Everything in Between

by Hubbard, Crystal

  Gian verified that a few minutes later. “The paramedics are working on Braeden,” he said. “Chief Dunlop is getting a scooper in place to dig you out.”

  “Hurry,” Chip said, his voice breaking. He cradled Zae closer. He pulled off his right glove and tried to clear the dust from her face. “ ‘I will never fail you or forsake you.’ ”

  “Hebrews 13:5,” Zae said. “What, you think a heathen like me doesn’t read the Bible?”

  “That wasn’t just a quote. That’s my promise to you.” After shoving glass away with his foot, he gently laid her on the floor. He joined the effort to clear a space big enough to get Zae out safely through the stairwell. He rested his shoulder against a huge piece of drywall with rebar protruding from it, and shoved. Every muscle in his body screaming in pain, he managed to budge it just enough to clear an opening large enough for one of the firemen to stick his head and shoulders through.

  The fireman suddenly disappeared, replaced by Sionne’s head and one arm. “Pass her to me,” he said.

  Chip almost laughed aloud at the sight of the yellow hard hat on Sionne’s head. Too small to properly fit his big dome, it sat on top of his head, like part of a child’s Bob the Builder costume. “I’ll need a backboard,” Chip said. “I’m afraid to move her anymore without support.” He turned back to Zae while Sionne went for the backboard. “You’ll be out of here in a few more minutes,” he told her. “Eve and Dawn are waiting for you. They’ve been so worried.”

  Zae blindly reached for him. He caught her hand and held it to his heart. “If you have to ch-choose,” she whispered, “choose the baby.”

  “Zae,” he sighed.

  “Choose the baby. Promise me.”

  “Don’t talk like this.”

  She cupped his face for a moment before her arm went limp and her hand fell away.

  “Here’s the board!” Sionne called.

  Chip took it and carefully strapped Zae to it. Turning her headfirst, he pulled her to the opening, then lifted her to it. Moving backwards underneath it to elevate it, Chip pushed her through the hole and into Sionne’s waiting arms. Chip climbed through after her, dragging his injured bad leg behind him. Sionne helped him up the stairs while paramedics in hardhats carried Zae. They climbed through the gaping hole bashed in the wall of the classroom, and Chip took deep breaths of the fresh night air as he was guided onto a gurney beside Zae’s.

  Through a swarm of fireman, Chief Dolan, Gian, Sionne and the paramedics tending to him, Chip struggled to see Zae. One of the medics flung her oxygen mask and tank to the ground. “She’s not breathing,” the woman said. “We can’t transport her until she’s stabilized. Bag!”

  “What’s happening?” Chip shouted. He fought to sit up.

  “You’ve got a serious laceration on your head, sir,” said the paramedic overseeing Chip’s care. “You’re bleeding from bad lacs on your arms and torso as well. Please, hold still so we can take care of you.”

  Chip pushed the paramedic out of his way. He rolled off the gurney, his knees giving out on his landing. He stumbled to Zae’s side. A young female paramedic had inserted a breathing tube and was squeezing a plastic bladder to keep air flowing to Zae’s lungs. “What’s happening to her?” Chip croaked. “She was breathing when I brought her out.” He tightly held onto the gurney’s railing.

  “Please give us room to work on her, sir,” the young woman said.

  “I’ve lost her pulse.” Her partner snatched a stethoscope from his ears. He set a compact defibrillator between Zae’s battered legs. “Charging.”

  Chip watched, stunned and scared, everything transpiring quickly, but at the same time dragging endlessly. Zae’s complexion was a nauseating shade of gray beneath the white dust coating her face and hair. They ripped her blouse open, exposing her torso. The male paramedic shouted, “Clear!” and Zae’s body rose from the force of the charge meant to jumpstart her heart.

  “How far along is she?” the young woman asked.

  “Almost five months,” Chip heard himself answer. He felt Gian’s hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him away. Gian spoke nonsense about giving the medics room to do their jobs. But it took Sionne’s strength to pry Chip’s hands from the gurney and replace him on his own.

  “Zae!” Chip cried out as she was zapped once more. “Don’t you leave me, professor! Don’t you dare!” Primal cries of grief tore from him, torturing those around him with his pain as he himself was tortured by fear of losing Zae and his baby.

  “His sleeve is soaked with blood but I can’t get a look at the wound!” protested one of Chip’s paramedics.

  “Clear!” called the medic, giving Zae a third shock.

  “Come back to me, professor,” Chip pleaded. “Baby, don’t…”

  The woman called for atropine, which her partner injected into Zae, and she asked for the time.

  “Seven minutes,” her partner told her. “Keep bagging. Charge!…Clear!”

  Zae’s body jumped once more.

  Howling his sorrow, Chip tried to get up again. His friends held him down, Sionne with a huge arm over Chip’s chest, Gian by leaning over Chip’s legs. A paramedic took that opportunity to sedate Chip.

  Chip’s world had already been turned upside down. The drug turned it inside out. He fought to remain conscious, to shake the rising fog from his head. His ability to speak deserted him, but Gian took up his cause.

  “Bring her back!” Gian called out as the sedative paralyzed Chip. “Don’t let her die!” Gian pleaded, his words the last Chip heard before emptiness claimed him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chip’s fresh cast left his fingers free, but he still had to be careful not to get it wet. A total of forty-seven stitches closed the wound near his hairline and sixteen staples sealed the one at his nape. Steri-strips had been used to close most of the lacerations on his arms and legs, but the worst of his cuts, a slash across his lower back, had required fifty-two stitches and would likely require plastic surgery at a later date.

  Nothing Chip had endured compared to the two days he’d spent at Zae’s bedside, waiting for her to awaken. The paramedics had revived her at the scene, but her head injury left her with brain swelling and she had suffered a great deal of blood loss as result of the rest of her lacerations and breaks. The doctors were sure she would awaken once the swelling went down, but no one could guess how her faculties would be affected.

  Eve and Dawn had spent the first night and day with Zae, going home only when Chip convinced Sionne and Cory to take them home to rest. The girls had gone willingly only after Chip swore he’d call if Zae’s condition changed.

  For hours, Chip talked to Zae and read to her, he slept with his head pillowed on her bed when exhaustion or medication prevented him from keeping his eyes open. He refused to leave her for fear that would be the moment she left him.

  Gian and Cinder sat with him in shifts, Cinder leaving only when Gian convinced her that sleep deprivation would be harmful to her baby. Early on the third morning of Zae’s hospitalization, Chip asked a nurse for supplies to bathe Zae.

  He raised the bed to a slight incline and drew the curtains around it. Mindful of Zae’s dislocated left shoulder and broken collarbone, he untied the back of her gown and eased it to her waist. Blotchy patches of blue and purple bruises discolored the skin visible around the bandages covering the lacerations on her ribcage and upper right arm. Chip used a package of waterless bath wipes, which the nurse had thoughtfully warmed, to gently clean Zae’s neck and arms, then her torso. His bare hands lingered over her abdomen, and he leaned down to kiss her there, wishing his love and caring into the baby nestled under her mottled skin.

  He sat up and replaced her gown, and draped a blanket over her chest and shoulders to keep her warm while he undressed her from the waist down. Her right leg had been seriously damaged. A specialist had been flown in from Massachusetts to perform the necessary surgery on it, which had required twelve titanium screws to piece her shattered femur ba
ck together, but only time would determine the extent of the nerve damage she had suffered.

  Chip lifted her left leg and ran a wipe over it, carefully avoiding the sixteen stitches along her calf where a large sliver of glass had been removed. After he’d bathed her and dressed her in a fresh gown, he spent a long while massaging her favorite lotion into her feet. Zae was as particular about her feet as other women were about their faces.

  Her care completed, he picked up the brush the girls had brought for her. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he repositioned her pillows so they would support her neck yet give him access to her hair.

  “Dawn washed your hair with one of those waterless shampoos when you got out of surgery,” Chip said softly as he brushed Zae’s hair. “She knew it was the first thing you would have done.”

  The waterless shampoo had left Zae’s hair clean but lusterless and flat. With each stroke of the brush, Zae’s hair grew shinier and fuller.

  “CJ wanted to bring his licorice stick and play for you,” Chip went on. “I think that might be a good idea. He’s so worried about you and his baby brother. I keep telling him that there might be a sister cooking in there, but he wants no part of another girl.”

  Chip set the brush aside and hugged her, careful not to apply too much pressure even as he hoped to transfer some of his own vitality into her. “I want a healthy baby. That’s all. I don’t care if he’s a boy or if she’s a girl, all I want is a baby with everything where it’s supposed to be.”

  “I want a cigarette.”

  Chip sat up and cupped Zae’s face. Her eyes slowly worked their way open, but she seemed to have trouble focusing on him. “Zae, baby, oh honey…” Chip grabbed the call cord for the nurse and gave it a good tug.

  “I want a cigarette,” she croaked once more, her voice rusty from disuse.

  “You’re pregnant,” Chip said, relief flooding from him in the form of laughter. “Remember? You can’t smoke.”

  “Then give me a comb…”

  “What?” Chip pressed the call button for the nurse, hoping to hurry her along.

  “I need a comb.” Zae’s right hand went to her head. “And a blow dryer. I know my hair looks a hot mess right now.”

  “Your hair is gorgeous.” He took her left hand and kissed it. “I just spent a half hour brushing it.”

  “I can’t trust your opinion. You’re biased.”

  He held her gaze, water welling in his eyes. “I almost lost you, professor.”

  “No,” Zae smiled wanly. “You found me. Braeden, too. How is he?”

  “Both of his arms are broken, his pelvis is cracked and his skull is fractured. He also broke a couple of teeth. But his prognosis is good. Eve and Dawn have been visiting with him. He won the science competition, too.”

  “And deservedly so. Did Elton Dye make it out of the building?”

  Chip shook his head. “He was cut up pretty badly and suffered major head trauma. I don’t think there’s a plastic surgeon in the world talented enough to repair his face. If he’s lucky, he’ll learn how to tie his shoes again someday, maybe even count to ten without help.”

  Zae began to weep.

  “Don’t feel sorry for him,” Chip said. “That crazy bastard tried to kill you.”

  “It’s not Elton.”

  “The baby is fine,” Chip assured her. “The heartbeat is strong and the baby is in a good position. You’re a tank, remember?”

  “It’s not the baby.”

  “Then, what—”

  “It’s you.” She rested her hand on his right thigh.

  “I’m fine. What’s a few more railroad tracks in this thing? We match now. You had a severe break in your right femur. It was repaired with titanium screws. You’ve got almost as much metal in your leg as I have in mine.”

  “It’s not that, either,” she wept. “I was so afraid to tell you that I loved you, Chip, because I was sure that I would lose you, just like I lost Colin. I won’t make that mistake again. I love you, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you know it, every single day.”

  He sat beside her, gently embracing her. “I begged God and all his angels, even Colin, to help me get you out of that building. When I heard you call me, I knew that God answered my prayer. I should have been a little greedier. I got you out, but then I lost you anyway. For seven minutes.

  “You were right, you know. I once told you that I didn’t believe a heart could break, but mine did when they couldn’t revive you. You were gone for seven minutes. That’s seven minutes of pure hell I don’t ever want to live again. I felt as if everything that ever mattered to me had vanished. You give my life its beautiful color and joyful noise. You give it meaning and value.”

  “You have always been someone I could depend on,” Zae said. “You are the place of comfort and contentment I’ve wanted for so long. All Colin ever wanted was for me to be happy. And I think he knows that you are my happiness. We have his blessing.”

  “So when can we get married?”

  “I’m free right now, actually.”

  He kissed the top of her head, then her temple and her cheek. “Thank you. Thank you, you beautiful, stubborn, smart, obnoxious, precious, nightmare of a dream come true!”

  A nurse drew back the curtain and smiled. “You’re awake! Welcome back to the world, sleepyhead.”

  Chip got off the bed and gave the nurse room to check Zae’s vitals. Which wasn’t easy.

  “He rang for you a good ten minutes ago,” Zae exaggerated. “What if I was in cardiac arrest? Or bleeding from my eyeballs? What the hell were you doing that was more important than coming in here to make sure I hadn’t rolled out of bed or started choking on my own vomit?”

  From his chair, Chip closed his eyes and offered a silent prayer of thanks before calling the twins and Gian and Cinder. Zae had returned to him, and from the sound of her, she was just as good as ever. Or better…

  * * *

  Zae peeped through the porthole window of one of the hospital chapel doors. Eve and Dawn, her stalwart maids of honor, stood at the humble wooden alter. Zae had allowed her daughters to choose their own dresses for the ceremony. Dawn, as was her preference, wore white. The white rosebuds in her chignon matched her cocktail-length halter dress. Eve wore black. Her only ornamentation, a pair of chocolate diamond earrings given to her by Cory for Christmas, perfectly complemented her off-the-shoulder cashmere sweater, wool pencil skirt and stockings. Eve clutched a trio of white tulips while Dawn carried three purple tulips so dark they looked black.

  Zae shifted her gaze to the groom’s side of the alter. Cory, a bit of a clothes horse, looked sharp in a gray suit. Zae grinned at the sight of Sionne. His jacket was the size of a car cover, and he’d managed to find a pair of size 23 wingtips. The unruly mane of long black hair of which he was so proud had been tamed and pulled into a busy ponytail that resembled an electrified Persian hanging from the back of his head.

  Gian and Cinder, CJ, Hirsch Sheppard, Braeden and select faculty from Missouri University occupied Zae’s half of the tiny chapel. Zae narrowed her eyes at Chip’s half of the chapel, where hospital staff Zae hadn’t pissed off sat with Sheng Li students and instructors. Chip’s mother sat in the front pew in a stylish blue suit that made the most of her blue eyes and attractive legs. The elder Mrs. Kish had been gracious and pleasant toward Zae since her arrival the day before the hastily planned wedding, but Zae wasn’t about to let her guard down. Particularly after learning that Mrs. Kish was a retired English teacher, a fact Chip had chosen not to disclose.

  “I didn’t want you to think I was trying to marry my mother,” he’d told her.

  “Since you didn’t tell me, that’s exactly what I think,” Zae had argued.

  The debate had been settled under covers and behind the drawn curtains surrounding Zae’s hospital bed. Mrs. Kish had stumbled upon them, and there couldn’t have been a clearer illustration of the different roles played by the most important women in Chip’s life.

&n
bsp; Zae was in her eighth day at the hospital, her discharge postponed because of a blood clot in her injured leg that required treatment and careful observation. Zae’s eagerness to go home took the form of constant abuse heaped at the nursing staff (“What do you people do with all the blood you take from me every day? Do you drink it?”), food service (“How do you expect people to heal when you’re feeding them cold food with no taste?”), housekeeping (“Does the hospital pay you extra for stirring up clouds of dust that make patients sicker?”), and her doctors (“You aren’t examining me until you’re old enough to shave, Doogie.”).

  Cinder’s suggestion for Chip and Zae to marry in the hospital chapel had given Zae something to do other than commit acts of random verbal abuse against hospital personnel. Within the next couple of days, blood tests had been taken, a license was purchased, and the rector of Zae’s own church had agreed to perform the ceremony.

  As Zae stood beside Chip outside the chapel, on the verge of becoming his wife, uncertainty flared within her. Her modest bouquet of blood-red tulips clutched in her hand, she stared up at Chip, her heart in her throat.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  His calm should have settled her. He was painfully beautiful in a dark grey suit that beautifully matched the pale champagne of her gown. He’d cut his hair for the occasion, which made him look less boyish, except when he smiled.

  “What if the blood clot in my leg dislodges and goes to my lung and kills me?” she said in a rush.

  “Let’s hope you get to say ‘I do’ before it does,” he replied.

  “What if it breaks loose later tonight? I’ll make you a widower on the first day of our married life.”

  “It won’t,” he said.

  “It could.”

  “It won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.” He ran his hands over her bare shoulders. She’d chosen a strapless gown with an empire bodice to accommodate the dressing on her dislocated shoulder, and to elegantly hide her leg cast and growing belly bump. To Chip, she was a vision of pure beauty.