Authors: Marianna Roberg
Colin swallowed, then said, "It's a long story."
"I've got all night," she said pleasantly.
"Okay." He cleared his throat. "Well... back when I was working on this show back in my twenties, I... had a girlfriend. I didn't see us as that serious, but apparently, she did. When I wouldn't commit, we broke up, and she started telling people that I was gay."
"Ouch." Jaina winced. "Then what? Didn't you protest?"
"Well, too much protesting, and they wouldn't believe me. I figure that if they were going to believe her, they wouldn't listen to me. And about that time..." He paused, then asked, "Have you seen
What Women Want
'?"
She nodded. "So... There's a Marisa Tomei in there somewhere?"
Colin was surprised. Jaina had caught on quicker than he'd thought. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm... I'm friends with her still, have been for ages, but... I'm not interested in her, and... letting her think I'm gay was easier than breaking her heart."
"Hmm." Jaina stirred her cereal. "Well, as long as I'm Helen Hunt to your Mel Gibson, without the backstabbing, I'm good. So who is she?"
"Um. You haven't met her." Colin was getting very distracted by her foot. "Jaina, if you keep doing that, the only sounds that come out of me will be gibberish."
"Sorry." Grinning to show she was anything but, Jaina tucked her foot under her chair. "So that's it? People think you're gay just because you haven't said otherwise?"
"Pretty much, yes. And I haven't had a date in ages." Shrugging, he said, "Plus, for the last two years, I've been celibate."
Her grin turned wicked. "Oh, that's riiiight. Did I make you break your vow of celibacy? That's too bad."
Colin eyed her. "If you want to know, the reason I couldn't get a date and haven't been laid in years is because everyone thought I was gay and I couldn't get a woman to look at me twice. Well, not one who wasn't a fan, and I don't get involved with fans."
She frowned. "
I'm
a fan."
"Yes, but you're also a coworker, and my best friend. I
know
you as more than someone I've met at a convention, or something. More than that, I
love
you." He smiled.
That smile faded when he saw how pale she was. "Are you all right?"
"I dunno, I just feel... tired. I mean, yeah, I have reason to be tired, but... I haven't been feeling well recently, and I guess I'm just exhausted."
Colin nodded. "All right, then. Tonight, we'll just sleep."
Jaina straightened. "No, we can still..."
When she blushed, he smiled and said, "To quote Xander Harris, if you're old enough to be doing it, you're old enough to say it."
She ducked her head. "It just... it's all new, and weird. I mean, I've wanted this more than anything, but having is different than wanting. I never really thought about what happens after."
"After happily ever after?" Colin reached over and took her fingers. "Tonight, it will be sleep. Despite what I said earlier, I don't want to hurt you, and truthfully, I'm just as exhausted. Besides, we need to be on set at seven tomorrow."
Jaina groaned. "I do
not
want to go to work."
"Seven AM is too early," he said, remembering.
"It's not that. I mean, yeah, it's too early, but Angela's also very nosy. And she knows how I feel about you."
"You told her?"
"Well, she was wondering why I'm such a head case and why I go to pieces when you're around."
"Ah." He grinned, feeling smug.
Jaina finished her cereal, then yawned. "Okay, I think it's time for bed."
He nodded, spooning in the last of his marshmallows. Colin followed Jaina into the kitchen. As they put their bowls in the sink, Colin frowned.
"Jaina..."
"Yeah?"
He struggled, not able to get the words out. "Jaina, we didn't... um."
It took her a moment. "Oh. Don't worry about it. I'm on birth control."
His face cleared. "Ah. All right. Pills?"
"No, the patch," she said. "You didn't notice?"
Colin shook his head. Jaina, knowing none but he could see her, showed him the flat thing stuck to her hip.
"Oh, I thought that was a bandage," he laughed.
"Nope." She shrugged. "It regulates, and everything. And I don't have to worry about taking some stupid pill."
She sighed. "You ever feel like you're so tired you don't want to move, but at the same time, you can't sit still?"
"Sometimes. After long, long hours of working."
"That's me right now. I hate this feeling."
Colin bussed the top of her head, then stopped and lifted her in his arms. Jaina sighed, resting her head on his shoulder, and he took her upstairs
.
♥♥♥
There wasn't a question as to whether Colin would stay the night. Even though neither of them felt up to another round of lovemaking, they crawled into bed and curled up together. Colin had been doubtful about his changes at sleeping, but before he knew it, he was out like a light.
Jaina slept fitfully, finally rising in the middle of the night. She was surprised to see it really was just past midnight. She stumbled into the bathroom, feeling uncoordinated and even a little dizzy.
A few moments later, she found she was bleeding again. This alarmed her, but she didn't know what to do. It was the middle of the night.
She could see herself shaking Colin awake and telling him, and while that might make
her
feel better, it would worry him, and he probably wouldn't have any idea, either.
Ruling that out, Jaina shook her head, then grabbed at the counter as the room swayed.
She caught a glimpse of her face, shockingly pale in the mirror, and then her knees buckled and her fingers slipped off the tile
.
♥♥♥
Colin was dreaming of riding one of those old bicycles, with the giant front wheels, when something made him jerk awake. He sat up, scanning the darkened room.
The bathroom door was ajar, spilling a wedge of light into the room. Beside him, the bed was empty.
"Jaina?" he called.
There was no answer. Tossing back the covers, he slid out of bed and padded to the bathroom, pushing to door open.
Then he was on his knees beside Jaina. She was as white as the tile beneath her. Her breathing was shallow, and when he felt for her pulse, he found it rapid and shallow. What scared him most was the blood on her thighs.
He shook her gently. "Jaina?"
There was no response. She was unconscious. She didn't appear to have hit her head.
For a moment, he considered dialing 111, then decided that taking her to the hospital himself would be faster. By the time the ambulance even got to the house, he could have her at the emergency room. Besides, the neighbors would talk if an ambulance showed up in the middle of the night.
Cursing himself for not paying more attention when she said she wasn't feeling well, he ran back into the bedroom. He tugged on his pants as he shoved his feet into his shoes, forgoing socks, and then rifled through Jaina's dresser, knowing she had to have a shirt big enough to fit him. He'd seen them, he knew they existed.
He finally found one. It was the largest T-shirt she owned, with a print of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and the words, "Get Home Before Dark." Normally, he would have felt ridiculous, but at the moment, he didn't care. He threw some clothing for Jaina, pretty much at random, into a duffel bag he found in the closet.
Colin took the folded quilt at the foot of the bed, and her robe, and carefully wrapped Jaina in both.
His keys and Jaina's in his pocket, the duffel over his shoulder, and Jaina in his arms, he headed for the car
.
♥♥♥
At the emergency room, Colin handed Jaina over to the doctors. He was reluctant to let her go, even knowing they could help her and he could not. He had a paranoid fear that if he let them take her, he wouldn't see her again.
"What happened?" the trau
ma registrar demanded as Colin put her on the gurney.
"I... I don't know. I found her on the floor in the bathroom." Colin's voice cracked. "I don't think she hit her head, but she wasn't responding and... she's bleeding."
The registrar looked from Jaina's motionless form to Colin. "Was she r-"
"No!" he said forcefully. "I mean, we, uh... we had..."
Colin forced himself to stop, since he'd started stuttering. Lowering his voice, aware he was red in the face, he said, "We had intercourse, yes. She was a virgin, that's why she's bleeding. But I don't know about the fainting."
She looked reluctant to believe him. "We'll examine her, sir. You can wait here, give her information to one of the personnel."
"Her name is Jaina," he said. "Jaina McGregor."
No one acknowledged him. Colin watched, feeling numb, as they wheeled Jaina through the doors at the end of the hallway.
Chapter Sixteen
Since he didn't have much else to do, Colin went and parked the car, which he'd left sitting in front of the emergency room doors. He didn't think they'd be particularly happy with him if his car was in the way when an ambulance arrived.
After that, he spoke with a young woman in a white nurse's smock, giving her what information he knew. It was in doing that, that he realized how little he knew.
"Her name is Jaina Leigh McGregor. That's L-E-I-G-H. No A in McGregor," he said.
"Like Ewan?" the nurse asked.
"Exactly." Colin managed a weak smile. "Date of birth... the seventh of July 1981."
She put that in, then asked, "Are you her husband?"
He blinked. "No, I'm not her husband, I'm her boyfriend." That felt strange to say, because he'd never said it aloud. They'd only been an item for a matter of hours.
"What's her insurance company?"
"I don't have that information. Her family is out of town, I'd assume they know. And I don't know how to reach them."
Finally, he was able to collapse into a chair, lean his head back, and close his eyes.
Colin couldn't help feeling guilty. He knew that Jaina would tell him it wasn't his fault, but he couldn't help feeling it was. First he'd made her feel betrayed, and now he'd landed her in the hospital.
He felt a tug at his pant leg. Opening his eyes, he looked down.
Huge blue eyes peered at him from behind a mop of white-blonde wisps that hung around a dirt-smudged face, and stuck out in random directions, some straight up. The little girl, about four, stood beside his chair, clutching a doll. The blonde hair of the doll mirrored its owner's. She was dressed in a rumpled pajama set, pink with multi-colored hearts and stars. He saw she had bare feet.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," he replied.
"Are you sick?" she asked. She had a very slight lisp, caused by the gap in her front teeth.
"No," he said, sitting forward. Colin looked around the room, but didn't see anyone besides himself. That was strange. Where had the child come from?
"I'm not," she told him. She was cheerfully messing up Barbie's hair. Not that it seemed it could get much worse, he thought idly. "My mommy's sick."
The child didn't look upset, which meant that either she was used to her mother being in the emergency room, or she didn't understand what was going on.
"Where's your daddy, sweetheart?" Colin asked.
"Don't have one," she said.
"Okay, then, who brought you and Mommy to the hospital?" he asked.
As if summoned, the doors that Jaina had been taken through opened and a man walked out. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots, nothing out of the ordinary there. Actually, nothing about him was out of the ordinary. He had light brown hair, grey eyes, was of medium height and build, medium complexion.
But at the sight of him, the little girl ducked behind Colin, whimpering.
Colin didn't know what it was, but something about the man set his nerves on edge. The hair on the back of his neck rose, like the hackles on a dog.
The man saw the child and his expression darkened. Colin noticed he had bandages on his knuckles, and felt vaguely sick. "There you are, you little brat."
He started forward. The air of menace around him was almost palpable, so much so that Colin stood and put himself between the man and the child.
The girl apparently saw Colin as her protector, because she latched onto his leg, dropping her doll. Steeling himself, Colin straightened to his full height--which was only five-ten, but still taller than the man he faced--and looked him in the eyes.
"Come here, Jessie," the man said.