The Men On Fire: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set)

by Samantha Christy

  When I look over at Bass, I find him staring at me. He doesn’t make some dick comment like Geoff Nolan and a lot of other guys would. He doesn’t even try to talk to me. He just looks … concerned.

  As soon as we’re back at the station and I get cleaned up, I call Joelle.

  “Hi, Denver,” she answers.

  I can tell in her voice that something’s wrong.

  “What is it? Is she okay?”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that I can’t go to the hospital today, or for several days. The twins both woke up with bad colds and the nurse told me not to come. They can’t risk any germs in the ICU. Sara is already at risk for pneumonia.”

  My head falls back against the wall and I look to the ceiling in disappointment. Sara will be alone today. All day.

  “And Oliver?”

  “He hasn’t shown up yet,” she says. “He didn’t get back to you?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe Lydia will go back,” she says.

  I shake my head. “I doubt it. I got the feeling she showed up yesterday to get some kind of closure.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “Have you talked to the hospital today?”

  “Not since one-thirty this morning.”

  “You called them in the middle of the night?” she asks.

  “I had a bad feeling. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But nothing had really changed. Have you heard anything different?”

  “They got the results of the MRI.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t know if they aren’t telling me something or if they really just don’t know. They said one important finding was that the brainstem itself was not compromised as originally thought. This is good news as that’s the part of the brain that controls the bodily functions we don’t think about like our heartbeat, breathing, and digestion. However, there is damage in other areas of the brain, but they said the extent of that damage won’t be known until Sara wakes up.”

  I close my eyes. “Shit, Joelle. I’m sorry.”

  “The other news, which I guess is good, is that today they are going to remove the wire coming out of her head that measures the pressure.”

  “Yeah, they told me they would probably do that soon.”

  “And she’s having a few minor surgeries today to put in a feeding tube and trach.”

  “Why does she need those if the brainstem wasn’t affected?”

  “The way they explained it to me is that she’s starting to take a few breaths over the ventilator, but they expect she’ll need help breathing for a while and that the risk of bacteria is high with the tube in her mouth. They said it will be far more comfortable for Sara to have the tube in her neck and not her throat. And to eliminate all tubes going down her throat, they will attach a feeding tube directly to her stomach with a bag outside her body. They claim that will be just temporary until she can progress to eating on her own.”

  “So, they expect her to be able to eat on her own?”

  “Like I said, they aren’t guaranteeing anything. I swear they talk in code half the time.”

  “And did she move again?” I ask. “Has she woken up?”

  “They didn’t say anything about that, so I guess not.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be there today. I’ll go as soon as I get off shift tomorrow morning.”

  “Denver, you’ve gone way above and beyond. I don’t expect you to go back at all. You don’t need to sit with her.”

  “Until Oliver shows up, I’m going back. She shouldn’t have to be alone.”

  “I know, but it’s not on you.”

  “It’s okay, Joelle. I want to. I don’t mind.”

  “Well, thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  My eyes find the floor. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Oh, but you have. Listen, I have to go. One of the kids is crying. I’ll let you know if they call me with another update.”

  “Thanks, Joelle. I hope your kids feel better.”

  I put my phone on the table next to my cot. As I lie back and lace my hands behind my neck, I notice Bass leaning against the wall not far from my space. It’s obvious he was listening.

  I sit up and put my forearms on my knees. “How much of that did you hear?”

  “Pretty much all of it.”

  “And you didn’t think to mind your own fucking business?” I bite at him.

  He walks over and sits on the cot opposite me. “Listen, Denver. I get that you’re struggling with something here. But your obsession with the girl in the hospital isn’t normal.”

  My eyes snap to his. “You think I’m obsessed with her?”

  “Well, what would you call it when you spend every waking minute at the hospital with a stranger?” He nods to my phone. “And when you can’t be there, you’re asking her family about her.”

  “Some family,” I say. “She’s got a cousin who can’t even show up most of the time, an old friend who she cut ties with years ago, and a boyfriend who’s MIA.”

  “And how is that your problem, man?”

  “Why do you even give a shit, Bass? I did my job this morning.”

  “Because thoughts of this girl are consuming you. It’s not healthy.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” I say, springing up off the cot.

  “Because I’m not sure you can be.”

  I flash him an uninviting stare. “Are you telling me I should see a goddamned shrink?”

  “If that’s what it takes. The department has a lot of resources. And it doesn’t have to be a shrink, you know. FDNY has chaplains stationed around the city. But I think it’s time you talk to someone, Denver. Anyone.”

  I do talk to someone, I want to tell him. I talk to Sara.

  I walk out of the bunk room and into the bathroom where I splash some water on my face. Then I spend the rest of the day thinking about the girl lying in the hospital bed, wondering if anyone showed up to hold her hand today.

  Chapter Seven

  She looks so different without all the tubes, tape, and wires around her face. I’ve never seen her whole face before. When I was in the car with her, all I could see was her eyes and the top of her head. And after she was pulled out, she had an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth.

  She looks almost peaceful now.

  I walk to the head of the bed and study her skull. She has new stitches where the ICP monitor used to be, to go along with the twelve stitches on the right side of her head.

  They did a good job preserving her hair, which looks like it’s been recently cleaned. It’s dirty-blonde with an edgy cut that falls just about to her shoulders. I imagine if her hair doesn’t fully grow back around the stitches, she’ll be able to cover them easily.

  I notice a birthmark on her face by her left ear. It’s a darker patch of skin about the size of a fingernail but in the shape of a flower.

  “Good morning,” I finally say to her, wondering if she can hear me. “It’s Denver again. Sorry I couldn’t visit yesterday. I was working all day.”

  I put my jacket around me, shivering in the cold. I’d hoped her fever would be down by now, but the nurse outside told me that a spike in temperature was expected after her surgeries yesterday. They hope it will abate soon.

  “Damn, girl. You’ll be ready to move to Antarctica after all this,” I say.

  I pull the chair to the side of her bed and sit down. Then I tell her what I’ve told her twenty times a day. “You were in an accident, Sara. You’re in the hospital now. They gave you drugs to sleep, but you should wake up soon. You’re going to be okay.”

  I look at her hand, hoping my voice will have her finger moving again, but it doesn’t.

  I reach into the pocket of my coat and pull out the book I bought on my way home from the hospital the other day. Anne of Green Gables. Lydia said it was Sara’s favorite book growing up. She told me Sara read it at least fifty times. I open the cover and start reading.

&n
bsp; A nurse comes in a while later, catching me during the third chapter. I look up at her. She’s not the same day nurse as the last few times I was here.

  “Don’t stop on my account,” she says. “I think it’s great that you’re reading to her. Most families will just sit and watch TV or play around on their phones.”

  “I’m not family,” I tell her.

  “I know. Krista told me. She said you’ve been here a lot. Told me the whole story. I think what you’re doing is heroic.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sitting with a woman in a coma. There’s nothing heroic about it.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” she says, as she replaces Sara’s empty IV bag with a full one.

  I see movement out of the corner of my eye and immediately stand up, my heart pounding.

  “Look, there,” I say. “She moved her hand. Did you see that?”

  The nurse looks at Sara and then at her monitors. “Sara, sweetie, can you hear me?” she asks. “Can you open your eyes?” She makes a fist with her hand and rubs it on Sara’s chest. “Sara?”

  She looks back at me. “It can take a while to come out from under the sedation. And she is still on pain medication. What you saw could have been a reflex.”

  After the nurse leaves, I put down the book and talk to Sara. “I know you can hear me, Sara. I don’t believe what she said about the reflex. You moved your hand. I saw it. You’re going to wake up soon and you’re going to be okay. You were in a car accident, remember? But you’re safe now. You’re in the hospital. I called Oliver and he’s going to be here very soon. Joelle has been here as well. And Lydia. You remember Lydia? She’s the one who told me about your favorite book.”

  I see her finger twitch again, but I don’t bother calling the nurse. She’s just going to tell me some B.S. about it being a reflex. But I know better.

  For hours, I read to her. And when I go to the cafeteria for lunch, I leave my phone on the bed with Sara, having it stream one of her favorite shows Lydia told me they used to watch together, The Bachelor. I know she can’t see it, but maybe just hearing it will help.

  I’m eating a sandwich when Kyle Stone walks up.

  He nods to an empty chair. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please. It might be nice to have someone actually respond to me when I talk to them.”

  He laughs sadly. “Yeah, I heard she hasn’t woken up yet.”

  “She will soon,” I say.

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh? Is that what they told you?”

  I shake my head. “No. But I know she will.”

  He takes a drink of his coffee, studying me over the lid. “The nurses tell me you’ve been here almost every day, all day.”

  I put down my bag of chips. “You going to tell me that’s not normal, too?”

  “I’m not one to judge, Denver. There was a time when I sat with a patient on my days off.”

  I raise a brow at him.

  “Several years ago when I was a resident, I had a pregnant patient who was in the hospital for weeks. She had no one. And I mean no one. Not a cousin, like Sara has. Not even an old friend.”

  “So what happened? Did you ever see her again after she left the hospital?”

  “I see her every day,” he says. “She’s my wife.”

  I almost choke on my soda. “You married her?”

  He smiles. “Sure did. So I’m sure as hell not going to be the one to tell you that you can’t have a relationship with a patient.”

  “A relationship?” I look at him walleyed. “No, that’s not what I want. I mean, I guess I want to be her friend. But she has a boyfriend, Kyle.”

  “One who’s still not been to see her from what I hear.”

  “Joelle said he travels a lot.”

  Kyle stares at me.

  “You think I’m trying to get into the pants of a comatose woman? What kind of guy do you take me for?”

  He shakes his head in amusement. “That’s not what I meant. And I think it’s admirable what you’re doing. Just don’t have too high expectations. Brain injuries are tricky.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, aside from any obvious physical deficiencies she may have, she may not be the person she once was.”

  “I don’t know the person she once was,” I say.

  “Even so, when she wakes up, she may be combative. Or angry. She may feel lost. Depressed. There have been studies done on patients with traumatic brain injuries and by-and-large, they all experience some sort of personality shift.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It can be hard to explain,” he says, trying to find the words. “Think of it like teenagers who go off to college. When they return four years later, they are not the kids you remembered them to be. They are a different version of themselves.”

  “Yeah, but that’s based on life experiences,” I say. “How can a brain injury make you a different person?”

  “The brain is a mysterious organ, Denver. We still don’t fully understand it. But it’s also miraculous. And it can do things for your body that baffle doctors. The results of MRIs after a brain injury are grey at best. Sometimes all we can do is make an educated guess.”

  I nod my head. “Sara’s doctor doesn’t seem to want to tell us anything either way.”

  “Because he can’t. We simply just don’t know.”

  I take the last bite of my food and ball up my trash. “I should get back now. Thanks for the company.”

  “Anytime,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his lab coat. Then he hands me his card. “Feel free to call me if you have any questions, if you want me to explain anything to you, or if you just want to grab a bite together while you’re here.”

  I take his card and stick it in my back pocket before thanking him and walking away.

  When I return to Sara’s room, I pick my phone up off her bed, the episode of The Bachelor having ended.

  I call Oliver again. And again, it goes straight to voicemail.

  “Oliver, this is Denver Andrews. I’m wondering if you got the message I left two days ago about Sara. She’s been in an accident in New York City. She’s not alone. Her cousin has been here. And so has Lydia. But you need to get here as soon as possible. Please call me.”

  The accident happened five days ago, and I reached out to him the day before yesterday. I can’t wrap my head around why he’s not here yet. Hasn’t he noticed that his girlfriend has gone off the grid?

  Oh, shit. Suddenly, I wonder if Oliver could have been in the car with Anna and Sara. All the windows were busted out with the exception of the rear one. What if he was sitting in the back seat without a seatbelt and got ejected from the car and is lying dead at the bottom of the river?

  I decide to call Jake at NYPD later and have him look into it. It should be easier now that I know Oliver’s last name.

  I look closely at Sara and I can tell something is different. After days of sitting with her, I’ve gotten to know the exact position her hands tend to be in. The angle of her head. The curve of her elbows. I stick my head out her door. “Has anyone been here since I left?”

  Her nurse looks up from a chart. “No, sorry.”

  “What about you? Did you go in there and reposition her?”

  “Not lately, why?”

  “Her hands are different. Almost like she brought them together over her stomach and then lost her grip.”

  “Let’s take a look,” she says, following me into Sara’s room.

  “Sara? Can you hear me?” she says. She opens one of Sara’s eyelids. “Can you open your eyes, sweetie?”

  No response. No movement of her hands. No flutter of her eyelids.

  “These things can take time,” the nurse tells me.

  I nod as she exits the room.

  I put Sara’s hands back the way they were. That way, I’ll know if she moves them again. As I’m doing it, I think about what Kyle said about people being different after brain injuries. I hope she isn’t. I hope she can still
paint—if she’s able to, that is.

  I get out my phone and Google more of her paintings. Then I talk to her about them. What they look like. The colors that she used. How they make me feel when I look at them.

  I find one that I think must be of her parents. Joelle said they were older, and this painting shows an older couple with a young girl—a toddler. And I wonder if the girl is her.

  “Remember how I told you my parents are gone, too?” I say. “I’d love it if you could paint them like you painted yourself with your parents. Except I have a sister, so she’d have to be in the painting, too. I think I told you that you’d have to go to Colorado to do your research. Man, my parents loved to ski. Every year, they’d drag us to one mountain or another. I think Aspen and I learned to ski before we learned how to ride bikes. I remember one vacation, it was blizzarding so badly that they closed the slopes to skiers. But my parents still took us outside. We walked up the bunny slope, and then Aspen and I tried to slide down on our butts. It didn’t work, though, because it wasn’t steep enough, so we decided to roll down, the way you would on the side of a grassy hill. For hours, my parents watched us, freezing their asses off while we rolled down the hill and then walked up and then rolled down again. It must have been miserable for them, but they wanted us to love the snow as much as they did. And I don’t remember being cold, even though I know I must have been. All I remember is laughing with my sister. And my parents—I can still see them clapping and cheering through the heavy snow.”

  I see another twitch of her finger. I decide to play her some more music because the other day when I played the Beach Boys, Sara moved for the first time.

  I stand up and place my phone on her pillow. Maybe hearing it louder than before will help.

  I remember my grandma as I listen to song after song.

  Then, I stop breathing. I stop breathing because Sara opens her eyes and looks at me.

  And I swear we’re back in the car on the bridge. Her eyes lock on to mine, and all I can think about is how scared she was in the car. How desperate. And she must still feel like that now, because the way she’s looking at me—it’s exactly the same.