The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Forty-Six: Lauren, Sunday

"Oh, God." It was painful to cry. Her body convulsed in ways that challenged the constraints of the neck brace. "Poor Al! Poor Rachel! Poor kids! Do they hate me?"

Joe frowned and said, "No, of course not, why would they hate you? It was an accident."

"They didn't tell you what happened?" 

"What?"

"We were being chased by someone in what looked like an unmarked police cruiser. It tried to run us off the road. I was trying to cut into the turnoff, but with the wet weather we skidded and flipped."

Joe gasped. "Do the police know about this?"

"I don't know. Al was on the phone with nine-one-one, describing our pursuer. There was a guy who looked in on us to make sure we were okay, he said he saw everything, maybe he talked to the cops."

Joanie chose that moment to slip in. Her face sagged in relief when she saw Lauren. "Oh, thank God," she said. "I saw the Highlander after it flipped. It's pretty much a write-off. You're lucky to be alive."

"Al's not so lucky," Lauren pointed out, and started sobbing again.

Joanie nodded and gave Joe a pained look.

"I need to see him," Lauren said. "I need to see him and tell him how sorry I am."

"Babe, you're not going anywhere," Joe said stiffly, perhaps sensing the ghost of Lauren's feelings for him, feelings that were supposed to belong completely to Joe now. "At least not right now. You have your own healing to do."

"He's right," Joanie said. "You have a neck brace, an arm in a sling because of the dislocated shoulder, and a cast on your leg. Movement is going to be a challenge for you right now."

"There are wheelchairs, aren't there?" she growled. "This is a fucking hospital, isn't it? You can wheel me there to see him."

"Lauren, he wouldn't even be able to hear you, so your apology would be useless," Joe snapped.

His callousness made her gasp.

"Anyway, there's more," Joe said. He cast a sidelong glance at Naomi and Tosh. "But I'll tell you later."

"What?" she demanded.

"Later. In private." 

His look was so cold and his voice so hard that she decided not to press him.

The curtain parted, and a blonde woman her age, in scrubs and a white coat, stepped inside. "Oh, she's awake!" she said. "Hi, Lauren, I'm Doctor Markovich. You had quite a night, tonight."

"My friend," she said. "Al Mackenzie. He's in a coma. I want to see him."

Doctor Markovich looked to Joe with raised eyebrows. Joe sighed in exasperation and shook his head. "Well, I don't know anything about that," she said. "I'm your doctor, and your son's. My responsibility is to attend to both of you. If your friend is in the ICU, he has a team looking out for him, don't you worry."

Lauren ground her eyes shut in frustration. When she opened them again, another tear rolled down her cheek. 

"Let's check you over," Doctor Markovich said. "Can I have a little privacy, please?"

Joe, Joanie and Naomi nodded and went back out into the corridor, and Doctor Markovich closed the curtain on Tosh. She went through the routine of listening to her heart with the stethoscope, checking her blood pressure and temperature, the reflexes on her uncast leg and her unbound arm. She looked in her eyes with the ophthalmoscope, and palpated her stomach.