When You're Ready (The Ready Series #1)

Chapter One

Three Years Later...

~Clare~

"Miss? Do you need to see a doctor?" the emergency room attendant asked.

My eyes roamed the familiar sterile walls, taking me back to the last time I'd stood in this very room. It was when they'd told me he—

Don't think about it. Don't even go there.

"Miss?"

I didn't even know why she was asking. Why else would I be standing here? The vomit smell, the wild look in my eyes, and the crying child in my arms weren't enough of an answer for her?

"Yes, my daughter fell. She threw up the whole way here. I-I think she might have a concussion," I managed to say while juggling said daughter in one arm and printing her name on the sign-in sheet on the counter with the other. I pushed back a piece of my auburn hair with my freed-up hand and exhaled in exhaustion.

Nodding, the middle-aged woman with the sandy-brown hair and a name tag that said Tammy began to take our information. She slapped those uncomfortable hospital bracelets on both our wrists and ushered us into the waiting room, assuring me it wouldn't be too long of a wait.

Hopefully, the walls wouldn't close in on me before we got called back. I hated this place.

I sat down in the far corner, making sure there was plenty of space between us and the other patients waiting their turns. No one needed to be sitting near this train wreck. My nerves were shot, and I was still shaking like a leaf from our harrowing drive. I was fairly sure I'd broken a number of traffic laws while getting us here, but when your child was in the backseat, re-creating a scene from The Exorcist, traffic tickets seemed a little less important.

I knew, in the back of my mind, that it was most likely a run-of-the-mill concussion, and she just needed to be examined. I should have been calmer, but as soon as she'd begun getting sick on the couch at home, I'd freaked out. I thought it was a mom thing, that we couldn't help it. It was our job to panic. That was what I kept telling myself at least.

I looked down at my Maddie, my four-year-old monster, currently dressed completely in pink, all of which was covered in dry vomit. She was holding on to my shirt with a tight fist, her tiny head resting against my chest. She was still sniffling from tears that had long since dried. The beautiful curly strawberry-blonde hair that she'd inherited from me was a matted mess, sticking up in every direction. Her left thumb was purposely stuck in her mouth, her preferred method of calming herself down when she was upset.

I desperately tried not to think about whether or not that thumb had come in contact with anything projecting out of her mouth. Gross.

"I swear, child, you're gonna give me a heart attack before I turn thirty," I said while absently running my hand through her disheveled hair, gazing into the brown eyes that reminded me so much of the man I'd loved.

My eyes were a deep green, but Maddie's were the color of her father's, dark chestnut brown.

The last two hours were a blur, and I was still trying to recover. Parenthood was never-ending and exhausting. Being a single parent was even more so.

I hadn't planned on the single part.

"Ethan, please don't leave me!"

The memory of that night came rushing back. I remembered finding him unconscious and barely breathing, the ambulance, and the hysteria as they'd wheeled him into the emergency room. Standing in this waiting room when the doctor had come out and—