by Shandi Boyes
Snagging my cell phone off the coffee table, I log into my banking app. “$143.24,” I groan with a huff. A hundred dollars won’t cover over a year’s worth of gym membership, but it’s a start.
Just as I'm about to set down my phone, it rings, startling me. It’s Jacob. I consider letting his call go to voicemail, but I’m curious if he’s aware Hank is sleeping in his gym, so I answer it instead.
“Hello, Jacob.”
Chapter Forty
Jacob
I'd take a moment to assess the anger in Lola's tone if I had the chance. Regrettably, the last item on my agenda is starting World War III. Things aren't good for Noah. By not good, I mean I have no clue how he is. I've yet to get an update. Emily was only granted visitation twenty minutes ago, and we've been pacing the glossy tiled floors of the emergency department for hours. Some say no news is good news. I'm not that person. I hate not knowing what's going on. That's why I'm frantically updating everyone on Noah's accident. I know what it's like to be in the dark, so I won't subject anyone else to it.
With that in mind, I remember the purpose of my call. “Ah...hey, Lola. It’s Jacob.” Jesus, I sound like an idiot with half a brain. My number has been in her phone for years, so who would she think was calling? “Noah was in an accident. He’s in the Intensive Care Unit at Parkwood University Hospital.”
“What? Is he okay?” Nothing but unbridled panic now reflects in her tone.
My shoulders inch toward my ears. “I don’t know; I haven’t seen him. Em is with him now.”
My eyes stray to the door Emily walked through twenty minutes ago at the same time Lola offers up her sympathies. I'm about to tell her she has nothing to be sorry for, but Emily's pale face steals my words. She's stumbling out the double doors of the ICU, her face as white as a ghost.
“I have to go.” My voice turns gravelly and thick when I see the shock and distress on Emily’s face. “I’ll call you back as soon as I have more information.”
After slipping my phone in my pocket, I move to Emily’s side. With every step I take, I scan her grief-stricken face for signs on Noah’s condition. “Is he okay? Is he awake?”
Her throat works hard to swallow before she shakes her head. “He’s on life support.” She swallows another three times before taking a wary step forward.
“Em...?”
Before my question can leave my mouth, her eyes roll into the back of her head as her knees buckle. I catch her a mere second before she hits the light gray tiles we’ve paced nonstop the past four hours.
“Em...” I shake her shoulders, attempting to wake her. “Emily!”
When she doesn’t respond, I gather her in my arms before sprinting back to the emergency department I darted through like a maniac when I first arrived. “Help. I need help!”
A nurse with kind brown eyes cranks her neck my way. When she spots Emily flopped in my arms, she gestures for me to follow her. “What happened?”
I set Emily down on the bed in the emergency triage room before shrugging. “I don’t know; she just collapsed.”
The nurse completes a set of observations on Emily before passing her stats on to a male physician. He checks Emily’s pulse, flicks a light in her eyes, and lowers the waistband on her jeans to push on her stomach.
His somewhat carefree demeanor is nipped in the bud when his eyes lift to me. “How far along is she?”
“Far along what?” I’m not acting daft. I have no clue what he’s asking.
My jaw drops when he replies, “Pregnant. How many weeks is she?”
“I don’t know... I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
I’m not lying. Noah never said a word to me, which is shocking. I didn’t think we kept anything from each other.
“She’s dehydrated, so we’ll put her on a drip, but please note, visits to the ER can be avoided with adequate nutrition. She needs to eat and drink regularly.”
Still too stunned to speak, I accept the doctor’s disdain with a dip of my chin. Although Emily's diet isn't my responsibility, it will be until Noah wakes. I promised him I'd always look out for her when he freaked about her not answering her phone her first night at college. I'm a man who keeps his promises.
“She’ll most likely sleep for a few more hours. The first trimester is very tiring.” The nurse who aided me an hour ago finishes checking Emily’s vitals before her eyes drift to me. “Why don’t you go grab something to eat and come back in around an hour? We’ll have a better idea on how things are going by then.”
The last thing I want to do is leave Emily’s side, but I’m also dying to get an update on Noah. All Emily told me before she collapsed was that he was in a coma. I’ve not heard a thing since.
"Can I borrow that?" I nudge my head to the pen in the nurse's uniform pocket. When she hands it to me, I jot down my number on a scrap of paper. "If Emily wakes before I'm back, please call me." After standing, I hand back her pen and my number. "Even if she says not to, call me."
Although the nurse agrees to my request, I'm still torn about leaving. Noah is in a coma, and his girl is passed out on a hospital bed. Today couldn't get any more shit for me. After a final squeeze to Emily’s hand, I bolt back to the ICU. It’s lucky I’m fit. All the running I’ve done today while hungover would put an average man on his ass.
I’ve barely blasted through the double swinging doors when Ryan spans the distance between us. “Where the hell did you go? One minute you were on your phone; the next minute you were gone.”
His anger takes a back seat when I reply, “Emily fainted; I just left her in the ER.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s... ah.” I nearly say “pregnant” until I realize it isn’t my place to say. If Noah is aware and keeping it secret, it’s for a reason. “Have you seen Noah?”
Ryan shakes his head. “No, they said only immediate family are allowed to see him.”
“Immediate family?”
When Ryan nods, I turn on my heels and stride to the ICU doors to hit the intercom button. Ryan shadows me but remains quiet. Not long later, a gray-haired nurse pushes open the door. She has a clipboard in her hands and two pencils holding together her messy bun.
“I’m here to see Noah Taylor.”
The nurse checks a list of names on her clipboard before raising her eyes to me. “Your name?”
“Chris Taylor, Noah’s brother.”
I hear Ryan's Adam's apple bob up and down, but not even the badge on his hip has him stepping in to recant my statement. After checking her list for the second time, the nurse steps to the side, unblocking the doorway from her plump frame. “Okay, come in.”
I glance back at Ryan, shocked my ruse worked. He smiles before giving me the thumbs up, knowing I would have worn a dress and pretended to be Noah’s mother if it guaranteed I’d see him.
The nurse makes me wash my hands before guiding me to the bedside of a man I don’t recognize. When I read the nameplate above the bed, my fists clench into tight balls. Now I understand why Ryan dragged Emily away from Noah at the accident scene. He has significant head injuries that make him barely recognizable.
A bandage covers a majority of his head and one of his eyes. A ventilator tube inserted into his mouth and his chest is rising and falling in rhythm with the machine on the right side of his bed. His left leg is covered in plaster and held up in a brace, and his rocker clothing has been replaced with a light blue hospital gown.
“How is he?”
The nurse gives me a sympathetic smirk. “We stopped the internal bleeding by removing part of his spleen, but he had a cerebral edema to his brain. We drained the hematoma, but he’s not out of the woods just yet. The bleed to his brain caused it to swell. Although we released the pressure, we won’t know the extent of the damage until we conduct further tests.”
“When will they be done?”
She takes a moment to deliberate by shrugging. “We can conduct tests while he’s in a coma, but we won’t know the full
extent of his injuries until he wakes.” She rubs my arm in a comforting manner. “Talk to him; you’d be surprised what coma patients hear.”
I swallow harshly before jerking up my chin. After running her hand down my arm for the second time, she moves toward the nurses' station in the middle of the room. As I walk to Noah's beside, my heart beats in a similar rhythm as the machines keeping him alive. It's an annoying, thud, thud, thud I’d rather hear without the beep of a life support machine.
With words eluding me, I curl my fingers around his hand instead. Just as my index finger circles his wrist, something sharp jabs it.
What the hell?
When I flip his hand, I notice many scratches and grazes on his wrist, but I don’t see anything that would cause a jabbing sensation. With my curiosity high, I run my fingertips over his cuts. I’m not meaning to hurt him, but something is off. My lips quirk when I feel something sharp nick my skin for the second time.
“Excuse me.” A nurse walking by stops what she’s doing to peer at me. “Can you feel this?”
When she stops next to me, I run her fingers over Noah’s wrist in the same manner I just did. I can tell the exact moment she feels what I did when her brows scrunch.
“Doctor Matthew, can you please come here?”
When an elderly male doctor arrives in Noah’s cubicle, the nurse does the same routine to him as I did to her.
“Hmm, interesting.”
I watch the doctor in silence when he moves around the cubicle, gathering equipment from little nooks throughout the sterile smelling space. Once he has everything in order, he places a blue dressing sheet over Noah’s arm, then slices open his wrist with a scalpel.
“What the fuck! Why aren’t you taking him to surgery?”
My stomach rolls when he stuffs tweezers into the wound before digging around. Certain I’m seconds from passing out, I concentrate on a speck on the wall in front of me while fighting to keep the contents of my stomach in their rightful spot.
A few seconds later, the doctor lifts a large shard of thin glass into the air. “I got it!”
After dumping the offending material on a stainless steel tray at the side, he sews stitches into Noah’s wrist. The seven butterfly stitches make it seem like his operation was child’s play, but I’m still shocked.
“Why did you do that here?”
Dr. Matthew’s eyes stray to mine. “He wouldn’t have survived another operation. He barely made it through the first one.”
“He’s stronger than you think.”
He finishes rolling a white bandage around Noah’s stitches before standing. “I’m sorry if I seem harsh, but I’ve never been one to sugarcoat things. Do you want me to speak the truth or give you a well-rehearsed line?”
“The truth.” I hate being lied to.
“Okay. Then here it is.” His pause is more worrying than comforting. “Noah’s chances of surviving the next twenty-four hours are sitting at five percent. He has significant head injuries and may have sustained permanent brain damage.” Dr. Matthew’s tone is stern, but it also shows his genuine concern.
“He’ll prove you wrong.”
He squeezes my shoulder, either thinking I'm an optimist or an idiot. “I hope he does—because he’s in for one hell of a ride.”
While they pack away the medical equipment they used, I move to Noah's bedside to remind him of the promise he made to me four years ago.
“Remember the pain you went through when Chris left? Don’t do that to me, Noah. I won’t let you leave me like they left you. You have to fight; you have to fight to live. Emily would want you to live.” I squeeze his hand in mine when his eyes rapidly move under his eyelids. “Promise me you’ll fight. Promise me, and I’ll promise that you won’t go through this alone. I’ll be there for you every day. I’ll fight alongside you. You will survive this, Noah. It’ll never stop hurting, but you will survive this.”
We will survive this.
I sit with Noah for another ten minutes before my phone buzzes in my pocket. I almost let it go to voicemail before I remember I gave the nurse my number. As I slide my phone out, my call goes to voicemail. I'm about to check my messages when the nurse who showed me in nudges her head to a sign advising cell phones are banned in the ICU. It's just above the sign that states visitation is limited to fifteen minutes.
“I’ll be back, alright?”
Noah can’t reply, but I’m certain he knows I’m watching over him. I did the same thing when his brothers died, and I’ll continue doing it until he’s recovered.
As I exit the ICU, I dial my voicemail. While it walks me through the process, I cup the speaker of my phone so I can answer Ryan’s wordless questions.
“He’s...” I struggle to find an appropriate word, “...fighting.” I nudge my head to the door I just walked through. “The nurse who let me in just left for lunch, so as far as the others are aware, Chris hasn’t visited Noah today.”
“Thanks, Jake.” He slaps my shoulder before ramming his finger into the ICU buzzer on repeat.
“You might want to hide that.” I drop my eyes to the badge on his hip. “And that.” My eyes drift to his gun holster poking out of his jacket.
Ryan stuffs his badge into the breast pocket of his jacket and adjusts his gun holster a mere second before a nurse arrives to answer his call. When he successfully pulls the wool over her eyes, I return my attention to my phone.
My first message is from Lola. “Hey...umm... I just wanted to say I’m here if you need me—for anything. Just call me. Okay? Umm... bye.”
I've never heard her so nervous before. It honestly unsettles me as much as seeing Noah holed up in the ICU. I'm about to return her call when my next message arrives. It's from yesterday.
“Hey, Jacob, it’s Flynn.” He pauses like he’s unsure what to say. “I wanted to talk to you about what happened the other day. The...ah...Lola incident. When you get a chance, give me a call... or pop into Mavericks. Whatever’s easiest. Yeah, well, until then...” He recites his number before hanging up.
Now I’m not just panicked out of my mind, I’m pissed. Between waking up to a topless woman knowing my name and seeing Noah in the ICU, my day has been a clusterfuck of emotions. I’m tired, anxious, and now jealous as fuck. To say I’m holding on by a very thin thread is an understatement—a major one.
With my mind not up for more meddling, I shut down my phone, slide it into my pocket, and make my way back to the emergency department. As much as I’d love to know exactly what happened between Lola and Flynn, I’ve got more pressing matters to deal with right now.
Chapter Forty-One
Lola
My knees clang together when I enter Noah’s hospital room on the heels of my mom. Visiting hours were only invoked today because Noah’s record label transferred his care to Ravenshoe Private Hospital.
I'm not a fan of hospitals in general, but Noah's badly battered face is upping the ante. His injuries are horrifying. Surviving a head-on collision with a semi is already remarkable, much less all the prodding he's endured the past seventy-two hours. He has machine tubing coming out of him in all directions, and the portions of his face I can see give no indication to the man hiding beneath the layers of bandages.
“I’m going to sit over there,” I say to anyone listening.
When no one voices an opinion, I make a beeline for a chair in the far corner of the room. It's close enough to Noah's bedside he knows I'm here, but far enough away, I'm not in anyone's way. His room is full to the brim with those nearest and dearest to him. His bandmates and their significant others sit on the left of his bed; Jacob and Emily are on his right, and there's a man I've never met before floating at the back.
The mood in the room is so gloomy and sad. It almost seems as if I’m attending a funeral. Noah might be seriously injured, but he’s alive. The people in this room need to remember that.
Hoping to lighten the mood, I make my way to Emily. Jacob watches me approach under lowered lashes,
but he doesn't say anything. That's not unusual. Not even my offer of assistance three days ago made him reach out to me. Under different circumstances, I'd be pissed, but this isn't anything close to ordinary. I thought I had all my personalities worked out, but even I don't know how to act in this situation.
Once I reach my sister’s side, I bump her with my hip. “You never thanked me, you know.”
Emily lifts her watering eyes to mine. “For?”
I glare at her, silently warning her to keep her tears at bay. If she cries, I’ll cry, and then I’ll have to kill every person in this room just to salvage my “bitchy” reputation. There’s only one person in this room who’s seen me cry, and I plan to keep it that way.
Confident Emily has her teary eyes under control, I say, “The night Jacob dropped me home from Mavericks, I told Noah the bathroom was on the left.”
Emily's furrowed brows reveal she heard my confession, but she remains as quiet as a church mouse. Perhaps she's confused? I'll try and settle it. “The instant I saw him, I knew he was perfect for you, so I gave fate a little push.”
I don't believe in destiny or every other crock-of-shit love remedies people try to palm off to excuse them from moving in together after three weeks and marrying within six months, but Emily does. She always says she and Noah were destined to be together, so why isn’t she putting that same faith in believing he’ll do everything in his power to stay with her? Besides, surrounding Noah with positivity would have to be more beneficial than acting like he’s one step from his grave—surely!
My empowering the world with positivity rant ends when a heartbreaking sob rips through Emily’s lips. When she sways like a leaf on a hot summer’s day, Jacob grabs the tops of her arms, steading her unsteady movements. He talks to her in hushed whispers, and I realize they’re closer than I thought.
After he wipes away the tears sitting high on Emily’s cheeks, Jacob’s eyes stray to mine. They’re brimming with anger. “What?” I whisper, unable to comprehend what I did wrong. I was trying to embolden Emily with optimism, not make him angry at me—again.
