She let up, but not before placing a kiss on my quickly reddening forehead first.
Then she patted me on the shoulder and started to squirm.
Understanding she wanted down, I dropped her legs, and she did the rest of the work.
"What's down here?" she asked, pointing in the direction of a wooded area that I hadn't gotten a chance to explore yet.
"I don't know," I admitted. "We have another hour or so before we need to head home and catch a nap before work. If you want, we can walk that way. When we get tired, we'll turn around."
She looked skeptically at the sheer drop that led even further down into the woods.
"I'm going to bust my ass, possibly break my arm, and have to skip work because I'll be in the ER getting a cast fitted onto my arm. As long as you're okay working with someone you don't like, I'll do it."
I gave her a look that clearly relayed what I thought about her trust in me and held out my hand.
She didn't even hesitate.
Placing her hand into mine, I helped her down the hill.
And not once did she fall.
Me, on the other hand … yeah, I was a different story.
***
"Oh, my God," Naomi's eyes were bright. "Are you sure you're okay?"
I looked over at her for the fifth time in less than an hour.
I was driving the medic, and trying hard not to laugh at the horror that was still pasted on Naomi's face.
"I'm fine," I promised her for the final time. "Drop it, okay?"
She bit her lip, but her eyes stayed on my eyebrow where I was now the proud new owner of fifteen stitches.
It started at the bridge of my nose and curled around my eye, stopping just above my eye socket on my left side. I had no eyebrow, though you couldn't tell really since the stitches were now acting as a temporary one.
"Does it hurt?" she whispered.
I shook my head.
"No."
I was lying. It hurt like a motherfucker.
I didn't want her to feel worse than she already did, though, so I kept silent on how much it was throbbing.
Since I couldn't take any pain meds while I was at work, I was stuck with feeling the sharp ache despite taking both Tylenol and Motrin.
"It looks like it hur … "
"Naomi, I'll smack your ass if you ask that again," I growled.
I'd fallen.
Oh, boy had I fallen.
And not gracefully, either.
I'd just helped Naomi over a fallen log, and had put my weight on it to hop over myself.
The weight of my body had been a lot more than Naomi's, and seconds after my full body weight had been on it, it collapsed out from under me.
I fell, face forward, straight into a stump and split my eye open.
"You could've lost your eye," she continued.
I sighed.
"I really, really don't want to talk about this right now," I grumbled. "So, if you'd please shut up, I'd appreciate it."
She started to snicker, and I narrowed my eyes at her.
"I'm not eating Taco Bell again," she declared once she'd managed to compose herself. "I haven't tried it since I got my colostomy reversal, but I just don't think my belly can handle it."
I hummed in approval. "I think that's acceptable. So you either have Subway, which happens to be on the way home. Or Fanny's."
Fanny's wasn't really on the way home, but I could make it on the way home. They'd never notice if I stopped in and grabbed the food.
"Fanny's," she said excitedly. "I've never had it, but I've heard that it's good."
It was. "The best," I promised. "Call ahead. Tell them you want two specials."
"What's the special?" she asked as she took her phone out of her pocket and started googling the number.
She'd just gotten on the line with them when the tones dropped.
"Medic 33, child sick and lethargic at 777 Pointy Grove Lane."
My stomach dropped.
"Oh, God," Naomi echoed my thoughts. "Never mind."
Naomi hung up the phone and I swung around a slow driving car, flipping on my lights at the same time.
The drive to the house was silent and tense, and by the time we arrived, the sick feeling in my stomach had turned to a deep ache that resonated in my bones.
It took three minutes and thirty-seven seconds to respond to the call.
This was going to be very bad. I knew it before I'd even gotten out of the medic.
"Shit," Naomi said, seeing the parents standing in the street. "I'll grab the doors."
I didn't wait to see if she got them or not. The minute I had the ambulance in park, I was running toward the front of the house as fast as my legs would take me.
My head no longer hurt, and my eyes were focused on my target.