting that my weak quad arms couldn’t compete with the force of inertia. Fortunately, Dawn managed to catch herself before she crashed face-first into the closed elevator doors. “Whoa! You okay?” I asked her, still holding out my hand in case she needed something to grab onto.

“Yeah,” she said, letting out a shaky laugh. “Just a little tipsy. It’s been a while since I’ve let myself drink like that.” As the doors slid apart, she motioned for me to exit first while she made sure they didn’t try to close on my chair. “After you.”

Seconds after I’d rolled out of the elevator, I heard a sharp intake of a breath, followed by a loud thump – the now-familiar sound of a body hitting the floor. “Dawn?” I cried hoarsely, my heart leaping into my throat. I jammed my hand against my joystick, trying to turn my chair around as fast as possible, afraid of what I would find when I did. My first thought was that she had pushed herself too far and passed out again, like she had back in February. In the two seconds it took to turn, I tried to prepare myself for the sight of her unconscious body lying on the floor. Instead, I found her on her hands and knees, her head hanging down. “What happened?” I asked her. “Are you okay?”

Dawn didn’t answer me right away. I couldn’t see her face, and, at first, I thought she was trying not to cry. Her shoulders shook, her breath coming in short gasps that made me even more concerned… until it suddenly occurred to me that she was laughing, not crying. “I don’t know!” she finally managed to choke out, wheezing with laughter. “I must’ve caught my toe in the crack. Damn clown feet. I’m okay, though.”

Relief flooded my senses. “I’ve never seen you drunk before, Dawn,” I said, snickering as I inched my power chair closer to her and put on the brakes. “Here, hold onto me.” I didn’t have the physical strength to help her up, but I could at least provide something solid for her to hang onto as she pulled herself up. Clinging to my legs, she climbed slowly to her feet. “There you go. You good?” I asked as she stood in front of me, swaying unsteadily.

“Yup… just as long as I don’t have to walk in a straight line.”

I laughed. “You don’t have to walk at all if you don’t want to. Hop on the back of my chair, and I’ll give you a ride back to the room.”

“Really?” Dawn replied, laughing along with me. “What if I tip it over?”

“You won’t. This thing weighs, like, four hundred pounds.”

“Uh… okay… but our combined weight has gotta be pretty close to that,” she pointed out. “Even twenty pounds lighter, I still weigh a lot more than Mason or Natalie or anyone else you might’ve had on the back of your chair before.”

“Aw, c’mon, just get on. It’ll be fine,” I insisted, grinning up at her. “We’re not going far.”

“If you say so…” Carefully, she climbed onto the two bars that connected my back caster wheels to the base of my chair, the way she’d seen Mason do many times before. He was still short enough that he could just hang onto the push handle behind my backrest, but Dawn was so tall that she had to hunch over me with her arms wrapped around my neck.

“Hold on tight,” I told her as I eased the joystick forward.

“Oh, god!” Dawn gasped at first, practically putting me in a chokehold as she hung on for dear life. “I don’t know about this…” But we hadn’t made it halfway down the hall before she was laughing and begging me to go faster. By the time I slowed to a stop outside the door of our hotel room, she had relaxed her arms around me. “Okay, that was actually really fun,” she admitted as she hopped down, holding onto the wall for support. “Thanks for giving me a ride.” She grinned at me, her blue eyes bright, her face flushed pink.

“My pleasure,” I replied, smiling back. I waited while she fished her room key out of her purse and unlocked the door. Even drunk, she managed to do it faster than I could have and held the door open for me as I followed her into our suite.

“I dunno about you, but I’m ready to get out of these clothes and into something more comfortable,” she said, closing the door behind me. “These damn skinny jeans are so flippin’ tight, they’re ‘bout to cut off my circulation.”

I laughed. “Can’t quite say I know how that feels, but I’m definitely ready to get out of this chair and lie down. You can go change first, though.”

“Thanks, but we’d better get you into bed before I do that. It’s probably gonna take me a while to free my cankles from the confines of these jeans and wash all this crap off my face.”

“You have such a way with words,” I said, smiling at her. “But, sure, whatever you wanna do.”

I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth while Dawn took off her shoes and turned down my bed. Watching her weave her way around the bedroom, I couldn’t help feeling slightly apprehensive about her ability to assist me in her state of intoxication. But what other choice did I have? I didn’t want to call Nick and ask him to leave the casino and come up to do my night routine, although I knew he would if I really needed him. Only as a last resort, I decided as I rolled back into the bedroom, determined to do as much as I could independently.

“Did I tell you I managed to get into bed all by myself last weekend?” I asked Dawn, who had just finished folding back the covers.

She looked up from the bed in surprise. “What? No!”

“Yeah… Sunday night,” I said, positioning my power chair next to the bed. “Natalie and I were sorta fighting, so I wanted to see if I could do it without her help.”

“What do you mean? She wouldn’t help you while she was mad at you?” Dawn asked with a frown as she retrieved my slide board from the corner of the room. At my insistence, we had been using the Hoyer lift at home to make transfers easier for her on the nights when Natalie wasn’t there, but here in the hotel room, we had to do things the old-fashioned way.

“No, of course not,” I replied quickly, reaching down to unbuckle my seatbelt. “She was standing right in front of me the whole time, ready to catch me if I lost my balance. But I didn’t.”

“That’s great!” Dawn said, her face relaxing into a smile. “Good for you!”

“Thanks.” I felt a rush of pride as I removed my side guard and pushed my arm rest out of the way. “I’ve been working on it in P.T. for the past couple months. Wanna see?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “You can do whatever you want, Kevin. I work for you, remember? But, for the record, I’m not too tired or drunk to do a transfer, in case you were worried about that.” She gave me a wry look, seeing right through my sudden eagerness to show off the most recent progress I’d made.

“No, I know,” I lied, leaning over to loosen my footstraps so she wouldn’t notice my flushed face. “Hell, I may be too tired and drunk to do a transfer, but I still wanna try it. Will you spot me?” I asked, huffing and puffing as I pulled myself back into an upright position.

“Of course,” she said, handing me the slide board. Hooking my fingers through the hole on one end, I worked the board into place, creating a bridge between my chair and the bed. Then I began the painstakingly slow process of hauling my paralyzed body across it. It couldn’t have been pretty to watch, but Dawn was patient. She didn’t interfere. When I finally managed to make it onto the bed, her face broke into a broad grin. “Way to go, Kevin!” she exclaimed, giving me a fist bump. “Rockstar!”

I couldn’t have felt further from a rockstar, but I knew she meant it as a compliment. After all, Dawn loved rockstars.

“Thanks,” I replied breathlessly, allowing my upper body to flop backward onto the soft mattress. “But I’d better let you do the rest.”

“No problem,” she replied, bending down to lift my legs onto the bed as well. She removed my shoes, socks, jeans, and jacket, leaving my t-shirt and underwear on for the time being. Then, using plenty of pillows, she propped me up in a comfortable position and pulled the covers up over my bare legs. “You good?” she asked, placing my phone in my hand.

I looked around, making sure the TV remote and my water bottle were within reach before I nodded. “Yeah. You can go change now.”

“Thank god,” she said with a grin. But she didn’t go change right away. First, she put my power chair into manual mode, so she could push it across the room and plug it into an unused outlet to recharge its battery overnight. Then, she rummaged through her suitcase, taking out her pajamas and whatever else she needed to get ready for bed.

Watching her putter around the room, I could tell that the day’s activities had taken their toll on her. Her body was slightly hunched, as if her back was hurting. She took slow, shuffling steps, hardly lifting her tired feet from the floor. “You okay?” I asked her again as she hobbled past my bed, carrying her small pile of clothing into the spacious bathroom.

“Yeah,” she replied shortly. She didn’t bother closing the outer bathroom door, which was made of clear glass. Instead, she proceeded directly into the water closet within, which contained the toilet, and closed that door for privacy while she undressed. Considering she saw me naked nearly every day, I wouldn’t have cared if she had changed her clothes in the bedroom. But it was just as well that Dawn was modest when it came to showing her body because I knew Natalie probably would care about her being naked in front of me.

While she was changing, I sent Natalie a text, wondering if she was awake yet. It was just after nine a.m. in Paris, and I knew her flight back to Atlanta didn’t leave until later that afternoon.

Good morning, babe! Just got back from the concert. Great show! Wish you were here to pour some sugar on me. 😉♥️

I didn’t get a reply right away, which meant she was probably still asleep or in the shower. But there was a small, nagging part of me that couldn’t help consider other possibilities. What if she was wide awake and purposely avoiding me? Or, worse, what if she wasn’t alone in her hotel room? What if she’d hooked up with some suave French guy, knowing full well I would never find out?

It wasn’t the first time I had worried about my girlfriend cheating on me while she was on one of her work trips. But I knew I was probably just being paranoid. Natalie had never given me a reason not to trust her.

Setting my phone aside, I picked up the remote and turned on the TV, flipping through the channels until I found some true crime show that she probably would have wanted to watch. But I had a hard time paying attention to it. I was tired yet too wired to sleep.

After ten minutes or so, a bare-faced, frizzy-haired Dawn finally came out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of pajama shorts and the new Def Leppard t-shirt she’d bought at the concert. “Oh my god,” she panted. “Did you hear me fighting for my life in there, trying to peel those flippin’ skinny jeans off my fat legs? Look how puffy they are!” Holding onto the wall to help herself stay balanced, she lifted one of her legs and propped her foot up on the bed next to me. Indeed, it was so swollen that her ankle bones had all but disappeared. I could see clear indentations where the elastic cuffs of her socks had dug into her skin.

“That’s called edema,” I remembered Dawn’s doctor telling her the day she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy. “When the heart begins to fail, it can lead to a backup of blood that causes fluid to leak and accumulate in the lungs and lower limbs.”

“Damn… that’s not good, Dawn,” I said, my mouth going dry.

She nodded grimly. “I know. I missed my evening dose of meds earlier, so I just now took them. I’ll probably be up half the night peeing,” she added with a heavy sigh as she lowered her leg to the floor, “but the diuretic should help.”

That reminded me that I still needed to take my night meds, too. A wave of guilt washed over me as I watched Dawn hobble across the room to retrieve my pill case from my carry-on. She didn’t complain, but I hated having to rely on her to take care of me when she was clearly in pain. “Here,” she said, shaking a handful of pills into my palm. I popped them into my mouth, washing them down with a big swig of water from my bottle.

“Thanks,” I replied, swallowing hard as I set the bottle back down on the table between the two beds. “I think I’m set for now. Why don’t you lie down and put your feet up? My doctor told me it’s best to lie on your back with your legs in the air. They have to be higher than your heart to help the fluid drain.”

For once, Dawn didn’t insist that she was “fine.” Instead, she followed my advice. Sitting on the side of her bed, she turned her body to face the wall it was pushed up against. Then, placing a pillow in the center of the bed, she lay down and lifted her legs up. “Like this?” she asked as she propped her puffy feet against the quilted leather of the upholstered mahogany headboard.

“Yup. Now leave ‘em like that for at least fifteen minutes and let gravity do its thing.”

“Okay.” Dawn sighed as she looked up at the ceiling. “The room is spinning…”

“Close your eyes then.”

“Can’t. What if I fall asleep? We haven’t finished your night routine yet. I still have to hook up your catheter.”

“That’s okay,” I replied patiently. “Your bladder will wake you up before mine overflows on me.”

Dawn let out a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that.” She covered her face with her hands. “God… I shouldn’t have drunk as much as I did. I’m gonna regret this tomorrow, aren’t I?” she groaned, raking her fingers through her tangle of unruly curls.

“Depends. Did you have a good time tonight?”

“I told you, it was incredible,” she said, cracking a crooked smile. “Thanks again for planning this entire trip – and for giving me such a cool Christmas present in the first place.”

“My pleasure. Thanks for including me in it,” I said, smiling back. “I had a good time, too. Def Leppard still puts on a pretty great show.”

“Yes, they sure do…”

We talked for another twenty minutes, until Dawn got up to make the second of what would turn out to be many trips to the bathroom. When she came back out, she took off the rest of my clothes, put on my condom catheter, and positioned me for sleep on my right side, strategically placing pillows to protect the bony parts of my body. “I’ll set an alarm for five to turn you,” she promised as she tucked me in, pulling the covers all the way up over my body. “Sleep tight.”

“You too. Thanks, Dawn.” I closed my eyes, listening to the creak of the mattress as she climbed into bed, the rustle of covers as she rolled over, and the click of the light switch as she shut off her wall lamp. The TV was still on, but after a few minutes, she turned that off, too, plunging the room into sudden darkness and silence.

I was so tired that it didn’t take me long to drift off to sleep. But it also wasn’t long before I was startled awake by a harsh, retching sound. My first, semi-conscious thought was that it was Natalie’s cat coughing up a hairball. But, as the convulsive gagging noises continued, it occurred to me that I was in a hotel room, far from home, so they couldn’t be coming from Colby.

Suddenly alert, I opened my eyes, only to be greeted by total darkness. “Dawn?” I called hoarsely. With difficulty, I rolled onto my back and turned my head toward her, straining to see across the black abyss that separated our beds. “Dawn, you okay?”

When she didn’t respond right away, I felt around blindly for my phone, knowing I wouldn’t be able to reach the light switch on the wall. I was still fumbling with it, trying to fit my fingers through the strap on the back of my phone case, when I heard another heave, followed by a wet splatter. “Oh, god,” Dawn moaned.

A moment later, the wall lamp clicked back on, flooding the room with light. Once my eyes adjusted to the sudden change, I saw Dawn sitting up on the side of her bed, staring down at herself in dismay. She had vomit dripping down the front of her new t-shirt. When she stood up and staggered off to the bathroom, I saw that her bedsheets were stained with it as well.

Lying in the other bed, listening to the sounds of her getting sick inside the water closet, I felt completely helpless. I couldn’t comfort her. I couldn’t take care of her. I couldn’t clean up the mess for her. Even if I could have gotten out of bed by myself, I wouldn’t get far without my wheelchair, which was all the way on the other side of our suite. There was absolutely nothing I could do for Dawn, except call for someone else to come and help – and, somehow, I knew she wouldn’t want me to do that. That left me with no choice but to lie there and wait for her to finish.

“Feeling any better?” I asked when she finally emerged from the bathroom.

“No,” she croaked as she plodded past my bed. She stopped at her suitcase and took out another t-shirt. “Can you close your eyes, please?”

“Of course.” I kept my eyes shut while she peeled off her soiled top and put on the clean one. When I opened them again, she was pulling the comforter off of her bed. “Don’t worry about cleaning up now, Dawn,” I said. “It can wait until morning.”

“I know. But I’m not sleeping in a puddle of puke,” she replied bluntly. Tucking a pillow under one arm, she turned and shuffled toward the living room, dragging the comforter behind her. “I’m gonna go crash on the couch.”

“Dawn, wait!” I called after her, knowing I couldn’t let her spend the night on an uncomfortable hotel couch. “Come here. You can have the other half of my bed.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but you don’t have to share your bed with me, Kevin. I’ll be fine on the couch.”

“No, you won’t. Your back’s already killing you; I can tell.” Sensing her hesitation, I added, “And what if you get sick again? You’ll be a lot closer to the bathroom this way.”

That last part seemed to convince her. Turning around, she gave me a long, searching look. “Are you sure? I don’t wanna keep you awake all night.”

“Come on.” Reaching out, I patted an empty spot on the mattress, like Natalie did when she was trying to coax Colby to jump up onto the bed with us. “It’s the least I can do.” Apart from wanting to be chivalrous, I worried about the dangers of letting her sleep alone in another room. What if she started choking on her own vomit? At least, with her lying right next to me, I was more likely to hear her and wake up, even if she didn’t.

“Well… okay. As long as it won’t be too weird for you.”

I laughed. “Dawn, on the list of weird things you’ve done for me, sharing a hotel bed wouldn’t even make the top five. As long as you don’t puke on me, I couldn’t care less.”

“I’ll try not to, but I make no promises.” She managed a weak smile as she dropped the comforter. Still carrying her pillow, she came back over to turn off the lamp between the two beds. Moments later, I felt the mattress move as she crawled into bed beside me. “Thanks, Kevin,” she murmured as she made herself comfortable.

“No problem. Try to get some sleep,” I told her.

But, as it turned out, neither one of us got much sleep that night. It seemed like every time I started to drift off, I was inevitably jolted awake as Dawn stumbled out of bed again. Over the next two hours, she made several more trips to the toilet. “If it’s not my stomach, it’s my bladder,” she said miserably as she staggered back to bed. “I’m sorry. At the rate I’m going, I might as well just spend the rest of the night in the bathroom.”

“No need to apologize,” I tried to reassure her. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is, though. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to mix medication and alcohol. That was stupid of me.”

“Well, you weren’t the only one. I shouldn’t have been drinking either, and neither should’ve Nick.” I frowned, feeling a flicker of deja vu as my mind flashed back to the day Nick was diagnosed with the same condition Dawn was dealing with now. I vividly remembered lying in bed in the hospital room I had shared with him, listening to his doctor lecture him about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. “Alcohol’s hard on the heart.”

“No kidding,” Dawn muttered as she lay down next to me. “Mine’s galloping like a racehorse right now.”

“Really?” I turned my head to look at her. She had left the light on in the water closet but closed the door, letting a small amount of light leak out through the crack at the bottom so she could see where she was going in the dark. In its faint glow, I could see that she had two fingers pressed against the side of her neck, feeling her own pulse. “Are you all right?” I asked, worried.

“Yeah… I dunno. I’m having palpitations. My heart rate’s high. Blood pressure’s probably low, judging by how light-headed I feel every time I have to get out of bed.” She said this all in a remarkably pragmatic tone.

“Jesus, Dawn… that doesn’t sound good.” I stared at her through the darkness, struggling to make sense of what she was telling me. My thoughts had become muddled and slow as my own medication kicked in, making me feel drunk, even though I’d only had a couple of beers at the concert. “Do I need to call 911?”

“No,” she replied adamantly. “I’m not going through all that again. I’ll feel better in the morning; I just need to sleep it off.”

I wished I could fall asleep, too, but I wouldn’t let myself nod off again until I knew Dawn was okay. While I didn’t blame her for wanting to avoid another hospitalization, I would have felt better knowing she was being monitored by medical professionals. Even in the midst of my brain fog, I worried about what might happen if we waited to see how she felt in the morning. What if she got worse instead of better? There wasn’t much I could do to help her in an emergency, except call for an ambulance – and, this time, I didn’t even have Mason around to open the door or help me get dressed like he had the last time something like this had happened. The realization left me feeling frightened and vulnerable as I lay naked in bed next to Dawn, listening to the sound of her shallow breathing.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and reached for my phone. “What are you doing?” Dawn asked groggily, lifting her head off her pillow to look at my brightly lit screen. “You’re not calling 911, are you?”

“No.” Moving my knuckle from the keypad to my contacts, I tapped a name near the top of my most recent list. “I’m calling Nick.”

***