Always: Broken Series Book Four Read Free Page B

hospital. I don’t know why I decided that it was urgent, because I had been ignoring this pain for so long, but I knew that it was. I could feel it in my gut that I needed to see a doctor, and that I shouldn’t delay it.
    The Uber driver picked me up. “Where you going at the time of the night?” he asked me.
    “Greenwich Hospital,” I said. “The ER.”
    He looked at me strangely and started driving. “How come you’re all alone?”
    I looked out the window and said nothing for a bit. Then I decided to go ahead and tell him. “My sister didn’t want to be bothered to bring me. And my mom and dad are in a cabin right now up in the Poconos.”
    He nodded. “A young girl like you shouldn’t be going out in the middle of the night unless it’s something that’s urgent.”
    “It’s urgent.” Of course, I was kinda lying. It wasn’t that urgent, otherwise I wouldn’t have been ignoring it all this time.
    He just nodded his head again. “Do you need me to also pick you up from the hospital?”
    “Yes, probably. I’ll be sure to text you after I’m done.”
    “That’s probably a good idea.”
    He didn’t speak for the rest of the trip, and, it seemed like no time at all before I was being dropped off in front of the hospital’s ER. “Well, here we are. I’ll be looking for your text. At any rate, even if I’m busy with another call, which I probably won’t be, but even if I am, be sure and get an Uber driver to take you home.”
    “Thanks.”
    I went into the ER and went right up to the counter. “Uh, hello, my name is Addison O’Hara, and I think that I need to see a doctor.”
    The lady behind the counter just nodded her head. “Where are your parents?”
    “They’re not here. They’re in the mountains.” I hated to keep having to explain my situation. Was it really that unusual that a 15-year-old would be out alone in the middle of the night?
    Don’t answer that question. Of course it was unusual that I would be all alone in the hospital in the middle of the night. Still, I figured that I wasn’t the only young girl who was there in the hospital with nobody around. It did make me feel just a little bit sad to think that, though.
    The lady sighed. “You do have insurance, right?”
    “Of course.” I gave her my insurance card and she made note of it.
    “Fill this out.” She handed me a stack of papers that I needed to fill out about my medical history.
    “Can’t I just tell you that I’m not on any medication of any sort, and I’ve never been hospitalized nor ever sick in my life?” I hated to fill out forms. Hated it with a passion. My handwriting wasn’t the best, but, more than that, it was just so tedious. And I knew from Chloe and Olivia being hospitalized that hospitals always had fifty bajillion forms to fill out. It drove me up a tree.
    “No, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. We need your medical history. We’re also going to have to have your parents sign off on any treatment that we give you here. When are they going to be back?”
    “Monday.”
    She shrugged. “Well, hopefully there’s nothing wrong with you, and there won’t be an issue.”
    As much as I hated it, I did fill out the forms and handed them into the lady. Then I took a seat in the waiting room. As I looked around the room, I became more and more apprehensive about doing things this way. I was a young girl, all alone, in a hospital waiting room. Everywhere around me were people who were hacking and coughing and generally looking miserable. There were quite a few people who looked strung out or homeless or possibly both.
    And I thought, for the first time, that Olivia was going to wake up and find me gone and get really, really upset. Of course, hopefully I would just be let out of the hospital in an hour or so, and I’d be back before she even noticed me gone. After all, she was really hungover and tired, and she probably planned to sleep in because it was Sunday.
    I cleared my throat and