He propped his feet up on the edge of her hospital bed and tossed back a handful of mixed nuts he’d scored from the vending machine. He debated caffeine since he never did get to finish the drink he’d ordered at the café, but hospital coffee was way too disgusting.
“You don’t have to wait with me, you know,” Kareena said looking up from her cell phone at his loud crunching. She had dark bags under her eyes now, and her hair fell in thick waves around her shoulders. Some of her exposed skin was still splotchy and red. “I appreciate you bringing me in, but I’m perfectly fine.”
“I can take you home when we’re done,” he said. “Since you don’t want your family to know that you’re here.”
She shook her head. “It’s better if I take a car service. Or I’ll ask one of my friends to come down and take me. I don’t want to have to explain myself if my family sees you.”
Prem shrugged. He could understand that sentiment. He’d had similar thoughts when he and Gori discussed living on their own. “Well, at least now we can talk,” he said as he shook out more mixed nuts from his snack pack.
“Ugh, really?”
“I think it’s time, don’t you?”
“Not particularly. Hopefully, I won’t be here much longer.”
Her nurse had left a few moments ago after a barrage of testing and visits from various professionals. Now they were waiting for her results to come back before determining whether or not she would be discharged. She was hooked up to an IV, and pumped full of epinephrine and steroids, but they’d stopped the reaction in more than enough time that they didn’t feel like they needed more than that.
“When was the last time you saw an allergist?”
Kareena, with her glasses perched on top of her head, lying back against the upright hospital bed, glared at him. “A while ago, and no, I’m not going to see one tonight. I think I’ve had enough needles, thank you very much. Is that what you wanted to talk about? Prem, my reaction stopped like ten minutes after they gave me the shots. The itching, the throat swelling . . . what? Why are you grinning like that?”
“You said my name,” he blurted out. “You haven’t since we first met.” It felt . . . sexy? No, that wasn’t it. Intimate. It was an intimate experience hearing his name from Kareena’s mouth.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be referring to you as Dr. Phil shortly.” She crossed her arms after motioning to the discarded sweater vest at the foot of her bed. “I don’t understand why they had to cut my sweater vest. Did you tell them to do that? You have it out for my sweater vests, don’t you?”
Prem rolled his eyes. “They cut it because you were wearing too many layers. By the time they realized you were passing out because of a panic attack, not because your airways had closed, it was already too late. And no, I didn’t tell them to cut your sweater vests. I’m partial to them. That’s one of the first things I noticed about you.”
The ruefulness in her expression faded, and she grew solemn. Fiddling with her phone, she said, “Did you hit on me because you thought I was easy? At the bar.”
“What? Where did that come from?”
“Never mind, forget I asked.”
“No,” he said. Prem reached out and touched Kareena’s hand, so she’d look over at him. “No. I was there with my friend that night, but he didn’t want to sit with me because I kept looking over at you. So, he left, and I figured what the hell?”
“But you definitely regretted it when we started making out,” she replied. “That’s why you faked your emergency call.”
“I didn’t fake it,” he said. And because he knew the time for lying was long past, he added, “My family has an SOS ring tone. That way my parents, my aunts, my uncles, all of whom are physicians or professors, know to drop everything, including their patients, because there is something wrong.”
Kareena’s eyes widened. “Pineapple,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Pineapple. That’s our SOS text with our dad so he knows it’s an emergency and has to stop in the middle of seeing patients. I’m assuming while I was tied up with my sweater vest, that phone ping was your Pineapple.”
“Exactly,” he said with an exhale of relief. “I really was going to come back.”
She shook her head. “I think it was meant to be. Dr. Dil’s philosophy really doesn’t jibe with mine,” she added ruefully.