Robbie, though, she’d been the first. She wasn’t just his best friend. She was family in every sense of the word.
And now, because of one bad choice, she lay on a bed and might not wake up.
Dropping into a chair, he rubbed a hand hard over his face as if he could shove all the worry back in physically. He should have stopped her—he’d known that asshole Jason had drunk too much to drive, and he’d known Robs had drunk too much tequila to be logical—but he’d let her go. What if he’d stopped her? Sure, she’d have been pissed off, but she’d have gotten over it. Shit, he could’ve bodily hauled her out of that bar and into a cab….
Should’ve. Could’ve. Would’ve.
None of it stopped the damned beeping or the too-slow rise and fall of her chest. But wait….
Were the beeps faster than they were a second ago? Was that a good thing or a bad one? Should he call a nurse?
Leaning close to her, he studied her face, searching for anything. A twitch, a move, any change.
Had her eyelashes moved? Even a little?
After watching her so closely that his eyes began to tear up from not blinking, he leaned back. No, nothing. Still the same. Still she slept and didn’t respond. He moved back to the window and resumed his tapping. She’d wake up soon.
She had to.
***
Somewhere Out of Time
“Can you hear me? Squeeze my fingers if you can hear me.”
The strange, insisting voice repeated the words over and over, a litany that was too loud and almost painful against the ringing in her ears. Where in the hell was she, anyway?
“Roberta? Can you hear me? Squeeze my fingers if you can hear me.”
She wanted to say fuck off, but her voice didn’t seem to be working correctly. Was she sick? Where in the hell was she, anyway?
“Can you hear me? Roberta? Roberta? Can you hear me? Squeeze my fingers if you can hear me.”
Seriously, who in the hell was this bitch? Was she tied up? Why couldn’t she move?
“Robs, you in there?”
That voice, she recognized.
Gray.
Fighting to open her eyes, which seemed glued together—maybe she was sick?—she tried to find him. Instead, all she saw was bright, swirling light. Oh, yeah…she’d been drinking. Maybe she was so drunk she was….
What? She was what, lost in a light tunnel?
“Can you hear me, Roberta? Squeeze my fingers if you can hear me.”
“She squeezed my fingers.” Gray’s voice again, floating somewhere near her but on the other side of her body from the annoying woman.
“That’s good. That’s really, really good.”
Everything was too loud, too bright, too confusing. Each time she tried to gather her thoughts, they scattered like leaves tossed by the wind. Frustrated, she drifted back to sleep, not sure what was going on but happy to fall into Gray’s arms in her dreams.
When she next woke, she remembered the weird, swirling dream of lights and tried to stretch. Her body didn’t work right, and her mouth was so dry—so very, very dry—she couldn’t swallow. Blinking fast, she tried to focus on the world around her, and it was weirdly white. White walls, white ceiling, white sheets.
Where in the hell was she, anyway? The annoying woman was gone, but Robbie couldn’t quite turn her head all the way. She opened her mouth to demand answers, and only a squeak came out. Too dry to talk.
“Are you thirsty?” A young man in green scrubs rushed to her side, offering a straw. “This is thick, so….”
She tried to swallow the water, but it tasted medicinal and thick, like glue or something. She choked, and he mopped at her with a towel.
“Is she awake?”
“Yes, not biting this time, thankfully. Roberta, your friend is here to see you. He’s been here with you almost the whole time.”
The whole time? What whole time? She’d just gone to sleep or…wait, where was she?
“Hey, you.”
Gray’s face appeared over hers, and she sighed. Whatever was wrong, he was here, and that was good.
But he looked like shit. His scruff was long, almost an actual beard, and his eyes were surrounded by dark circles as though he’d not been sleeping well. His hair was a mess, too, as if he’d dragged his fingertips through it. She tried to tell him so, but her tongue still felt thick and awkward, and it didn’t come out right at all.
“Shh, don’t try to talk. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re awake now. Everything is going to be okay.” His soothing words weren’t soothing. What is okay? What is wrong with me?
But she couldn’t ask him for answers. All she could do was accept another sip of the slimy fluid and hope her voice would work right soon.
***
Time, as she knew it anyway, passed in spurts. She couldn’t seem to shake the strange exhaustion that plagued her, and she’d wake to new tortures—first the horrible thick drinks and constant poking while people asked if she felt their pokes and then, once they’d determined she could swallow, remembering how to walk and move.
The day that they permitted her a shower—a real shower, not a half-assed sponge bath—became a red-letter event. If she could get over the loss of pride having two nurses guard her as if she were made of spun glass and likely to shatter from simply washing her hair, it would have been wonderful.
Well, if not for the fact that she’d gotten too tired to rinse her own damned hair.
Gray stayed by her side through all her hospital convalescence. He was like some scruffy cheerleader, always there, never seeming to waver in his determination that she get better from…whatever in the hell was wrong with her.
Since her voice didn’t seem to work right or, rather, the words seemed determined to scatter away from her, too complex for verbalization…she couldn’t answer him when he fought to help her accomplish increasingly complicated tasks. She also couldn’t ask him what in the hell had happened to her.
Her mother? Only visited once that she remembered. It was entirely possible she’d visited more and that Robbie couldn’t recall since she’d lost time somehow through whatever happened. Regardless, her mother had not said much, and Robbie couldn’t really answer her, either.
It seemed fitting, somehow, that she finally figured out what happened because of her father.
Always angry, always like a dark cloud, he’d appeared over her bed in her darkened room, and, at first, Robbie thought she’d dreamed his presence. But he’d cleared his throat before speaking. “Too bad you screwed up. If you could just keep your legs together, you wouldn’t be wasting everyone’s time trying to scrape the pieces back into order after you got into a drunken wreck. Typical, just typical. I told your mother you were trash, just like her. Maybe she’ll listen to me now.”
He’d left the room, not even bothering to glance back to see the slow tears tracking their way down her cheeks. He vanished, and, once she’d managed to blink past the tears, Gray’s face swam into focus. “Hey, you…you okay?”
She shook her head. So it was a car accident. She didn’t remember it, but it was somehow satisfying to know, even if her father’s delivery of the news left a lot to be desired. Gray’s hand brushed across her cheeks, mopping away her tears. “Robs, talk to me, baby. You okay in there?”
No, and I’ll probably never be okay. What in the hell happened to me? How do I fix it?
But since she couldn’t give voice to the questions, Gray couldn’t answer them.
Chapter Three
January
“Are you ready to go home, Roberta?” The chipper nurse fluttered around, snapping up flotsam, stuffing it into a bag, and, in general, straightening the room. Next to the pale fragility of Robbie, she seemed almost obscenely healthy—flush-faced and rushing around too fast—and he could almost see Robbie flinching away from her unconcerned efficiency.
Robbie didn’t answer her, and Gray didn’t speak either. At this point
, he felt only a fierce longing to scoop Robbie up and get out of this hellhole that was a hospital. Somehow, he felt that she couldn’t go back to being herself—couldn’t begin to try to be normal again—so long as she stayed locked up in the antiseptic walls, surrounded by doctors and nurses who didn’t know her.
Maybe it wasn’t even about her. Perhaps he wanted to free her for his own reasons—if she wasn’t here, she wasn’t at risk of dying. He’d not allowed himself to consider her death, not while he was awake, but dreams of attending her funeral, of them lowering a casket with his whole world inside and covering it with dirt, haunted him the few times he’d managed to sleep at all. If he could get her out of the hospital, it meant she wasn’t leaving him.
Sure, it would be hard.
He was used to hard. He’d take complicated and alive over dead and done any day of the week.
“Do you understand her medication schedule, Mr. Smith?”
“Smythe,” he corrected automatically.
Him correcting people when they mispronounced his name had been a running joke in their group for years. He still didn’t look away from Robbie, so he saw the telltale twitch on one side of her mouth. A couple months ago, that twitch would have been a full-out belly laugh, rumbling up from her stomach and erupting from her lips like joy given sound.
Now, just a twitch.
“Okay, do you understand the schedule? Did you get the notes from the social worker? We’ve set up the physical therapy…are you sure your home is equipped and ready for this?”
They’d asked him the same damned questions more than a hundred times. Medicines? Yes, it seemed he’d loaded a full pharmacy up in one bag. He’d sat with the other nurse and organized it into morning, afternoon, and nighttime dosages for the month. He wasn’t likely to botch that, not when he just had to pop it open and dump the pills into his hand. And the at-home nurse planned to stop by at least biweekly for the first month or so of Robbie’s at-home rehab, ensuring she’d likely be there often enough that he’d never even touch the bottles. They only required him to dump out the correct dosage and stick it in applesauce.
At that thought, he swallowed hard. If she couldn’t even be trusted to swallow without choking on the pills, meaning they still had to be given in applesauce, should he risk taking her home? Wasn’t she better off in the hospital where they could save her if she got worse?
No, he could do this. They could do this. They had to.
“Yes, I’ve had two home visits. We built the ramp and ensured the house is ready, including preparing things for the bath. We’ll be fine, but thanks for your concern.”
He wasn’t sure they’d be fine, but sounding confident was half the battle with the medical types, or so he’d been learning over the past weeks. Tagging on the empty thanks when he wanted to roar in frustration seemed to prove to the nurse he was ready because she nodded and patted Robbie’s shoulder before bustling out of the room.
“I’ll be back with her exit paperwork,” she said over her shoulder.
Then the door clicked, and they were alone.
Only once he’d given the nurse a few seconds to leave did he move from his position of leaning on the window and bend close to her. The doctors had said Robbie could focus better if he was close and on her level, so he’d taken to kneeling when he wanted her attention.
“You okay in there? Ready to go home?”
Which was a lie of sorts. He couldn’t take her home. Actually, her home would be gone altogether too soon. Something about knowing her house—with its airy sunroom he’d helped her paint a bright and happy yellow and the smell of her rich in the air of every room while remaining untainted by the medicinal overlay of her convalescence—would soon be gone tugged at him. He wished he could save her house and still help her, but just the preparations for her coming home had nearly wiped out his meager savings. He’d sold his bike, a small price to pay if it meant he could bring her home with him, to afford some of it, and he foresaw things getting even tighter as time passed….
But he’d make it work. He needed her close, and if he could keep her out of a nursing home while she recovered to have her with him instead, it was worth it.
Squeezing her knees, he waited for her to meet his gaze, but her fingertips twitched, almost fluttering in her lap, and she refused to look right at him.
“We’re going to get through this. You know that, right? We’re going home, baby, and everything is going to be okay.”
He believed it. He had to.
Lips compressed until they were white with tension, she finally looked at him.
“Not okay.”
It wasn’t okay. She was right. But it was the best he had for now.
“We’ll make it okay. Did you want to go somewhere else? They let me make the decisions, but are you comfortable with them? You will let me help you recover, right?”
They’d been over the details a hundred times already, but like the nurse, he repeated the conversation, hoping she really understood. She would recover. His girl, she was brass tacks and brazen balls. This wasn’t it for her. She’d fight her way out of the darkness, and he’d slay any dragons to help her until she could do it on her own again.
“I don’t have a farce.”
Her face scrunched, and he knew she’d used the wrong word. The doctor said, with time, it would become easier and the less stress, the better. Until then, he grated at the knowledge her body betrayed her and at the frustration he could read so easily in her every expression. “Choice. I don’t have a choice, Gray. Where else can I go?”
He wanted to scoop her up. Hold her close. Promise her anything to get the lost look out of her eyes. “I’ll do whatever you need. I’m here. Pack forever, remember? We promised each other we’d be there through whatever came our way. This is a rough patch. We’ll get through it together.”
She didn’t have a chance to answer, swiveling her gaze to the door as the nurse swept back in. “Here is her dismissal paperwork, and then you can be on your way. Are you excited to go home, Roberta?”
Robbie didn’t answer. She turned her head away and faced the window in silence, hands still fluttering like butterflies captured at the ends of her wrists. Gray took the clipboard, signed, and accepted his copies. He stuffed them in the last bag, so he could wheel her out. He’d already loaded most of her hospital things in the back of his truck. He felt like he should rush, as if waiting might allow them to change their mind and not let her escape. “Ready to roll, hot stuff?”
She didn’t answer. He released the locks on the wheelchair then pushed her down the hall and to the elevator as quickly as he could without jostling her. With skill gained from practice in the past month or so of her stay, he spun her to face the doors and jammed his thumb into the button to go down. Tinny music filled the small space, broken only by the sound of her rustling hands and harsh breathing. He searched for words, trying to think of what to say to make her more at ease, but none came to him. The elevator dinged before the doors swished back open.
Within minutes, he had her in the overhanging roof area of the circle driveway, and he braked the chair again before moving to open the truck door. Already, she worked to stand, hands braced on the arms of the chair, but she didn’t need to transfer.
She weighed next to nothing, so he easily swung her into his arms and fastened her into the seat. When she pinched him, he wasn’t sure if it was intentional or a random uncontrolled muscle movement, so he leaned back to see her face.
“Not a child, dammit.”
He accepted her complaint with a nod yet didn’t answer verbally. She wasn’t a child, and her body felt familiar and alive and horribly important held against his. Part of him wanted to take her home and just hold her—physical proof that she’d survived this thing and he wasn’t going to lose her.
Instead of saying any of that, he simply smiled at her and chucked her chin with his knuckles. “No, you’re a bitch, and I love ya for it. Now, hush.
Faster I load you up, faster we can get out of here.”
As he drove away, he couldn’t speak himself. He might not have brain damage or be the one who was sick, but his soul literally ached. Worry battled triumph—one part gleeful as they pulled away from the brick building that had been home for too long now, one part horrified that they let him take her, and yet another part terrified he’d fuck up and not be able to help her.
Since no words could capture all that he felt, he simply turned on the radio and aimed the truck toward home. There’d be plenty of time for conversations. Like everything else, it got shoved into the category of things to do when she was better….
Because she will get better, dammit.
***
If anyone had asked her months ago—years, even—if she wanted to live with Gray, she would have lied to them and said no. Of course, she did want to live with him, her secret crush on her best friend realized and all the happy possibility it would mean to share his utterly masculine space. However, actually living with him?
The past week had been hell. He’d catered to her every need and fluttered around her like some twisted version of a nursemaid most of the time. When it came time for him to go to work, he always hovered, almost as if he was afraid to leave her, a grown-ass woman, alone for the duration of a shift. Every time, instead of missing him while he was gone, she breathed a sigh of relief that he was not there to constantly watch her as if she’d shatter if he took his eyes of her for a second.
And he worked thirds, somehow having changed his schedule to better fit his new role as caretaker. So, she wasn’t even awake for huge chunks of the time he was gone. He took care of her as though she was a child, for god’s sake.
She wasn’t a child. She was a woman.
Or, rather, she’d been a woman before she fucked up, and now she was too broken to even have him think of looking at her as a woman. Her body had betrayed her, failed her, and she couldn’t even blame him for it since she’d caused all of it.
The bath lady was supposed to have come yesterday, help her with her bath, but a snowstorm shut just about everything down. Even Gray’s work closed up for the night, leaving him somewhere in the house. She’d practically snuck away, one hand on the wall to ensure her sometimes shady balance didn’t screw her so she’d face plant rather than making it to the bathroom undetected.
Forever Devoted Page 2
