I turned to the nurse and waited, my belly turning somersaults as I waited.
“He’s out of surgery as of about a minute and a half ago,” she started. “They’re putting him in a recovery room. Once they validate his status, they’ll either move him to ICU—which they think is where he’ll go—or to a step-down unit that’s just one below the ICU. One that means that he’s stable enough to be there. But none of that will be decided for another hour at least.”
I swallowed hard.
“Is he…did he…will he…”
“The doctor is coming out as soon as he’s cleaned up and will talk to you,” she said. “Normally the doctor explains it to you…” She looked at the Chief. “But since you have the right credentials...”
I smiled for the first time in a while. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “I know you have questions. That’s why I don’t usually hand out any information.”
With that, she dismissed us and went back to her work.
I turned to Chief Donaldson and saw Nivea standing almost directly beside me.
“Is there a reason that you’re over here?” I blurted.
Nivea looked offended. “I’m here because I’m worried about Flint.”
I ground my teeth together. “How about you go away and leave me and Carmichael in peace so we can talk to the Chief without you breathing down our necks?”
I was getting angry.
Very, very angry.
I’d been angry since the moment she walked in the door, but I’d been trying to control it.
But she was making it a lot more difficult than it needed to be.
“How about I walk you down to your car?” Ezra suggested.
I looked at him over my shoulder and saw him trying hard not to smile.
“I didn’t drive,” Nivea said. “Carver dropped me off. Plus, I want to wait and make sure that Flint’s okay. Possibly go see him.”
I was already shaking my head, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
“That’s a big fat negative,” I said through clenched teeth.
“What? Why?” Nivea asked.
Was she serious?
I turned to stare at Carmichael to see the same look of horror on her face.
“You’re not getting in to see my brother,” Carmichael promised. “Only family is allowed in right now.”
“Then Camryn can’t go,” Nivea snapped.
“Actually,” Chief Donaldson said. “I heard him call Camryn his fiancée. So…technically they’re nearly family. About as family as you can get, really. And I can give you a ride home if you need one. Or to the closest motel.”
“Carver is on his way back,” she shook her head. “He wasn’t feeling well. He has a headache. He had to get stitches today and had to run by the drugstore for some ibuprofen. Are you sure I won’t be able to see him? Is that a hospital rule? Only family?”
I turned around and tried to get control of myself, making eye contact with the nurse who was once again paying attention to us and not the paperwork in front of her.
She made eye contact with me and gestured to something to my right.
A door.
“Go,” she mouthed.
I swallowed hard, grabbed hold of Carmichael’s hand, and headed toward it.
Carmichael, on the verge of losing it herself, followed behind like the dutiful woman that she was, and didn’t stop to question why until the door closed behind us.
“Um,” she hesitated. “Where does this take us?”
I had no idea and told her as much moments later.
“It’s a private lounge area,” the nurse said. “You can sit here until the doctor arrives. I’ll point him in the right direction.” She paused. “Beautiful dog. I bought a German Shepherd not too long ago, but he’s long-haired.”
I smiled. “I love long-haired German Shepherds. They’re so pretty.”
Dooley was an all black German Shepherd with gold eyes.
He looked more wolf than any dog I’d ever seen before.
“I’ll try to find a way to get rid of the nuisance,” the nurse said.
Then she was gone.
It felt like hours, but was just fifteen long minutes, until the doctor arrived.
He looked tired, but happy, and I felt something inside of my chest—something that hadn’t felt like it was working—start to beat once again.
“The fiancée and the sister of Mr. Flint Stone?”
There was a long, palpable pause before both Carmichael and I started to giggle.
It was irrational, and we were both likely losing it, but it was needed.
“Yes,” I wiped my eyes free of tears. “That’s us. I’m soon-to-be Mrs. Flint Stone.”
The doctor’s lips twitched.
“I don’t know what my mother and father were thinking,” Carmichael giggled. “Oh God. Is he all right?”
The doctor nodded once.
“He is,” he confirmed. “As of about twenty minutes ago, he has exceeded expectations.” He paused, looking from Carmichael to me. “He’s in good shape…considering.”
“Considering…”
“Considering he was crushed by a car,” I murmured softly to Carmichael’s statement.
“Yes,” the doctor confirmed. “I was able to repair both legs. He now has pins in his left and right tibias, holding it together.” He paused. “His knees were okay, but he does have a fracture of his left fibula that we’re thinking will heal with his continued bed rest for the next six weeks.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “His right hip was also crushed in the accident, and we did a full hip replacement.”
I felt my belly drop.
“His left hand was broken, and that’s in a cast,” he continued. “He has seven rib fractures, bruised kidneys that we’re going to pay very close attention to today, as well as slight brain swelling due to the force of his head hitting the ground.”
“That doesn’t sound like he’s lucky,” Carmichael whispered, her voice horrified.
“True,” the doctor conceded. “However, he could be dead. He could’ve lost both his legs. He could’ve had brain damage. Ultimately, he was a very, very lucky man.”
I drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Just shit.”
I walked toward Carmichael and drew her into my arms.
“I think we both need a hug right now,” I told her.
She clung to me tightly while the doctor watched on in silence.
“He’s able to have visitors,” he said. “We considered placing him in the intensive care unit until tomorrow, but we feel that he’s going to be doing just fine for the step-down unit he is in.” He paused. “You’ll both be able to visit, but just a heads up, he’s likely not going to be very coherent today, so it might be good to come back tomorrow.”
Yeah, right.
“Yeah, right,” Carmichael echoed my thoughts.
He rolled his eyes, and it was then that I decided that I liked this doctor.
A lot.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said to him. “Can we go see him now?”
He nodded his head. “He’s in room twenty-one fourteen.”
***
Flint
Eight hours later
I woke to a pounding in my head, a heavy weight on my shoulder, and the realization that I wasn’t dead.
I blinked open both eyes just to get an eyeful of crazy hair that was in a mass of tangles on my chest.
The heavy weight on my shoulder moved, and suddenly Camryn was standing over me with a worried expression on her face.
“You’re awake!” she cried out.
I grinned. “Yeah.”
“Are you in any pain?” she asked.
“None at all,” I lied.
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead gently to mine.
It made the headache pounding away at my skull e
xplode.
I didn’t move a muscle.
Not because I was hurting, but because I didn’t want her to move.
“You’re such a bad liar,” she whispered. “God, I love you.”
I felt something inside of me settle. “I love you, too.”
Chapter 17
I hate it when healthy me does the grocery shopping.
-Text from Camryn to Flint
Camryn
“You have to go back to work,” he told me.
He’d already had this same conversation with Carmichael, and she’d actually listened.
Me? Not so much.
“I—”
“You’re going back to work,” he interrupted my explanation as to why I wasn’t. “And that’s final.” He looked at me with concern on his face. “When they move me today, you won’t have any reason to stay because I’ll be in town and not two hours away. You can rest at home. You can also get here in a moment’s notice.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sleeping at home without you.”
He softened slightly.
“Then that’s fine,” he said. “But you can still go back to work. It’s time, baby.”
I looked down at Flint’s battered and bruised face and realized that he was right.
Flint was okay.
And I think he needed me to go just as much as I didn’t want to.
“They’re moving me to Gun Barrel in a half an hour. You are going to have to drive yourself anyway. You can’t leave my truck here.”
True.
All of it true.
I looked down at my hands.
“I’ll be okay,” he promised. “Nothing will happen to me.”
I smiled at him, then sighed and dropped my head down to rest on his forehead.
“I’m not sure…”
With that, he pointed at the door. “Go. I’ll text you when I get to a room. And when you come visit me at lunch, I fully expect you to bring me something good to eat.”
I felt tears threaten to spill over, but his argument was sound.
I could visit him at lunch.
I could also get to him fast if it was needed. If he needed me. Or maybe if I needed him.
“I’ll take Dooley with me,” I said softly. “And when you get to your room, I’ll bring him to you. When I come for a visit after I get off, I’ll let him outside…sound good?”
His smile was infectious, even if I still had that urge to cry.
“Yes, ma’am.” He paused. “Now come kiss me.”
***
Needless to say, I was an emotional wreck when I got to school that morning.
I’d made it just in time to walk into my classroom before the bell rang.
By the end of third period, I was tired, cranky, and ready to go check on my man.
Only, as I was gathering up my things to go, Raleigh came in like a whirlwind.
“Yo, did you see this?”
I frowned and looked up at Raleigh as she came barreling into my classroom.
“See what?” I asked.
“See the post that Nivea posted on her social media outlets.” She turned her phone to me.
I frowned at the paper that I’d literally just handed back to one of my students.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “Why does she have that posted on her page?”
It was the same test that I’d just had a not-so-great meeting with a student about who was very unhappy with her grade on said test.
“It says that the student took the test to another chemistry teacher to see if it was graded correctly since she didn’t feel like she deserved the grade,” Raleigh explained. “And I know your handwriting, so I know that you graded this. What’s it all about?”
I flipped through the various photos that Nivea had posted of the test and frowned harder with each photo.
“She fixed some of these answers,” I muttered. “Because she got a fifty on this test. Do you see these eraser lines?”
Raleigh nodded. “Yes.”
I went back to my photocopies—ones that I kept of each and every test that I graded until the end of the semester—and showed her the proof.
“This is the original,” I said.
“Huh.” She looked back at the phone. “Man, some of these comments are brutal.”
I opened up my own phone and realized that fucking Nivea had tagged me in the goddamn photo.
The bitch.
“She knew that the teacher was me,” I told her. “There’s no doubt. God, I hate her.”
“I know,” Raleigh agreed. “Did you see Carver today? Holy shit, that shiner is bad! A broken nose looks awful on him, and the bruising is so bad that I swear there’s something more wrong than just a broken nose.”
“Hmmm,” I muttered as I went through the comments. “Wow, listen to this one: this teacher needs to learn her ass from her elbow. It’s not hard to see that she clearly wrote ‘Oxygen.’”
I rolled my eyes and went to that question on the test, then pointed it out to Raleigh.
“You should probably just preemptively show this to Mrs. Sherpa. That way when this shit blows up, you’ve got your bases covered,” Raleigh concluded. “And I’ve never thought of photocopying tests before. Why did you?”
I tucked the photocopy into my bag as I said, “One of our old teachers did it. She said it was due to the likelihood of students cheating that she always wanted to have a reference to go back on. I thought it was a good idea just in case.”
Raleigh shook her head. “Did you hear from Flint today?”
I nodded, feeling a smile tug at my lips.
“They had him sitting up in a chair today,” I told her. “They took him to the new hospital, allowing him to sit up on the gurney all the way home.” She sniffled. “His new room has a balcony outside. He can see the school, he said.”
“Well then you should go to him,” Raleigh suggested. “That way when you read these, like I know you’re about to do, you will have his shoulder to cry on.”
She had no idea how right she was.
***
My heart was shattered.
You’re a fucking pitiful excuse for a teacher.
What kind of asshole person grades tests of tenth graders like this?
Why, on earth, are you a teacher? Maybe you should be a sub, that way you don’t alter the path of young minds who are bound for greatness.
Seems to me, Nivea, that you should be lead teacher and not somebody else.
And those were just the nice ones.
There were awful ones, too.
You should kill yourself.
I swallowed hard.
The more comments I read, the worse I felt.
“Had this teacher last year,” I read aloud. “She was a total bitch and I’m so glad that I got transferred to a new school.”
“Who said that?” Flint asked, sounding pissed.
He’d been pissed for a while now, but the more I read him, the worse his anger seemed to get.
“Amber Surrea,” I answered.
“She was transferred to an alternative school because I found drugs in her locker,” he explained. “Ignore her opinion. What’s the next one?”
“She was the hardest teacher that I ever had. I have never been so happy to end a school year. She was boring, hard, and never gave an inch,” I read.
“Who said that?” he asked again.
“Adam Nodd,” I muttered.
“Good kid.” He paused. “But he got his ass beat if he didn’t make honor roll. That’s probably why he doesn’t like you.”
I wiped at the tears streaking down my cheeks. “These are all so mean.”
“That’s the thing about keyboard warriors,” Flint grumbled. “The things they’ll say on Facebook or Twitter are completely different to something they’d say in real life. You think that half of those people would’ve opened their mouths had they been face to face with
you?”
No. No, I didn’t.
That didn’t make the words hurt any less, though.
“There’s nothing wrong with expecting your students to actually do the work,” Flint said. “And you damn well know that Mrs. Sherpa has no problem with how you grade your tests.”
That had been figured out about an hour before when Mrs. Sherpa had stopped by.
She’d seen the look on my face—my tear-streaked cheeks—and had automatically asked what was wrong.
When Flint had explained my inability to have a coherent talk with her without breaking out in tears, the topic had come up of the tests and the Facebook post.
She’d been justifiably pissed, but not at me. At Nivea.
“That woman,” Mrs. Sherpa had said. “She’s going to bark up the wrong tree one of these days, and she’s going to have a shit storm on her.”
“I know,” I admitted. “I just don’t understand.”
“Nivea knew that you were going to see that post, otherwise she wouldn’t have tagged you,” he continued. “And right now, you’re playing into her hand. She wanted this response from you.”
I swallowed hard and placed the phone aside.
“I’m going to stop reading them,” I said. “It’ll die down.”
Flint nodded once. “It will. Now come here and tell me about the rest of your day.”
So I did, not sparing another second to Nivea’s attempt at hurting me.
“What did Mrs. Sherpa say?” he asked. “Nivea should’ve been fired.”
“She can’t be.” I shook my head. “Apparently it wasn’t a ‘termination worthy offense’ according to the school board.”
He sensed that the subject needed to be changed, so he didn’t hesitate.
“Who do they have up there as my replacement?” he asked.
He tried to sound nonchalant, but came off sounding sad and hurt that they’d already replaced him.
“Schultz,” I answered. “And he hates it.”
Flint’s lips tipped up.
“He does,” Flint admitted. “He covered for me a couple of months ago for a week. Do you remember?”
I did.
“The time that you went fishing in Arkansas and came back with an upper respiratory infection that kept you out another week?” I asked.
His arm around my waist tightened. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you used to like me.”
Lord Have Mercy Page 16
