by Hazel Parker
“Eustice, can you hear me?” she called, confident that she wouldn’t get an answer but knowing that it was protocol to check. To no one’s surprise, he remained silent. “Has someone called an ambulance?” she asked the rest of the group, motioning with her hands for everyone to stop when several people took out their cell phones. “No, if everyone calls, it’ll just clog the lines. David, can you do it?” He nodded once and scurried off to the side to get to a place where he could hear and focus while Anna turned her attention back to her patient.
That’s how she had to think of him in this moment—her patient, just a patient who’d fainted. If she let herself see him as Eustice in her mind right now, she’d probably cry, and there was no time for that, now. She pressed two fingers to his carotid artery in his neck and hoped to God that she could feel a pulse, no matter how irregular or faint, but she had no such luck.
“I’m starting CPR,” she announced, turning to Mr. Riggs, who was hovering right next to her worriedly, “tell David to let the dispatcher know that.” Without waiting for confirmation, Anna opened up Eustice’s airway and made sure it was clear before beginning compressions. Rhythmic, steady, strong: all the things that a heartbeat should be, she pushed over and over and didn’t let herself think about what would happen if it weren’t enough.
By the time the paramedics came, Anna was out of breath, her arms were sore, and Eustice still wasn’t awake. Honestly, she didn’t even notice that they’d arrived until they were shoving her out of the way, where Brett took hold of her as she wavered a little dizzily.
“Here, sit down,” he offered softly, sitting her on a chair. Anna’s eyes were trained to the paramedic who hooked Eustice up to an automated defibrillator, unbuttoning his shirt all the way to attach the pads and pushing the button once, then pressed his fingers to Eustice’s neck and shook his head. Again, they shocked him, and again, the paramedic seemed to find nothing for a moment, but just before he could pull his hand away, he looked up with bright, attentive eyes.
“I’ve got a pulse,” he announced, and the room let out a collective apprehensive breath.
“Thank God,” Anna heard Brett murmur. Though he was still doubtlessly drunk, the situation seemed to have sobered him up quite a bit, almost enough to make her forget that she was angry at him. Though she hadn’t forgiven him that was the furthest thing from her mind right now. Brett was shaking, she realized, with anxiety of his own, and she pulled him into the seat next to hers, both of them turned to face away from the table.
“He’s okay for now,” Anna reassured. Brett nodded, running a hand through his hair. “Are you okay?” He looked pallid and wide-eyed, far from the cocky, nonchalant persona that he was always projecting. This had rattled him. This had scared him. Even if he was only pretending to date her to get into the will, he really did love his grandpa.
“Me?” Brett asked incredulously. “Hell, Anna, you just performed CPR for fifteen minutes straight. I should be asking you.” She nodded as if it were nothing.
“It’s not the first time I’ve done it,” she admitted. Though hospice patients usually had DNR orders, it wasn’t required, plus the fact that she’d worked in an emergency room while she was in nursing school and had resuscitated several people during that time. Eustice didn’t have a DNR, but honestly, even if he had, Anna wasn’t sure that she’d have been able just to stand by and do nothing as his family panicked around him. She was glad, even if it only bought him a small amount of time that he would make it at least through the night: otherwise, Martha would have forever remembered her wedding as the night that her reception party had killed her grandfather.
“Anna,” he pressed, giving her a knowing, somber look. He knew her well enough to know when she was lying.
“Okay,” she caved, “I’m a little shaken up, yeah. But I’ll be fine. I’m worried about you. Talk to me, Brett.”
He shrugged. “Why do you even care?”
“Why do I care?” Anna echoed, her voice low, genuinely shocked. Why did she care?
“Because I care about you,” she admitted. “Even if the feeling isn’t mutual. I think you’re a good person, underneath all the layers of acting like an asshole.” He laughed out loud at that, and she was grateful that it hadn’t offended him.
“You’re…an incurable optimist, do you know that?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“No matter how many terrible traits I show you or how many times I mess up, you still think there’s good inside me. Why are you searching for it so hard?”
Anna didn’t have an answer for that. Partially she wanted to believe that she hadn’t just been gullible and swept off her feet by his charm; partially she wanted to think there was a good heart inside everyone. Mostly, though, she just wanted to rationalize how much she liked him. Luckily, she didn’t have to, because David came to rescue her from the conversation.
“They’re taking him to Saint’s Heart,” David informed, and Anna and Brett nodded.
“Who’s going with him?” Anna asked.
“Well, a lot of the family is kind of stuck,” he admitted. “Martha has to stay, obviously, and my parents don’t want to leave her on her wedding day. I was going to see if maybe my husband was ready to go—”
“Anna and I can go,” Brett offered immediately. She didn’t know if he simply wanted to get out of here or if he really wanted to go, but either way, she wasn’t going to argue. The wedding had been fun, but she was more than ready to leave. David looked at him with a concerned, almost distrusting expression.
“Are you sure?” he asked, and when Brett nodded, he turned to Anna. “You don’t have to stay. We’re more than happy to pay for a taxi to get you home.” She shook her head.
“I’d really like to check on Eustice,” she said. “Brett will text updates, but you should stay. Try to enjoy yourself. I’m sure he’ll be okay, at least for tonight.” After a deep breath, David smiled at her, nodding, then took Brett roughly by the arm.
“You don’t deserve her,” he warned, “but for some reason, she’s sticking with you. Brett rolled his eyes and pulled out of his brother’s grip.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed. “Like Anna said, we’ll keep you updated. I’m going to get us a cab.”
Anna frowned. “I can drive,” she offered. “I haven’t been drinking.” When Brett took one of her hands in his and held it up to her eyes, she noticed for the first time just how badly she was trembling.
“You shouldn’t be driving like this,” he said firmly. “The taxi won’t take any time at all. Come on.” He didn’t release her hand as he led her out of the reception hall and back outside, the cold air now even more biting than earlier, since the sun had gone down. Without hesitation, Brett shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over Anna’s shoulders wordlessly.
Maybe he cared at least a little, she thought, climbing into the cab that he’d flagged down from the street. Though it was too early to be able to say, perhaps there was a reason, after all, that she hadn’t given up on him, yet.
Chapter Twelve: Brett
He was still a little tipsy when the cab pulled up to the doors of the hospital, so he probably over-tipped the driver, but he couldn’t find the energy to care. Anna hadn’t said a word to him through the whole ride, and even though she didn’t seem overtly angry, he wasn’t dumb enough to think that the fight from earlier had disappeared just yet.
With Anna close behind him, he asked the nurse at the front desk where Eustice was and followed her directions to get to it, throwing open the door without so much as knocking. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway, because Eustice wouldn’t have been able to reply. He was hooked up to a ventilator, sedated. He looked so small lying there in his bed, the man that Brett had grown up thinking was the biggest, strongest man he’d ever know. It hadn’t really set in before this moment that he was going to lose Eustice: he’d known that his grandpa was sick and, on paper, he’d known that he was going to die. But knowing somethi
ng and feeling it, as it turns out, were two separate things, and he was just now learning this. The alcohol might have been partially to blame for the emotions that stirred up inside him as he looked over his grandfather in the bed, but he couldn’t help it: the grieving process began there at that moment.
Apparently, Anna could tell—of course, she could. She saw people dealing with this day in and day out; she knew the signs. Her hand tightened around his: she hadn’t let go even in the cab or on the way up to the room. In a way, he resented the pity, but more than anything, he just needed someone to be there for him.
“You alright?” she asked tentatively. Brett, for once in his life, wanted to be honest about his feelings.
“Not really,” he admitted, and Anna nodded.
“Okay,” she accepted, “that’s okay.” She wrapped her arms around him, her hand wrapping comfortingly around the back of his neck as she held him tightly. There was something deeply comforting about her warmth and the flowery smell of her perfume. Just having her there was enough to make him feel like he could handle this. He wasn’t ready to cry, not just yet, but they stood like that for a while, wordless and still. She didn’t ask him to move, and he didn’t pull away from her.
“Anna,” he said, his face still pressed against her chest. He felt the vibrations of her voice as she hummed in affirmation of his question. “Don’t leave.” She stiffened a little.
“I’m not going to leave,” she reassured. “You’re in no state to be alone—”
“No, not…not just tonight,” he said. “I mean after all this is over. When Gramps is gone, and there’s no reason left for you to pretend to be with me. That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t go.”
Anna sighed, clearly not wanting to hurt his feelings when he was so vulnerable but also not wanting to get his hopes up with false promises. “Brett, this isn’t a conversation we should be having right now.”
“You don’t have to be my girlfriend,” he countered. “Just…just stay with me. Be my friend, be someone who sticks around solely to hate me. I don’t care, as long as you’re here. But I can’t lose you, too.”
Anna shifted so that she was looking him in the eyes. He was sure that his were teary and puffy, but her gaze was strong and sure. “I promise,” she said, “that no matter what, I’ll stick around.”
Brett nodded, finally feeling strong enough to pull away from the security of her embrace and turn back toward his grandfather. Before he could even reach out to him, however, a doctor knocked on the doorframe, jarring them both out of their secluded moment.
“Are you family of Mr. Riggs?” he asked, and Brett nodded.
“I’m his grandson,” he said, “and this is…well, is he going to be okay?” He wasn’t sure how to describe his relationship with Anna right now, and it wasn’t important, anyway. The doctor walked into the room and picked up Eustice’s chart, looking it over for a moment as if to refresh his memory.
“It appears that your grandfather had a heart attack,” he explained. “The paramedics said that someone performed CPR for almost twenty minutes until he could get medical care, and that’s likely what saved his life.” Brett squeezed Anna’s hand in silent admiration.
“Is he going to be okay?” Brett asked. The doctor looked sympathetic in a way that made him feel on-edge.
“Well, I’m sure you’re aware that Mr. Riggs is and has been quite ill for some time,” he explained. “While he might recover from the heart attack, it’s going to have weakened him quite a bit. Normally, when we see end-stage cancer patients begin to have attacks like these, it’s not the heart problems that are fatal, but some kind of opportunistic infection.”
Brett frowned. “So, you’re saying…”
“I’m saying we need to manage our expectations here,” he dodged, “he probably doesn’t have much time.” Without another word, the doctor snuck out of the room to give them some privacy and Brett turned back to his grandfather. He knew that he wasn’t going to get a reaction; he didn’t expect one. Still, he sat at his bedside for half an hour just speaking to him about nothing, telling him that everyone was worried and that he needed to get better so that they could yell at him for scaring them so much. He talked until he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and even a little beyond that, until he felt like he was ready to go. Anna had updated David and, by association, the rest of his family, about Eustice’s stable-but-failing condition, so he’d been able to focus solely on his grandfather until he was told that ICU visiting hours were over and they needed to leave. Anna held his hand once more as they headed toward the elevators and pressed the first-floor button and watched the doors close.
“What time is it?” Brett asked, and Anna glanced down at her watch.
“Almost seven,” she said. “It feels so much later.”
Brett chuckled humorlessly, exhaustedly. “A lot happened,” he said, and she couldn’t help but agree. “I’m really getting hungry.”
“Me, too,” Anna agreed. It had been a few hours since they’d eaten at the wedding, and her stomach was empty. Before she could suggest that they go to a diner or something for food, the elevator jerked, just enough to make her wobble on her heels so that Brett had to reach out to steady her, and the lights turned off. After a moment, a dimmer set of emergency lights illuminated the elevator in yellowish light.
“What just happened?” Brett asked, obviously knowing that Anna had just as much information as he had. Without waiting for an answer, he pressed the emergency button and waited for someone to pick up. A woman answered their call and informed them through the speaker that there had been a power outage and that the elevators weren’t working, but that someone was already on their way to come work on it and that they shouldn’t be stuck inside for long. Though they both knew that might be a platitude, Brett decided not to argue with her, instead just choosing to thank her for responding and turning back to Anna with a sigh.
“It sounds like we might be in here for a while,” he observed. She nodded.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” she verified, and he smirked.
“I’m fine as long as I have you here,” he teased, watching her smile flicker confusingly for a moment. “What did I do?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she tried to dodge. “I mean, it’s not something that I want to talk about now.”
Brett sat down on the floor in one corner and watched as she did the same diagonal from him. “Well, when’s the next time we’re going to be stuck together like this?” he asked. “I can’t run, Anna. You should use that chance while you can. Speak your mind.” She hesitated further, seemingly weighing in her mind whether she really wanted to get into a serious conversation right now. Brett didn’t blame her: a lot had just happened, and she’d been through a lot. Not to mention, she was still angry at him for whatever their fight had been about earlier—he didn’t remember the specifics; everything was a little fuzzy. Finally, she took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes.
“I’m just a little confused about who you are right now,” she admitted. Her tone wasn’t hostile or even angry, but matter of fact.
“Who I am?”
“Yes,” she elaborated, “because this person is not the Brett that I used to know.”
“What can I say? People change.”
“No, it’s not—it’s different,” she said. “When you took me out for milkshakes at the diner, all I could think of was how you were still the same person that you had been when I was in college. But now, you’re…you’re different. I was starting to think that it was because you could change, but then at the wedding, your brother told me the real reason. And I wish I could say I was surprised.”
Brett frowned. “What’s the real reason?” he asked.
“The will,” Anna said simply, and suddenly, the fight from earlier began to come back in small bits and pieces. Right. David had told her why he’d been written out of Eustice’s will.
“Oh,” Brett agreed. “That.”
She bit her lower lip waiting for him to continue.
“That’s what this is about, right?” she asked. “That’s why you asked me out, why you got a job. Don’t try to convince me that it’s not.”
He shrugged. “Can’t it be both?” he questioned. “Yeah, that’s why I began this whole thing. It was a lie to get back into the will. But what I told you was true, too. When Eustice told me that he’d written me out of the will, I realized that he was going to die thinking that I wasn’t going to ever get my life together. I thought that it’d be nice to at least give him one less thing to worry about.”
Anna’s face didn’t betray a single emotion. “You can’t do a selfish thing that has good consequences and act like you’re a hero,” she pointed out. “Eustice feeling good was a side effect of you getting your money. That doesn’t make it a good thing.’’
