by Gina Wilkins
The pause that followed the question made her chest tighten again. “I don’t know,” Virginia said finally. “But last I heard, it wasn’t good.”
Forgetting for a moment that the housekeeper couldn’t see her, Lisa nodded. “Okay. I’m on my way to the hospital now. Call my cell if you hear anything in the next half hour or so, will you?”
“The next half hour?” Virginia repeated quizzically. “Are you—?”
“I’m just leaving Charlotte. I’ll explain later.”
“You be careful. I can tell you’re upset and I don’t want you driving recklessly.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised as she ended the quick call.
She wouldn’t take any risks, she vowed, starting the car again. Her parents needed her now. Wade needed her. And this time, she would be there for him, as he had been for her when she had needed him most.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WAITING ROOM WAS SO crowded that Wade felt almost as if there wasn’t enough air to supply everyone. His chest felt tight as he struggled to draw in a deep breath. It wasn’t a big area. Because of Jake’s celebrity, the hospital had provided a private waiting room in which they could wait for word without being observed or disturbing other equally worried families who wouldn’t appreciate public attention.
Wade sat alone in one corner, and even though he was surrounded by friends and coworkers, no one tried to approach him. They assumed he wanted to be left alone—and they were right.
Woody sat in a chair on the other side of the room, his walker propped beside him, his wife clinging to his hand from her chair on his other side. Ellen’s face was pale, Wade noted, and he wished he could go to her and reassure her that Jake would be all right. Because he couldn’t make that promise, he stayed where he was, lost in his own anguish.
Katie and Ronnie were there, Katie uncharacteristically subdued, her eyes red from crying. Ronnie hovered near her, trying to talk her into leaving the hospital and getting some rest. Wade heard him assure her that someone would call the moment there was some news of Jake’s condition, but Katie wouldn’t leave. Jake had no family of his own, she insisted. The Woodrow Racing family was all he had, and family stayed with their own in times of trouble.
Mike and Andrea hovered in one corner of the room, along with Scott and Digger and Bodie and Dick and a half dozen other key Woodrow employees. Even more had shown up earlier, but Woody had sent them away, saying that a general announcement would be made as soon as there was any news.
Pam paced the halls of the hospital, returning dozens of telephone calls from anxious sponsors and other racing associates, dealing with the clamoring media outside, checking in occasionally to see if there had been any updates from the medical staff. Ominously, nothing new had been reported in the past forty-five minutes.
Ellen had said something earlier about calling Lisa, but Woody had suggested they wait until they had somthing more definitive to tell her.
“No need to worry the girl unnecessarily,” he’d insisted gruffly, obviously refusing to believe that everything wouldn’t turn out fine. Woody Woodrow wouldn’t even acknowledge the possibility of disaster, a trait that served him well in his careers, but sometimes impeded his view of reality, Wade reflected somberly.
Knowing Lisa would probably hear about the accident through news reports, he kept his cell phone clipped to his belt. He couldn’t call her yet—didn’t trust his voice to remain steady—but he would answer if she called him. And he would try very hard to find the calm place inside him that he relied upon when everything was going to hell on the racetrack.
He couldn’t help wondering if his friend would ever rocket around a racetrack again. And even having the question cross his mind was so devastating that he slumped forward in his vinyl seat, propping his elbows on his knees and putting his face into his hands.
He didn’t usually consider himself a particularly religious man, but he prayed then.
LISA SAW HIM SITTING there the moment she walked into the waiting room. He looked so alone. So despondent. It broke her heart.
She stopped for a moment by her parents’ chairs, promising she would be back to explain to them how she had gotten there so quickly. They didn’t try to detain her as they followed her gaze toward Wade, who was still sitting with his head in his hands. She heard a low buzz of conversation as the others in the room recognized her, but other than acknowledging Katie and Ronnie with a nod, she didn’t pause on her way to Wade.
She knelt in front of his chair, placing her hands on his, so that they cupped his face. “Wade.”
His head jerked up abruptly. In one smooth movement, he was on his feet and Lisa was in his arms.
“I don’t know how you’re here,” he muttered into her ear, his voice unsteady, “but I’m glad you are.”
“I was coming to see you,” she whispered, clinging to him. “That talk we were going to have, remember?”
He nodded and drew back, looking suddenly aware of the attention they were getting from other parts of the room. Still, he didn’t let go of her hands, clinging to them so tightly she might have winced had she not been holding onto him every bit as firmly.
“How is Jake?”
“He’s in surgery. We haven’t heard an update in a while. It’s pretty bad, Lisa.”
The stark assessment made her throat tighten. “I’m so sorry. How did it happen?”
Anger darkened Wade’s eyes. “Some idiot was showing off, waving to some girls on the shore. He came up behind Jake’s boat without even watching where he was going. Slammed right into them before they had a chance to avoid him. Both Jake and his friend, Eric, were thrown from the boat. Eric didn’t make it. Jake was pinned in debris until some rescuers reached him. It’s a miracle he didn’t drown.”
“What are his injuries?”
“I’m not sure. Broken bones, definitely. Maybe a head injury.”
Which meant his racing season was most likely over, she thought fleetingly, if not his entire career. But because that was a distant secondary concern at the moment, she didn’t mention it.
She drew Wade over to where her parents sat, coaxing him into joining everyone else in the vigil. He needed to understand that he was a part of this group, she decided. He’d been alone for too much of his life. It was long past time for that to change.
Her dad was becoming typically impatient and beginning to bluster threats about demanding answers from the hospital administration. Her mom did her best to calm him, but Lisa could tell that she, too, was growing anxious for news.
Wade’s hand tightened on Lisa’s arm when a tall, angular African-American woman in blue scrubs strode through the door of the waiting room. “That’s the surgeon,” he muttered, rising to his feet. “Dr. Wiley.”
Lisa found herself looking for clues to Jake’s condition in the surgeon’s unrevealing features. Relief flooded her when Dr. Wiley smiled reassuringly.
“He’s going to be fine,” she announced to the room at large. “He has several weeks, perhaps a couple of months of rehabilitation ahead of him, but he should make a complete recovery. I fully expect him to be back out on the racetrack soon, regularly risking those same bones I just put back together.”
Lisa almost sagged in gratitude. Because his arm had been around her shoulders in preparation for the report, she could feel the slight shudder of relief that went through Wade.
She saw that Katie and Ronnie were hugging—Katie shedding a few more tears—and that the men in the room were slapping shoulders and bumping fists, their version of celebratory hugs. Her parents were holding hands, Ellen’s eyes damp, Woody’s face red with suppressed emotion.
Everyone in this room cared very deeply about Jake, she realized. The man, not just the winning driver. She hoped he would recognize that, himself. Maybe it would make it easier for him to accept that there would be no championship for him this year.
Jake was going to be in recovery for a while, and then in and out of consciousness for the rest of
the day while his pain was being managed, the surgeon said after wrapping up her discussion of the procedures he had undergone. After she left the waiting room, the group gathered there began to separate.
Pam went off to work on an official statement which she would personally deliver to the reporters gathered outside the hospital. Ronnie talked Katie into leaving to get some rest. She hugged everyone on her way out, lingering for just a moment to make Lisa promise that they would talk very soon.
The other two drivers and three crew chiefs drifted out shortly afterward, all of them having official duties to attend to, but all of them promising to be back to visit when Jake was up to seeing them.
And finally it was down to Lisa, her parents and Wade. The waiting room was suddenly very quiet, and felt much larger than it had only a short while earlier, Lisa thought, sinking into a chair beside her mother.
“Jake has no family at all?” she asked.
Apparently still too wired to sit, Wade prowled the room, but paused to answer her question before either of her parents could speak. “He doesn’t have anyone. He was raised by a single mother who died a couple of years ago. I think he’s had a couple of distant cousins pop up to claim relationship since he made it big, but he hasn’t gotten close to any of them.”
“How sad,” she murmured. “Not to have any family.”
“He has the Woodrow Racing family,” her father said gruffly. “Like Katie said earlier, we take care of our own. Jake won’t have to worry about being alone while he recuperates.”
Lisa smiled fondly at her father, wondering why it had taken her so many years to see the soft heart inside that blustering, workaholic exterior. Maybe she’d simply needed to be away for a while. A chance to grow up and see her parents—and Wade—through the eyes of an adult rather than an indulged and sheltered girl.
She didn’t regret leaving all those years ago. But maybe now it was time to come back home.
Her parents looked tired, she thought. But even as the observation crossed her mind, her dad’s thoughts had already turned to business.
“We’ll have to find a driver for the Number 82 car for the rest of the season, or at least until Jake’s cleared to drive again,” he said to Wade. “At least we can be accruing owner points for the next couple of months. You think Pete’s ready to move up?”
“He’s still green, but I can work with him,” Wade said, leaning against the presently unoccupied reception desk. “We’ll start first thing tomorrow morning, get him ready for Michigan. At least he’s close to Jake’s size, so the seat’ll fit him. What about the Busch—?”
“Honestly, you two,” Ellen said in wry exasperation, shaking her head. “Couldn’t you take a minute to appreciate that Jake’s going to be okay before you start discussing his replacement for the upcoming race?”
“Racing doesn’t stop because one of the drivers is hurt,” Woody answered with a pragmatic shrug. “Even if the worst had happened with Jake, there’d still be a race in Michigan this weekend. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the only way he’d want it.”
Men. Lisa shook her head before saying, “Mom’s tired, Dad. You should both go home and get some rest. I’ll stay around here with Jake if Wade needs to go to the shop, and I’m sure Pam will be here most of the day. Do you have someone to drive you?”
He nodded. “Walter’s waiting downstairs with the car,” he conceded. Walter was the driver who usually accompanied her dad to the various racetracks. Since Woody’s hip replacement, he’d been driving him around locally, as well. Ellen did very little driving since her own recent health scare.
“Good. You two go on home. I promise I’ll call you if there’s any news. I’ll be there later, after I’m sure Jake’s settled in and everything’s okay.”
It took another fifteen minutes to get them on their way, since Woody kept thinking of new instructions to bark at Wade. But finally Wade and Lisa were alone in the room.
“Have you had anything to eat today?” she asked him, noting the drawn look of his face.
“Breakfast.”
She glanced at his watch. “You should eat something. We can go down to the cafeteria. It’ll be a while before Jake’s out of recovery and you can see him.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“Wade.” She smiled at him. “Don’t make me have to get rough with you.”
For the first time since she had arrived, he gave her a little smile in return. Just a hint of one, but enough to satisfy her for now. “Think you’re tough enough to take me on, huh?”
“I’m Woody Woodrow’s daughter,” she reminded him. “Bossiness is in my genes.”
“Something I suppose I should keep in mind for the future.”
“Most definitely.”
He seemed to give it a moment’s thought, then nodded. “I’ve always held my own with Woody. Never had any problem getting along with him. Guess I can do the same with you.”
He had a knack for saying a great deal with a few completely prosaic words, she thought as she turned toward the doorway. Maybe she was just learning to read him better—but she was pretty sure Wade had just told her that he wanted a future with her.
She couldn’t help thinking back to the night he had proposed to her. “I love you,” he had said without embellishment, holding out the tasteful diamond ring he had chosen for her. “I think we make a great team. Will you marry me?”
She had waited a few beats before answering, perhaps hoping there would be a little more to the proposal. At least a few mushy words. When she’d realized that he’d said all he thought he needed to say, she’d accepted the proposal with a mixture of joy and secret trepidation.
That trepidation was gone now, she realized as she walked by his side toward the doorway. But the joy was back in full force.
“Lisa.” A hand on her arm, he detained her just as she was reaching out to push the door open.
She looked up at him curiously. “Yes?”
His mouth twisted a little. “It’s never the right time or the right place for us to have that talk, is it?”
“It will be,” she promised him quietly. “We have plenty of time for that, later.”
Looking pleased with her response, he pushed open the door and escorted her downstairs to the cafeteria.
LISA WAS SITTING BY Jake’s bed a few hours later when he opened his eyes, squinting against the bright hospital lighting. He was hooked up to IV bags and monitors, and his face was pale and bruised against the stark white sheets.
Yet somehow, even battered and temporarily incapacitated, there was a strength about Jake Hinson that was unmistakable, she decided, studying him as he came to full consciousness.
He looked around the otherwise empty room before focusing a bit blearily on her. “Lisa?”
“Yes. How are you feeling?”
He thought about it a moment, then summed his condition up with a succinctness that made her have to smother a laugh.
“It will get better,” she assured him. “Considering everything, you were really lucky, Jake. You’re expected to make a complete recovery.”
He had been brought up-to-date earlier, so he already knew that his friend had been killed and that he, himself, faced a lengthy rehabilitation. She saw the shadows cross his face as those grim facts all came back to him, but he merely nodded. Just from the little she knew about him, she understood that it would be unlike him to complain or feel sorry for himself.
“Where’s Wade?”
“He had to leave for a little while. He’ll be back soon. Pam’s still here, by the way. Last I saw she was answering a dozen or so phone calls from the media and sponsors.”
He nodded. “That’s Pam. Always got a phone to one ear.”
“She seems very efficient.”
“Frighteningly so. She’s probably already lining up interviews for me as soon as I leave the hospital.” He glanced at the equipment surrounding him, then asked quietly, “Who’s driving the Number 82 this weekend?”
>
Just like Wade and her father, Lisa thought wryly. Barely conscious and still all he could think about was racing. “Someone named Pete, from what I heard.”
“Yeah, that’s who I thought. Wade’s going to have his hands full this weekend.”
“He’ll miss you.”
“He’ll work with his driver,” Jake replied with a slight shrug that reminded her again of her father. “Pete’s gonna run his first major race with the best crew and the best crew chief in the sport.”
“Not that you’re biased or anything.”
“Just being factual,” he said, and obviously believed every word of it, which Lisa thought was nice.
“I’m kind of surprised to see you here,” he said a moment later. “Last I knew, you were back in Chicago. And Wade’s been a real bear since you left, by the way.”
“I’m back,” she said simply. “I was already in Charlotte when I heard about your accident. I volunteered to sit with you while the others take care of business this afternoon. Everyone was gathered here during your surgery, but we sent them all away to come back a few at a time when you’re up for visitors. My parents wanted to stay, but I convinced them to go home and rest.”
“Good. They don’t need to be hanging around a hospital. And while I appreciate you being here, you don’t have to stay, either, Lisa. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do. I’ll be okay.”
“I’d like to stay for a little while longer, if you don’t mind. My parents would feel better knowing there’s someone here with you.”
“No, I don’t mind. Actually, I…would rather not be alone right now. I just know how bored you must be sitting here.”
She smiled again. “I’m not bored at all. Is there anything you need?”
His dark eyes were tormented, but he shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”
He looked away, focusing on the television bolted to the ceiling at the foot of his bed, even though it wasn’t turned on. “I’m afraid I’m not very good company. I’m still kind of groggy. Can’t really think clear.”
