Left Behind (Lost & Found #1)

by C. L. Stacey

  “No.” I turn to look into the room. “She’s going to be okay, right?”

  Jessica turns her head in the same direction, looking into the busy room of doctors who’d already begun assessing Lexi’s injuries. “The wound is higher up on the chest, closer to the shoulder, so I imagine it hasn’t punctured any vital organs. Was she conscious and speaking after she’d been shot?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she seem to be struggling to breathe at all?” she follows up with another question.

  “No.”

  “Okay, those are good answers. That’s good. And you kept pressure on the wound the entire time?”

  “I did the best I could, but she’s lost so much—”

  “Stop right there.” Jessica quiets me with a hand in the air. “Like you said, you did the best you could. It’s more than anyone can expect given the circumstances, and they got her here alive. These are good signs.” She squeezes my arm, and I wince. Jessica’s eyes fall to the spot her hand had just abandoned and she bends at the knees to get a closer look. “You fucking idiot, you’ve been shot!”

  “I didn’t know, the gun only went off once before Brad shot himself—”

  Jessica leans into the room. “This was a through and through; the bullet is in my brother’s arm,” she informs them before returning her attention to me. “Go sit your ass down so we can take a look.”

  “No, I can’t. I have to—”

  “Jackson Michael Anderson, you are now a patient. Go have a fucking seat!” Jessica snaps at me.

  When she walks away, Caleb leans in, whispering out the side of his mouth, “Your sister’s a fucking badass.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Caleb.”

  “You shut the fuck up, Jackson. How the hell did you not feel a bullet in your fucking arm?”

  “My girlfriend had just been shot!” I clip. “Bitch.”

  Jessica returns with a different doctor, but I hold out a hand to stop the kid. “How old is he?” I turn to him. “Hi, how old are you?”

  The question I thought was pretty important to ask seems to anger my sister. “This kid is an intern but a doctor nonetheless, and this is a learning hospital. Every intern here has been properly trained by either me or one of my residents, so you will do as he says while he assesses your injury, and you will not give him shit about it.”

  A laugh sounds from the left of the cot, where I know Caleb is standing. I’d shoot him a glare, but I’m more concerned about the kid standing in front of me. “Why can’t you just fucking do it?” I bite back.

  An impatient sigh passes through my sister’s lips, and Jessica bends until her face is leveled with mine, hands resting on her knees like she is getting ready to speak medical terms with a child. “Physicians are not allowed to treat family, dumbass. So just do as the kid says, and he’ll make your ouchie go away,” she says in a condescending tone. “Okey dokey?”

  I glower at her.

  Jessica rolls her eyes before righting herself. “Now, I’m going to go check on your girlfriend. We need to check for any internal injuries, so she’ll most likely be wheeled off to surgery. Be a good boy and stay out of the way. I’ll come find you when I have an update.”

  Surgery…

  “Wait,” I stop her. She pauses and turns to face me again. “Don’t let her die, Jessica…”

  “She is going to be fine, Jackson.”

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “Because it’s me, and I’m good,” she states with confidence.

  “Dr. Anderson, OR 2,” a doctor in different colored scrubs informs her. “You’re scrubbing in, aren’t you?”

  She turns toward him and nods. “I’m coming, I’ll meet you up there.” Then her eyes dart toward the entrance of the ER. “Police are here to see you,” she informs me. “Do you need me to ask someone else to contact her family?”

  Her family.

  Fuck.

  In the midst of all the crazy, I forgot to notify her fucking family.

  I shake my head. “I’ll call them.”

  With a nod, she turns to leave.

  And I pray for the second time tonight.

  There’s a faint beeping coming from somewhere in the distance when I finally come to. I carefully open my eyes and let them adjust to my surroundings.

  I’m alive, as I promised to be.

  I’m in a hospital, as I expected to be.

  I’m surrounded by people, as I didn’t expect to be.

  I pictured waking up to my overdramatic mother, my worried father, a hysterical Harper, but I didn’t…

  My eyes scan the entire room from left to right.

  I didn’t expect to see my friends camping out on the floor in sleeping bags. Kellan, Harper, and Nick. Caleb looks ridiculous on the floor, his big bear frame making the rest of my friends look like puppies.

  My parents had fallen asleep on the couch under the window. Even in sleep, I can tell how much my mother had been crying. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut. Knew it.

  How the hell was this allowed to happen? Aren’t you only allowed a few visitors at a time? And isn’t there usually a specific time block when a patient’s allowed visitors before the nurses and doctors send them home?

  Between Harper, Jackson, and Caleb, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.

  Then my eyes stop their scanning when they land at the right side of my bed. Jackson is asleep on the chair next to me, his head resting over his arm down by my hips on the bed.

  I try to wiggle my fingers around to wake him, but his grip around my hand is so tight I can’t.

  The soft sound of the door opening pulls my attention to it, and I squint through the dark space when I see someone slowly approach me.

  Five years. Maybe a million different faces I’ve seen since then, but I could never forget hers.

  This doctor stuck with me the entire time of my recovery. She was also the one to tell me that Eli didn’t make it. She offered words of comfort. She explained what my body was going through. She sympathized with what my heart had been going through during my time of loss.

  She was attentive. She was kind. She was compassionate.

  “Bree.” I breathe a laugh, ignoring the pain that shoots through my shoulder when I do.

  Bree steps carefully around the sleeping bodies on the floor then sits herself down on the chair to the left of my bed. “Lexi.” Her mouth spreads into the warmest smile. “How are you feeling?” she whispers softly.

  “I’ll live.” I smile.

  My answer seems to upset her. Her lips clamp together when her eyes begin to flood, and she drops her gaze to her lap momentarily before lifting it back to mine. “You are the bravest person I know. Either that or the stupidest.”

  “Probably the latter,” I admit with a smile. “But I’d do it again if it means saving him.” I nod toward Jackson, still sound asleep.

  Bree shakes her head and reaches a finger up to catch a falling tear. “I, uh…” she sighs, hanging her head back to stare up at the ceiling. Then she clears her throat and makes eye contact again. “I came in here to thank you.”

  “Thank me?” I frown. “For what?”

  More tears spill from her eyes, and this time, she lets them fall. “For saving my brother.”

  “Your brother?” My eyes bounce from Jackson to her. “You’re Jessica? I thought your name was Bree.”

  “It’s my middle name, and it’s what I like to go by.” She smiles, wiping at her cheeks again. “My friends call me Bree. Jackson refuses to.”

  There were doctors in and out of my room during my stay here the first time, and I barely gave any of their faces a look. Each of them would ask me the same, stupid questions, when all I wanted was to be left alone. The reason I remembered Bree was because she seemed like the only one who gave a shit about me at all.

  She smiles like him.

  They have the same blonde hair.

  They share the same gunmetal blue eyes.

  Jackson did
say that his sister actively gave him advice that night… so it was her, speaking on my behalf.

  It all makes sense, but it’s still a lot to process.

  Then I remember one more thing. “So that night I was drugged in the club…”

  Jessica nods. “I came over to take care of you,” she confirms.

  “Did you recognize me?”

  “I remember thinking you looked familiar, but you’d grown up so much since the last time I saw you, and it’s been so long that I actually didn’t notice you right away…” She looks guiltily back at me. I have no idea why.

  “Bree, you’re a doctor. You see hundreds of different people every day. That’s understandable.” I shrug, passing it off as no big deal.”

  “It wasn’t until I saw the picture of you and Eli on your nightstand that I realized who you were. That’s when I found out that Jackson had been keeping you in his life all this time. I had no idea, Lexi. I swear. I knew he carried that guilt with him every day, but I had no idea. I was so mad at him, at first. You’d been through so much, and I was afraid of what finding out about him would do to you. I wanted to protect you, but I also wanted to protect my big brother, too… so I asked that he leave you alone, but…” She shakes her head. “I saw it in his face, he was already in love with you by then. He told me he couldn’t walk away from you, that he’d tried already, but he couldn’t stay away.”

  The sound of someone else telling our love story brings a smile to my face. “You think we’re crazy,” I say knowingly.

  Bree chuckles. “Does it matter?”

  “No,” I laugh.

  I’ve gotten to know Jackson over a span of ninety-nine days, considered him a best friend for about fifty of them, and then I fell in love with him, somewhere along the way.

  It’s only been a week since we have been officially more, and I already can’t imagine a life without him in it.

  I can see where people may think we’re crazy, but I think that it’s easy to judge when you don’t know the full story.

  We were very much lost in our respective lives. Only when we came together did anything start making sense.

  We live in a world where hope struggles to exist, where violence is common, and love is rare, where fifty percent of married couples choose to quit. Jackson and I are just two people who managed to find something beautiful in this hopeless place. So who the hell cares about the whens and hows? Love is love.

  Some are still waiting to meet their special someone.

  Some swear off love after just the one.

  Some of the unfortunate few may never find it.

  The lucky ones find a way to fall in love again.

  We are the lucky ones.

  “My friends and family were there for me in ways that left me mostly frustrated, because while they were there to witness what was happening to me, they had no way of understanding it. Your brother—we share this tragedy, therefore he understands it. It’s exactly what I needed to find my way back. He put me back together again, Bree. I thought I was way too broken for that to ever be a remote possibility.” My pain meds were starting to wear off. I shift, wincing when I feel achy again. “It took a while for me to add that up, but when I did, I quickly realized that what brought us together didn’t seem so important anymore.” I offer her a tight smile and exhale deeply, trying to release some of the pain growing in my shoulder and chest. “Can I get something for the pain, please? This hurts like a bitch again.”

  Bree shoots to her feet. “Yes, of course. Hold on, try not to move that arm too much.”

  I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Jackson’s hand has a death grip around it.

  I’m breathing in and out, hoping it will do something for the pain, then my eyes cut to Jackson’s side of the bed when I suddenly feel his hand squeeze mine.

  His head is turned toward me with his temple still resting over his arm.

  “I love you,” I blurt through a cheeky smile.

  Jackson’s mouth pulls upward into a slow smile, but he says nothing, just stares silently for a few beats. Then out of nowhere, he says, “Marry me.”

  I say nothing, too stunned to speak. My mouth opens, but nothing intelligible comes spilling from it, just a weird sound that makes his smile grow wider. “What?” I say, needing him to repeat it.

  “Marry me.”

  “I’m sorry, are you asking?”

  Jackson shakes his head. “I’m telling you. Marry me.”

  This is crazy. He’s crazy.

  But this is us. We’re crazy.

  My eyes fill up quickly, and I want to say yes, but I can’t seem to remember how to fucking say it. Then I lift my free hand off the bed, palm facing up. “Where’s my ring?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  I laugh. “You can’t ask if you don’t have a ring, are you serious?”

  “Does this seem planned to you?”

  This had to be the worst proposal in the history of proposals, but luckily for him, I find it sweet.

  Jackson finally picks his head up off the bed, a wide grin stretching across his face as he stares down at my ring-less finger, tracing slow circles with his thumb across the back of it. “I’ll get you a ring, don’t worry. I’ll get you the biggest fucking one I can find. Just say yes.”

  I’m smiling so hard I feel a cramp burning in my cheeks. “You’re crazy.”

  “You make me crazy.”

  “You want to spend the rest of your life with crazy?”

  “Yes, I really fucking do. We’re headed there anyway, why would we wait?”

  I fake a dreamy sigh while I fan at my very real tears with my good hand. “Oh, Jackson Anderson, you are such a romantic. How the hell did I get so lucky?”

  My eyes follow him when he stands, heart racing wildly when he moves closer to the head of the bed. He plants his free hand against the spot behind my pillow, and I draw in a breath when he leans in, face hanging just over mine. “Romance requires planning, planning takes time, time that I don’t have. I’m in a rush to secure my forever with you, Lexi. All you have to do is say yes.”

  They will call us crazy. I say let them. Because there’s no way I was telling him no.

  I grin up at him. “Did you ever doubt I’d say yes?”

  Jackson touches his forehead to mine and shakes his head. “I need a good, solid yes, Lexi.”

  “Yes,” I whisper through my smile.

  He breathes out a laugh, and I can’t help but notice that he seems relieved to hear my answer. Which is dumb. “How bad does it hurt?”

  I frown when I don’t understand his question right away. “What?”

  “Your shoulder,” he says. “I want to kiss you, but I don’t want to risk hurting you when I do.”

  Oh, right. The pain…

  “I feel nothing. I’m good. Kiss me.” I reach out to him with my good arm.

  The feeling his lips bring when they crash down onto mine is everything I need to verify that this moment is real and not just some cruel dream.

  The kiss finalizes our decision, sealing the “forever” deal we just made. And it’s so much better than any stupid ring he could have put on my finger.

  Meeting Jackson and getting trapped in that elevator with him is the best thing to ever happen to me. I wanted to get to know the man behind the name, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to find myself there, being protected by him all this time.

  I was the center of his whole world. For five years.

  All the Disney movies in the world could never have prepared me for the raw reality of this man. He is far from the story’s typical prince charming, where the stupid guy shows up at the end to whisk the princess away from her miserable life.

  No, but thanks anyway, Disney. You keep your prince charming, and I’ll take my Batman. My dark knight’s been with me since the very beginning.

  That’s how you do it. That’s how you get the girl.

  Although, they did manage to get one part right.

  Toge
ther, we will both live happily ever after…

  Finally.

  The End

  Caleb Carlisle’s story

  say love

  Chelsea Kuhel: Huge thanks to my editor for seeing this book all the way through. Between your work and home-life, you still managed to make time in your busy schedule for every single email I sent with silly questions! Thank you so much for making me comfortable enough to publish. You’ve made this process seem way less scary.

  Sarah Hansen: “Before they click, they see the cover. Before they reach for the shelf, they see the cover. Before they read the synopsis, they see the cover. Make it memorable.” And make it memorable, you did! Thank you for creating a cover I can proudly show off. It’s amazing, and I’m absolutely in love with it.

  To my readers from FictionPress: Thank you for your undying devotion and loyalty to my stories and characters over the years. Thank you for trusting me to tell a different version of Jackson and Lexi’s story, and for still wanting to read it. I would never have had the courage to hit publish if it weren’t for your encouraging reviews. Thank you a million times.

  To the reader: Thank you for simply picking this up, for inviting my characters into your life. I write to escape, and hopefully, as the reader, this story has done the same for you.

  CL Stacey is a Florida native, born and raised. She still resides in the Sunshine State with her husband and daughter. Relaxing with any good love story she can get her hands on is her favorite way to end the day.

  While life has always been good to her, she always believed that there was an important piece missing. After years of searching, she discovered her passion for storytelling when she published the original version of Jackson and Lexi’s story on FictionPress in 2013.

  In efforts to keep her dream world from colliding with her wonderful reality, she keeps her writing life a secret.

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