My Boyfriend and Friends Stole My Heart Surgery Fund for Their Trip novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: The Badge

By Saturday morning they had me out of the ICU and walking.

Walking meant shuffling down the hallway, with a heart-shaped pillow clutched to my chest and a nurse holding the back of my gown.

Lorcan walked on my other side.

He had slept at home on Friday, under orders from the hospital, and he had come back at six with two coffees he was not allowed to give me.

"The flowers," I said at the end of the hallway. "I want to know who carried them in."

"I asked," he said. "She came through the ICU waiting room at four on Thursday with her vendor badge. A volunteer took the vase back. Nobody thought anything of it."

"Where is she now?"

"The front atrium. It's her second delivery of the week." He glanced at me. "You don't have to do this today."

"I want to."

"You can barely stand."

"Then you'll stand for me."

The nurse sighed, found a wheelchair, and said she'd allow it if I stayed in it.

I stayed in it for as long as it took to get to the elevator.

The atrium of the hospital had a glass roof and a fountain and twelve rows of chairs where families waited for news.

That morning there was also Bree, in a dark apron, kneeling at the base of an enormous arrangement of white hydrangeas.

She had a rolling cart of stems beside her and a clip-on badge on her collar.

She looked up as the elevator opened, and her face did the thing it always did.

It softened.

It filled with warm concern.

"Vic," she said, rising. "Oh, sweetheart. You're up. I was so worried."

She came toward me with her hands out.

I put up one palm, and she stopped.

The atrium was nearly full. A man with a cast on his arm, two women with coffees, a child on a bench with a stuffed rabbit.

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