The Best Candidate

Chapter 11

A/N: The image above does not belong to me. It belongs to the person who uploaded it on the internet.

Third Person POV

"His bed is over here," Max heard someone saying and then he heard the rustling of the curtain that separated his bed from another bed in the ER.

"Tul !!!" Max could not even be sure now if it was Mook or Ella who exclaimed Tul's name.

Max totally forgot that opening his eyes could make his dizziness return, and worse, he forgot that if he tried to sit up, not just the nausea but the throbbing pain in his head would come back.

Max quickly sat up and then stood up from his bed.

"Ohmygahd nuuurrrssseee!" Mook and Ella screamed in unison for a nurse while Tul rushed over to Max who had promptly fallen to the floor the moment that he stood up from the bed.

"Are you okay? Where does it hurt?" Tul asked anxiously as he lifted Max and placed him back gently on the bed.

"I'm okay," Max assured Tul. "I landed on my fat butt so I'm okay. Nothing hurts except my pride," Max added with a sheepish smile.

Soon the ER nurse came in carrying the discharge papers and a medicine cup and a tumbler of water.

"Take these pills, please," the ER nurse instructed Max.

Tul lifted Max's upper body so that Max could swallow the pills safely.

Then the nurse took Max's blood pressure and respiration and heart rate and lastly his temperature. She also inserted Max's index finger into a pulse oximeter to measure his oxygen saturation at room air.

"All his vital signs are normal," the nurse announced. "The patient is okay to be discharged."

"Thank you, nurse," Tul was the only one who remembered to thank the nurse before she left the ER cubicle where Max was situated.

Ella turned to Tul.

"What are you doing here?" she asked Tul. "I thought you had gone home already after you dropped me off at the lobby entrance."

"I didn't say that I was going home," Tul said reproachfully. "What I said was I was going to drop you off first and then I was going to look for a parking space because, remember, there was no parking space available and we were just going round and round in the parking lot?"

"Oops, sorry," Ella said with a sheepish smile. "I guess I had been so distressed at the thought that Mook was coping with Max's ER situation all by herself that all I could think of was to get to her side as soon as possible."

"To her side or to my side, the patient???" Max raised an eyebrow at Ella which made Ella blush to the roots of her hair.

Max promptly raised his finger to stop the throbbing of his head. Even just the act of raising an eyebrow could trigger pain, goddammit.

"Are you okay, Max?" concern was written all over Tul's face when he saw Max grimacing as he gently pressed a finger to the side of his head.

"I think I can make it out of here," Max replied. "I just need someone to place his arm around my waist to support me while I walk."

"Let me do it," Mook quickly offered, putting her arm around Max, but in doing so, she dropped the discharge papers.

Tul bent and picked them up from the floor and handed them to Mook.

"Let me take care of Max," Tul said. "You go on ahead with Ella. I will bring him home in my car."

"You're taking me to your home or to mine?" Max asked, his heart palpitating so hard that if the nurse came back to take his vital signs, his heart rate was probably shooting off the ceiling.