by Julia Kent
“He’s dying?”
Lydia shook her head. “I don’t know. No one’s said anything. But I’m afraid he might. God, Jeremy, what if Mike dies?”
Sandy extracted herself from Lydia’s arms, pivoted, took the coffees from Jeremy, and gave Jeremy a look that would have made Lydia laugh if she weren’t crying. His wet, warm chest pressed against her cheek as he held her.
She was being passed around like an inconsolable child.
Which was just fine with her.
“Mike won’t die,” Jeremy mumbled into her hair. “He has to become a billionaire and beat me, and he’s a stubborn asshole. He won’t die without having a bigger net worth.”
Lydia choked out a laugh.
“And besides—he has too much to live for.” Jeremy’s arms squeezed her tighter.
We all do, she thought. But fate didn’t care about our feelings. It just did its job. No one could stop what was about to happen to Mike. The doctors would do their best, but....
Her shaky sigh trapped her warm breath in Jeremy’s thin cotton shirt. She clung to him.
“You saved him,” Lydia mumbled against Jeremy’s broad chest.
“I didn’t do a damn thing,” he muttered back.
“You did,” she insisted. As their relationship had deepened, Lydia had learned how self-effacing Jeremy could be. He wasn’t like any other man she’d ever met. He didn’t need the spotlight. Actively shied away from it. He hated responsibility but loved her and Mike with a fierce, unwavering loyalty that she found breathtaking when stolen moments let her mind wander.
She and Mike seemed to be exceptions in Jeremy’s devil-may-care world.
And as time passed, their triad became a rule.
Jeremy’s rule.
“Mike will be fine. He’s tough and hard and there’s no way he’s going out like this.” She could hear the emotion in his voice and it made more tears come.
“I hate that we can’t do anything.”
“We are, Lydia. We’re here. He knows that.”
“How?”
Jeremy’s soft palms cradled her jaw, tipping her face up to meet his pained eyes. “Because he just does. The same way I know you and Mike will be right there with me through thick and thin.” His voice cut off the last word, eyes going wide with panic and grief, and with the dawning recognition that he really meant his words. She knew he had a depth to him that shocked him to acknowledge. Watching Jeremy come into his own, emotionally, had been a privilege. Sharing her life with him these past few years felt like a gift.
And fate was reneging on that present right now.
“Michael Bournham’s family?” A grey-haired man in a wrinkled lab coat, stethoscope poking out of a breast pocket, walked into the tiny waiting room.
“That’s us,” Jeremy asserted.
“You’re his brother?”
“Yes,” Jeremy lied. Lydia didn’t correct him, because really—what was the point?
“We administered emergency care to him—”
Lydia felt faint and slumped against Jeremy, who stiffened.
“—and the seizure stopped before we even did the first CT scan—”
First CT scan?
“He’s stable now. Sedated, but stable. Mr. Bournham has a hairline skull fracture behind the right ear. It triggered a brain bleed, but so far, the bleeding seems to be under control. We don’t want to send him to Portland just yet. Not until he’s been stable for longer, and if his condition improves, we might not even need to transport him.”
“Can you repeat that? Because all I heard was cracked skull and brain is bleeding and then the lambs began screaming in my head,” Jeremy said.
“He means,” Alex said from behind them, “that the seizures stopped, Mike has a skull fracture, and he’s stable now.”
“Not out of the woods,” the doctor elaborated. “Not yet. But certainly better than he was when he came in.”
Lydia felt all the air inside her make a hasty retreat.
“Can we see him?” she asked.
“He’s sedated. He can’t respond. He’s in the Intensive Care Unit, and there’s limited visitation.”
“I just need to see him, even for just a minute.” she pleaded, knowing how pathetic she sounded. She didn’t care.
Alex and the doctor shared a look, and then his hand was on Lydia’s shoulder. “I’ll go in with you, if it helps.”
All she could do was nod.
“Thanks,” Jeremy said.
The walk down the hallway to the elevators felt like she was on her way to a morgue. Her mind raced to remember her last words with Mike. They’d been on the phone, just a short time ago, as he informed her of Mike Pine’s condition. What had they said to each other last? Was she angry? Had she said I love you?
What if the last words she ever said to Mike weren’t I love you? The thought was unbearable.
Utterly unbearable.
The doctor followed them onto the elevator and pushed a button Lydia couldn’t read, tears blinding her. Jeremy stayed right next to her, touching her, a pillar of support. She knew he was churning inside, too, and she should ask him how he was, but she couldn’t. Her own fears were too big to manage.
How could she take on his?
“He’s a fighter,” Jeremy whispered in her ear. His voice was low and gritty, so unlike Jeremy’s normal tone that she looked at Alex and the doctor first, thinking one of them had spoken.
“What?”
“Mike. Mike’s a fighter. He won’t let that damn cliff win.”
The elevator doors opened before she could answer, and they faced a short hall with a set of double doors marked ICU.
Her knees turned to jelly.
This was real. Mike was in there in a hospital bed, in bad enough shape to be in ICU and not be moved, and she was about to get one minute to see him and try to convey the thousands of ways that she loved him so dearly. Words and hand squeezes and looks couldn’t possibly communicate it all.
Why hadn’t she said more, done more, shown more when she could?
Stop it, she thought. Stop it. You’ll have your say when he’s better.
If, another voice whispered, like an evil snake slithering between her fears. If he wakes up.
“When!” she barked, the force of the thought so strong she spoke aloud.
“When what?” the doctor asked, his hand on the square steel panel to push the door button.
“When, uh, will he be able to go home?”
Alex and the doctor gave each other another maddening look.
“We’ll see,” is all Alex said, as the whoosh and beep of machines designed to keep fragile human bodies alive filled Lydia’s senses. Everyone spoke in a hushed tone. Nurses walked with a tense air, as if ready to pivot on a dime.
And some part of Lydia died right here. Right now.
They’d never had a trip to the hospital when her brother had died. Just the damn uniformed officers.
“Mike is going to be fine,” Jeremy said, his arm around her, voice squeezed through gritted teeth, as if he were angry at her thoughts. “Let’s go see him.”
The ICU rooms weren’t really rooms. More like three-quarter walls of glass facing a nurse’s station. She spotted Mike immediately and she felt faint.
Mike’s head was wrapped in white gauze, his body under a thin sheet and blanket, monitors hooked up to him, an IV dripping into the crook of one elbow. His eyes were closed and his face bore the scrapes and cuts of a man who had tumbled thirty feet down a sharp cliff.
He looked as bad as it had sounded when Jeremy described the mess from outside, on the shore.
His heart rate was in the eighties. His chest rose and fell with a reassurance that made her own breath come in sharp bursts. Mike was so virile, so athletic and commanding in his body, that seeing him in a hospital bed, suspended between life and...a word she couldn’t think about...made it feel surreal.
That was the Mike she knew.
And yet he was right here, right n
ow, fighting for himself because he really was her Mike. He’d hurt himself trying to save someone.
That was her Michael Bournham.
She reached the bed and brushed one fingertip against the back of Mike’s hand, avoiding the wires and tubes. His thumb moved slightly, and she slid her fingers into his open palm, just enough to feel how cold his hands were. One fingernail was cut, deeply, and she saw the scratches peppering the skin along his forearm. He hadn’t been here long enough to be washed, bits of sand and dirt on his non-injured skin so different from the sterile environment.
She took a deep breath and rested her bottom gently on the bed beside his hip, reaching up to gently touch his cheek.
He jolted.
“He’s sedated, and he likely won’t talk,” the doctor said in a soothing, but neutral voice. She knew he didn’t want to offer false hope.
“I don’t care. I’ll do all the talking for him,” Lydia whispered, a tear trickling down her cheek and over the edge of her lip, the salty intrusion a reminder that fear does, indeed, have a taste.
“How is he? Really?” Jeremy asked the doctor, who began a litany of issues that barely registered for Lydia. She knew that later, back at home, she would cry in Jeremy’s arms and he would fumble to say all the right things. But he would. And in the space that fear creates, he would recite whatever the doctor was saying right now, only Jeremy would shape it to reassure.
What mattered most in this moment was that Mike knew she was here.
That he should fight.
That he couldn’t leave her and Jeremy. Not like this.
Standing slightly, she leaned toward his face, her lips pressing against one of the few bare spots on his cool forehead, his warm breath the only kiss he could give. He could feel her, right? Sense her presence and know she loved him so much it was like a new self who lived inside her, taking up residence within her heart, settling in for the long haul.
You can’t die, she thought, the words like hammers pounding between them, meant to make it very clear to whatever part of Mike could feel her that dying was unacceptable.
Not permitted.
Absolutely off the table.
Resolute, she realized what she needed to do next. If time was their best friend, she had to buy time. Rubbing her hand on his gritty forearm, she touched him everywhere she could, keeping social niceties in mind. If she imprinted herself on as much of his skin as possible, maybe love could wiggle its way into him, alter his DNA, and she could bury a piece of herself inside him.
And she wasn’t planning on dying today, so neither would he.
Someone appeared with a set of images, and Lydia struggled to find the words. Xrays. MRIs. Radiology. The doctor huddled with Alex over images held up to the fluorescent light, murmuring together in a language she didn’t speak. Her face was inches from Mike’s eyes looking at every hair, every pore, memorizing the lines of his face, remembering his sapphire eyes and how they looked when she was the only object of their attention.
She would be, again.
Soon.
But she had no control over how soon.
Alex and the doctor said something to Jeremy, then stepped out of the room.
“Mike,” she whispered. “Come back. Come back. We’re here. We love you. I love you. God, I love you so much. You can’t...you can’t go. You can’t. Stay away from all those stupid lights that draw you away.”
“Go away from the light, Carol Ann!” Jeremy said in falsetto, making Lydia jerk with surprise and turn around with a death glare in her eyes.
“He can’t die today, but you keep that up and you will!” she snapped.
Jeremy’s sheepish grin did nothing to reduce her anger. “Sorry. But the doctor has good news.”
“What?”
“Mike’s doing so well they’re removing sedation. He’ll probably wake up in the next hour or so.”
“Really?”
Jeremy nodded. “And then I can make all the poltergeist jokes I want.”
“Jeremy!”
“Look, Lyd. I’m barely holding it together here, too. Mike would laugh if he were awake.”
“No, he wouldn’t! He’d scowl at you and tell you what an ass you are!”
“And then he’d laugh.”
She had to concede. He would.
“I’m not leaving if he’s waking up in an hour,” she declared. “And I don’t care what the nurses and doctors say. Visiting hours don’t count when you’re family.”
“If it’s going to take an hour, baby, let’s go get some food and coffee so we’re in better shape for him when he wakes up.”
Baby. Jeremy didn’t call her little names like that. She looked at him through new eyes, realizing she’d completely taken his presence for granted. Mike was his best friend. They’d known each other for years before they’d met her. He must be hurting so much, too. She reached out and felt his wet shirt, her hand sliding up to cup his jaw, fingertips wetted by his soaked hair, which hung in curls around his face.
A face filled with anguish.
“Oh, Jeremy,” she said, pulling him to her, seeking to comfort him for the first time tonight. He’d been out there with Mike. Had watched him fall. Had dutifully helped get Mike Pine the rest of the way up that cliff, and then gone right back down for his best friend.
“You’re a hero,” she whispered.
He sputtered, his chest spasming with something between laughter and a sob. “I’m anything but.”
“You are,” she crooned, and then they melted into each other. Their heartbeats synced as she felt the contours of muscle, soaked through the cotton of his shirt. She traced the long arms, his broad shoulders, the curl of lats and ribs, and found herself lost in the sheer presence of her love. This wasn’t sensual, and certainly not erotic.
It was more.
“We need to take care of ourselves so we can take care of Mike,” he murmured in her ear. His steady, centered calm made her rise to the occasion.
Who knew that Jeremy, of all people, could be such a rock?
“Right,” she answered, pulling away, and adding, “and we need to call my mom to ask her to bring you some dry clothes.”
He looked down, plucking his wet shirt from his abs. “That would be nice.”
“Your wish is my command,” said a voice filled with gravel and love.
Lydia turned toward the sound. “Grandma? What are you doing here?”
Madge stood at the doorway to the ICU, holding a duffel bag. “Your mom sent me. Meribeth’s back at the campground with Ed, who is sleeping. Sandy asked me to come check on you two, and we invaded your cabin and found some clothes for Jeremy. Nice sex toy collection in your top drawer,” she added, giving Jeremy a conspirator’s wink.
Alex happened to end his conversation with the doctor at that exact moment and walk over. He paled at Madge’s words.
“Don’t worry,” she cracked, looking up at him. “I’m not talking about your grandpa’s sex toy collection.” She thumbed toward Jeremy. “I’m talking about his.”
“Small comfort,” Alex replied.
Jeremy snorted and took the duffel bag from Madge, leaning way down to plant a kiss on her desiccated cheek. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. You’re the hero.”
Hearing Lydia’s words echoed by her grandmother made Jeremy’s face turn a furious red. Lydia cocked an eyebrow and sent a silent message.
See? You really are.
He turned away and loped down the hall toward the men’s room.
“Any news?” Madge asked Alex, quietly pulling Lydia in for a side hug. She smelled like Grandma. There was no way to describe it. It was just the scent of Madge.
“He’s increasingly stable, which is good. The real concern is whether he has more seizures. There’s swelling in the brain.”
Madge frowned. “Could there be brain damage?”
She always was a realist. Lydia’s body began to buzz at the words. Brain damage. Brain damage. Oh, God, no.
&
nbsp; Alex gave Lydia the side-eye and answered tightly, “There’s no way to know at this point.”
A sound of torture came from Lydia’s throat, completely unexpected, and she couldn’t stop it. Brain damage. Seizures. ICU. This was not her life. This just wasn’t.
And that wasn’t Mike in there.
It couldn’t be.
“But—wha—how—what do you mean, brain damage?” She felt the hysteria in her words, the sentence itself vibrating as it passed between her lips, setting the rest of her body into a tremor she couldn’t control.
“No one knows,” Alex said in a soothing voice. He looked at Madge. “Let’s not borrow trouble.”
Lydia nodded. “He’s going to be fine.”
“Better than fine,” Madge added, but Lydia could hear the doubt in her voice.
Grandma was the biggest realist out there.
And while normally Lydia could join her in Realityland, right now she wanted to live in the Denial Province. She needed to think that there was no other possible outcome than full recovery. Desperation made her block out any thought of Mike not coming back to her, whole and complete.
Completely Mike.
“It’s a game of time,” Alex said as Jeremy came back, wearing old jeans with holes in the knees, a long-sleeved red t-shirt, and a blue fleece jacket. His hair was still wet but he looked infinitely more at ease.
“What’s a game of time?” Jeremy asked.
“Waiting for results on Mike.”
“Something new?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s good,” Jeremy said with a relieved sigh. “At this point, no news is good news, right?”
Lydia hadn’t thought of it that way.
“Shouldn’t you be back at the campground, getting ready for your wedding tomorrow? Josie must be a mess,” Madge said kindly to Alex.
“Wedding?” Alex’s face went blank, then he made a sound of of recognition. “That’s right. The wedding.” He put his hand on Madge’s shoulder and looked at her. “I think the wedding needs to be postponed.”
“No!” Lydia cried. “You can still get married!”
“One of the grooms is in the hospital, and your Mike is in ICU. No one feels like celebrating right now.”
His words stung. “But my mom! And all the work she’s put into this!”
