“Yes, you should drive.”
They switched places, and Cat drove the rest of the way to the local hospital while Rachel stared out the window. She didn’t move, say a word, check her phone, or anything else she normally would have done.
From the corner of her eye, Cat could see silvery tears sliding down Rachel’s cheeks.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or feel. How am I supposed to react? I think I feel numb.”
“I think that’s a normal response,” Cat replied. “If it’s all too much, you just sort of go into survival mode until you can deal with it.”
“When they find the person that’s doing this, I swear I’m going to kill them myself,” Rachel vowed. “Why should I show them any mercy? They haven’t given me or Josh any.”
Cat doubted Rachel was capable of killing a person, and she was simply blowing off steam. She wasn’t going to go all vigilante and stride around town packing heat.
It took a few minutes to locate Josh in the emergency room. He’d been taken into a treatment area, and a friendly nurse escorted them through a labyrinth of hallways to where he was being treated.
Finn was already there when they arrived, and Josh was lying in a hospital bed, but conscious and talking. Wearing a hospital gown, Cat could see the vivid scratches on his face and the deep road rash on his arms and legs. He looked like someone had lifted him by the hair and dragged him down the road for a mile or two, smacking him down on the pavement a thousand times or so as they went. It wasn’t a pretty sight to see.
“Oh shit,” Rachel groaned, her face going pale and her hand flying to cover her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
A nurse appeared from nowhere, pressing a plastic bag into Rachel’s hands and hurrying her into the chair next to the bed. Cat had heard from actual health professionals that they didn’t like it when friends and family fainted. Then they had two patients.
“She gets woozy at the sight of blood or wounds of any type,” Josh said, his voice too loud for the small space. It echoed off the sterile walls and decor. “She’ll be fine in a minute.”
Cat wasn’t going to be sick, but Josh’s arms and legs looked none too pretty. He had to be in a great deal of pain, too. Someone must have plucked out the gravel from that road rash bit by bit.
“I have a sprained ankle,” Josh announced with a bright smile. “The doctor says I’m going to be covered in bruises.”
It was a little strange that he seemed so incredibly happy about it. Then Cat noticed that he was hooked up to an IV bag. Was he getting the good stuff? He would feel this later. Big time. Luckily, he was alive, and from what Cat could see, he was going to be fine.
“I’ll be back in a little while with your discharge paperwork and instructions,” the nurse said. “Someone will need to pick up your prescriptions at the pharmacy. You’ll want them today.”
“I can do that for you,” Cat offered. “If you like. I know you won’t want to leave Josh.”
“That would be good. Thanks.” Rachel took a deep breath, and her color improved. “Sorry about that. There’s a reason I didn’t become a doctor or nurse.”
Finn cleared his throat, his little notebook and pencil still out and ready to take notes.
“Josh, can we get back to what happened today?”
“Sure, sure. What do you need to know? Ask me anything,” Josh said, still grinning and throwing his arms wide.
Cat wasn’t sure how wise it was to take a statement from a man who was clearly on some hefty painkillers, but Finn was simply trying to do his job and get any information that he could to start working on who might have done something like this.
“You said you were riding down the road on your bicycle, and a vehicle knocked you off your bicycle. Is that correct?”
“Yep, they hit me on my left side.” Josh patted his left hip. “I lost control of my bike and ran off the road.”
“Did the vehicle stop or slow down? Even a little bit?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t have much memory of that. I watched it drive away. I don’t think it stopped. It might have slowed down.”
“Do you remember what the vehicle looked like? Anything at all?”
“It was blue,” Josh said, nodding his head. “It was a blue SUV. Just like yours, honey.”
The silence that followed Josh’s statement could only be described as awkward. Josh, on the other hand, didn’t have a clue as to the Pandora’s box he’d just opened.
“It looked like Rachel’s SUV?” Finn asked, his tone neutral. “As in it was the same make or just the same color?”
