Harold looked at the nurse and nodded his head.
“I noticed you have been here the whole day. Our staff will be here soon, why don’t you go and take a rest?”
The nurse was just trying to be nice, reminding him that he needed to rest and to eat, no matter what kind of a person, they can’t stay here all night.
But Harold refused to leave, now that Jenny was suffering in pain, he had no intention of thinking about his own needs.
He shook his head and asked softly, “Are there any VIP wards here?”
“Yeah… but they are all reserved by other patients, when they are discharged I can try and transfer you to one.”
The nurse lowered her head and looked at him, he had such handsome face, and had an aura like a royal person, he was taking such good care of his girlfriend, and said to herself that if she was gonna get married, he definitely needed to be handsome too.
Of course Harold didn’t know what she was thinking about, all he was thinking about was that Jenny will have to stay in this room for a few more days, so close to the noisy hall of the station. He felt so guilty about that.
Suddenly, he heard a voice coming from the bed, “Water…”
It was Jenny!
Both the nurse and Harold rushed to her side, making sure what she wanted and giving her some warm water to drink. Harold used a spoon to feed her bit by bit.
She was still not fully awake yet, but the natural reaction of her body helped her swallow the water, and she fell back to sleep again.
The nurse talked with Harold about what to pay attention to, and left the room. Harold stayed by Jenny’s side, but his tiredness was gone.
…
Wendy hadn’t seen Jenny since the day she left for her vacations, and the next day when she went to Jenny’s house, she was still not there.
Why was it so quiet?
Wendy knocked on her door, and yelled, “Jenny!”
No answer.
She felt that something was not right and took out her phone. She dialed Jenny’s number but no one picked up.
Just when she was about to hang up the phone again, she heard the voice of a man on the other side, “Hello?”
What is happening?
Wendy’s heart skipped a beat. Was she with the guy from the other day? She said, “James?”
When Harold heard that name, the color in his face vanished. Now even Jenny’s friends knew about James, but nobody knew about himself, who had so many memories with Jenny.
His low voice answered, “Harold Quarrington.”
That name sounded familiar, she had heard of him, so she asked, “How come you have Jenny’s phone, are you with her?”
Harold didn’t neglect that question, since he was truly with her at that time, and she was just laying on the bed in front of him.
When Wendy heard about what happened to Jenny, she didn’t even think twice and ran out of the house, getting into a taxi and went straight to the hospital.
On the way she was praying for Jenny, that nothing should happen to her, and if she only knew about this before, she would have been by her side all this time.
But thinking about this now didn’t matter anymore, the only thing she could do for her was to be there for her now.
The hospital was pretty central, not far from their home, when she arrived she hurried to the ward that Harold had sent her per message, pushed the door open and saw a pale Jenny laying on the bed.
She didn’t even look at the man who was greeting her and went straight to the side of Jenny’s bed. Wendy started to cry.
“How could something like this happen to her, who did that? Did you call the police?”
Harold’s voice was breaking, “Last night when I arrived, she was already on the ground, then I drove her to the hospital. I didn’t have a chance yet to call the police.”
“Do you know who it was?” Wendy was full of worries, the city was so secure, how could this have happened? It was hard to accept.
Harold shook his head, “I will get to the ground of this.”
Subconsciously Wendy rested her look on Harold and breathed out.
She knew a little about the things that happened between them, and now that she has met Harold, she didn’t know what to ask him about.
“Have you been here the whole night?”
Harold nodded, “Yeah.”
“Let me stay with her today, you should go back and have a rest. If you keep staying here you will break down soon.”
Wendy put down her bag, pulled the chair to Jenny’s bedside and sat down next to her. Harold looked at her and asked, “Are you her friend?”
“Yeah, we are pretty close.”
“You…”, he was just going to ask her something when there was a knock on the door, “Is the patient’s name Jenny Andrews?”
There was a woman at the door, maybe around 40 to 50 years of age, she was the care staff of the hospital. “I am the new care staff, from now on I will be taking care of Jenny, you can leave everything to me, and go home to rest.”
Harold nodded, even though he wanted to take care of Jenny himself, but she was trained for this, and there were things he couldn’t do for her.
He didn’t leave though, he wanted to wait until Jenny woke up before he could stop worrying.
The nurse took a quick look of the situation, and told them that they didn’t need to be too worried about Jenny’s condition. She looked at Harold and said, “We can try to feed her some liquid food, this will help her body recover faster.”
“Okay, you go and get some.”
Harold didn’t know what to buy, so he asked the nurse to do it for him.
The nurse didn’t refuse, turned around and left the room. This was her job to do.
Jenny looked so small and weak on the bed, her tiny face rested on the pillow, looking at her made one feel heartbreak.
“You are a stupid woman.”
Not long after, Jenny started to whimper, “It hurts…”
Harold rushed to her side and asked in her ear, “Where does it hurt?”
“So painful…” Jenny said, still unconscious, she was unable to answer his question.
Harold frowned, he grabbed her blanket and thought for a second, but then he decided to pull up her hospital gown.
The long wound was on her pale body, it looked so painful that even Harold was scared.
He took a closer look at the injury, why was it so red here?
The more he thought about it the more sure he was that something was not right here. He pressed the button to get a nurse, and not long after a few appeared in the room.
“How can this be?” One of the nurses stared at the wound and frowned, she waved her hand to the other two, “Go and get a doctor, now!”
Harold’s heart dropped deep, “What is happening?”
“Her wound got infected, it needs to be taken care of right now!”
What? Infected? How could this be so serious? Didn’t the doctor say that everything was alright? How could it be that it got infected so fast?
“How did this happen? Why?”
“There could be various reasons for this, we will need to wait for the doctor to take a look.”
As soon as the doctor arrived, and inspected the wound, he sighed, “Her wound got infected and it is really hard to treat now, but it’s good that we noticed in time.”
The doctor quickly ordered the needed medication and the IV was put on again, to treat the infection. Then he talked to Harold.
“The situation does not look good right now, you will need to stay with her at all times, so that we can be notified in case something happens.”