Save Me
By Natasha Preston
The right Natasha Preston to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my lovely beta readers and friends. Thanks for all that extra work you made me do… Ladies, I couldn’t do it without you.
To Mollie Wilson from MJWilson Design for creating the cover.
And to my editor Eileen Proksch.
Dedication
Kirsty, this one could only ever be for you!
Chapter One
Tegan
I sat in the small family room with my mum and sister, waiting to hear if our worst nightmare – the one we didn’t speak aloud in case we jinxed it – was about to come true.
Dad’s parents and brother were on their way but at the minute it was just us three. I needed more people here; more to focus on so I could pretend the surgeons weren’t fighting to save my dad’s life right now.
The room we were in was all wrong. It was light and welcoming, with bright flowers in a tall vase on the coffee table. It was cheerful and gave false hope. Not everyone that came in here was going to leave happy.
Ava sniffed and wiped her nose. She and Mum clung to each other. They were close. I was close to Dad. Whenever anything bad happened it was just assumed Dad would comfort me, and Mum would comfort Ava. I wanted, needed, the support they were offering but I knew the only person that could do that was in emergency surgery.
“What’s taking them so long?” Ava said. She already knew what. They were fighting to stop a pretty serious bleeding in his brain. I was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to.
“He’ll be fine,” Mum said, nodding more to herself than anyone else.
I tensed my body, stupidly telling myself that if I just stayed as still as I could he’d be fine. That was ridiculous, though. If I sat as still as a statue or did cartwheels around the room it made absolutely no difference to what the outcome of the operation would be. That was all down to Dad and the surgeons.
We’d only been here forty-five minutes but it felt like hours, days even. Dad was already in surgery when we received that call. I didn’t know how long something like that took to fix and I didn’t know if it was a good sign that we hadn’t heard anything since we arrived or not.
“Alison!” Nan said, bursting through the door. Tears streamed down her face, taking her mascara with it. Mum stood up and hugged her tight. They cried together for a minute before Nan pulled away and sat in Mum’s seat between me and Ava and put an arm around each of us. Her son was in surgery but she was doing her best to comfort us.
Ava cried harder, turning to sob on Mum’s shoulder on the other side of her now. I couldn’t cry at all. I didn’t want to. It would be like accepting there was a possibility that my strong dad wouldn’t make it. Deep down I knew there was a chance that could happen, of course. He was going to make it, though.
Next in the room were Grandad and Uncle Sam, just minutes behind Nan. I watched them talk, exchanging comforting words almost animatedly but I didn’t really hear a thing.
“Tegan, are you okay?” Mum asked softly. She knelt down in front of me, worry etched on her tear-stained face. How long had she been there for?
I nodded, at least I think I did. I didn’t want her worrying. “I’m fine,” I replied. Fine wasn’t how I felt at all; petrified was a much better fit. She smiled and sat back on her chair, wrapping her arm around Ava again.
Waiting was excruciating. What if they came with bad news? What if they couldn’t stop the bleeding? His car was hit by a lorry, what chance did he really have against that?
“Mrs Pennells?”
I leapt up with everyone else at the doctor’s words. My world stopped. The doctor’s face was blank, giving nothing away. I could feel my heart racing at a hundred miles an hour.
“I’m so sorry. We did everything that we could–”
I spaced out, muscles locking in position, hearing only the ringing in my ears as I tried to think of a way that I’d misheard that. Black spots danced in front of my face. My lungs burned where I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Then I was falling.
***