“You can go home,” I said to them. “Tommy’ll stay here with me. We got this.”
Mom nodded and stood up. After giving Felix’s cheek a careful kiss, she looked at me.
“We’ll bring some clothes for you.” She seemed to give Tommy a quick evaluation and shook her head. “We’ll get you some clothes, too.”
Once they were out the door, I leaned back and turned Tommy. His clothes seemed fine to me, but he had bloodshot eyes and hadn’t shaved in a while.
“Still hung over?”
“No, just really fucking tired and worn out. I’m sorry I missed your calls.”
“It’s okay. I knew you’d been on the road all day, and I suspected you might be pretty tired.” I smiled. Or, I tried to smile, but even my facial muscles were giving up on me.
“Yup. If you’re not going to use that sleeper chair, I’m taking it.”
All rooms had a sleeper chair, which was nice. I just rarely got around to using them.
“Take it,” I said. I leaned my chin in my hand and my elbow on the armrest, and closed my eyes. “I’m used to this.”
I fell asleep immediately, but was woken up by Tommy not long after.
“Don’t be fucking silly. You need sleep, and we can both use the sleeping chair.”
“It’s not that wide,” I murmured.
“No, but sharing it is a lot more comfortable than sleeping on a wooden chair. Come on.”
I wanted to object, but when he lifted me up, I was too damn tired to fight him. He lay down with me almost on top of him, but since there was only one pillow it was probably the best we could do, and it was quite comfy.
“I’m going to be really bitchy while we’re here. That’s kind of how I cope with this.”
“S’okay. I like you being mama bear watching over our cub.”
I was always a bitch while we were at the hospital. Mom and Dad knew and tried to smooth things over with the staff. They’d told me to focus on the important stuff, and they’d fix the rest. I appreciated it, but it meant I’d lost my boundaries on how to react when Felix was at the hospital years ago. Frankly, it was kind of spilling over to life outside the hospital, too. In combination with how I tended to keep everything in, I was pretty sure every nurse and doctor thought I was a bitchy fucking ice queen. I knew it, but I didn’t know what to do about it, and I wasn’t sure I cared, either. Thing was, if I lost it, I didn’t know if I would be able to put myself back together again. I would probably step out the doors and just never stop running. Or roll up into the fetal position and never stop crying. I couldn’t do any of that, because I needed to be there for Felix, so I bottled it up and kept going.
Tommy’d done well so far when it came to handling Felix being ill, but this was something different. Felix like this for a few hours was tough. Seeing him like this for days was pure torture, and I wasn’t sure he understood how rough it would be—how it would tear his soul apart.
I was resting on his shoulder, his arm around me, and mine over his chest. It did feel a bit odd, but it really was the only way we would both fit without falling off the narrow bed. I turned my head and looked at him.
“Sometimes I don’t know what I’m most sorry about: dragging you into all this, or not telling you about him to begin with.”
“Should be more sorry about not telling me. This sucks, but I’m glad to be here.”
I didn’t want to scare him by telling him it might change pretty soon, so I just hugged him.
“I need to sleep.”
“Yes, you do.” Then he shocked me by giving my forehead a kiss. “Need to be rested to be a good mama bear.”
It was a little confusing to be that close to him, and even more confusing that he was so nice. It wasn’t that he’d always been rude, but it had been pretty cold between us. I’d tried to stay out of his way, but I couldn’t do that now, and I wouldn’t. I was just glad that he accepted and understood, and that he’d still come. It proved that his focus, too, was on Felix.
*
When I woke up I could hear Tommy and Felix talking, and it was once again about Zach. Felix loved hearing stories about our family, probably because we talked about them all the time. It had been the same when I grew up, and I could tell detailed stories about Dad and his siblings. He came from a big family with four brothers and one sister. I often felt sorry for her, because it couldn’t have been easy to grow up with Dad and my uncles as older brothers.
I’d asked Mom why she hardly ever talked about her family when I was in my mid-teens; she’d avoided the question then, but she’d told me later. She’d grown up in high society. As she explained it, no one had ever taken an interest in her opinions about anything, and meeting Dad had been an eye-opener for her. I could see why.
Dad had a ‘grab it by the throat’ attitude about things, and everything was turned into a competition. It might sound insane, but it meant getting the firewood stacked along the woodshed was something fun, and it didn’t take much time. Mom had thought getting an extra lawnmower was stupid, until Dad gave one each to Zach and Tommy, asked them to start at opposite ends of the lawn and declared it a competition to see who managed to mow the biggest part of it. It would be easy to think that trick only worked once, but that wasn’t the case. He was the only one who never paid kids to mow his lawn. I had no memory of him ever hesitating to do anything. He never hesitated, but he owned up to his mistakes, too, because jumping into things meant he made mistakes.
Felix’s next question to Tommy made me take a deep breath.
“Were you and Mommy in love then?”
Tommy had been telling him about when we went to Niagara Falls.
“No,” Tommy answered with a laugh. “Think she hated me.”
That was true. It was when I was fourteen, and Tommy and Zach had been dicks the entire trip. I’d wanted to bring a friend, but no one had been able to come, so I was alone and they had each other. Dad had told me it would be fine, they’d include me, which they obviously hadn’t. They’d actually made an effort to keep me away, since they’d been cruising for chicks as soon as they were out of Mom and Dad’s line of sight. Those years, when I was between twelve and fifteen, had really sucked as far as Zach and Tommy went. Then it got better again.
“I did,” I said to confirm what Tommy had said and sat up. “They were mean.”
“Why?” Felix asked Tommy with big eyes.
“They thought I was childish,” I answered and walked over to his bed. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” he said. “Maybe I can go home soon?”
“I’m sorry, little guy. I don’t think so,” I answered and sat down on the chair next to the bed. There wasn’t any point in lying to him. It would just make it worse for him.
“The others will come and visit you,” Tommy said. “Someone will be here every day.”
I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “The club?”
“Yeah. Leah was going to call Mel to let her know the rules. They’ll be here.”
He sounded very confident, so I didn’t question it, but I was skeptical. Besides, even if it was just once or twice, it would still be good for Felix.
“Travis, Jacob, and Adam?” Felix asked.
“Yeah. They’ll be here,” Tommy assured him. “I talked to Dawg, and he said that he’d bring Travis here as soon as he could, and Bucket was going to call Adam’s mom and ask her if he could come.”
I bit my tongue to not start talking about how carful they had to be and… I just shut up. Felix needed something to get him through the days, and lying in bed watching movies only got us so far. We’d been there so damn often I was running out of ideas on how to keep him amused and occupied between the hits of pain.
Dawg and Travis were the first visitors, and they came just a few hours later, while Felix was trying to eat his lunch. At first, Travis stood next to Dawg with his hand in a firm grip and big eyes. When Felix smiled at him, he let go of Dawg and walked over to Felix. He carefully climbed up on the bed and looked a
t Felix’s food.
“That looks yucky.”
“It tastes yucky,” Felix nodded. “Wanna watch a movie with me?”
“Yeah,” Travis agreed and, still very carefully, moved over to sit next to Felix. “Whatta you got?”
When a nurse came in to give Felix his medicine, Travis stared with big eyes at her and what she was doing, since she administered it through the button in his belly, but she hadn’t pulled the robe up completely.
“That goes into you?”
“Yes,” Felix answered. “I have a button on my stomach that goes into my stomach.”
“A button?”
Felix lifted up his robe to show Travis before I could stop him, and Travis stared with big eyes.
“So you got a hole in your belly?”
“Yeah.”
He stared for a while longer. “Cool.”
I noticed Dawg and Tommy trying to not laugh, and I bit my lower lip as well. ‘Cool’ probably wasn’t the word I’d have chosen to describe it, but kids had a tendency to see things differently.
When Dad arrived, he introduced himself to Dawg before sitting down next to the bed with the boys, and he was soon occupied with telling Travis about what different airplanes he had flown while he was a pilot.
I moved over to Tommy and Dawg.
“Thank you,” I said to Dawg. “This means a lot to him.”
He shrugged. “I mentioned it to Travis, and he wouldn’t fucking shut up until we went.”
“They do that, don’t they?” I laughed, and I realized that I very rarely laughed when we were at the hospital. That made me laugh again. “Still, thanks. It’s usually hard for him to get friends. Meeting Travis and Joshua has meant a lot to him.”
“It’s not like it’s a sacrifice for any of them, and especially not Trav. He likes him, and he’s old enough to understand about being careful. And kids don’t see other kids as ‘the sick kid’ or shit like that. They see another kid they have fun with, and that’s all they give a damn about.”
That actually touched a nerve, because I’d thought the same thing about myself. That I so often thought of him as a ‘sick kid,’ and I’d wondered if I was holding him back more than was needed. The urge to protect him was so strong the entire time, and I knew he needed to be careful, but when was being careful stopping him from living life as well as he could? I didn’t know, but I’d often wondered if I was shielding him from life instead of just protecting him.
*
A few hours later, Felix was asleep, and it was just Tommy and I left. He’d gone to get us a cup of coffee, and I decided it might not be the best time to bring up the question about custody, but I didn’t want to wait. If Mr. Naylor got the ball rolling, it could mean someone would contact Tommy to let him know, and I wanted him to hear it from me.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about, and I know this might not be the best time, but… I’m not sure how long it can wait. I went to see our lawyer a few days ago.”
“So you still have a family lawyer?”
“Yeah. You know Mom.”
“I know Leah,” he confirmed. “Why?”
“Well, you’re not named on the birth certificate, and I thought that you might want to be, and then there’s the thing about custody. I have some information from him, and if you want that, there’s a lot of papers we need to fill out and… things we need to do.” I looked at him. “You don’t have to do this, but I’d be willing to. If you just want visitation rights, I’d agree to that, too.”
He stared at me. “You’d… agree to joint custody?”
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”
“No.” He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “I… I’ve been thinking about it, but I thought it was working as it was for now. Guess I didn’t want to rock the boat.”
“While he’s still sick, I… I’m not sure I want him to stay the night with you.”
“No. I understand.”
“But we can have something called joint legal custody, which means you have the same legal rights as I do.”
He studied me. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “If you’re only doing this because you think you owe me, or if it’s to make sure I stick around, there’s no need. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Maybe I’m doing it because I trust you?” I suggested. “Might be because I think I owe you, too, but mostly because I trust that you are sticking around, and I trust you with Felix.”
“But not to stay the night?” he asked in a suggestive way.
“Would you want that while he’s sick? You said you didn’t.”
“No,” he admitted.
“That’s why I trust you with him. And maybe I want you to trust that I’m not going to take your kidney and run with it.”
He laughed. “Okay. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me,” I shrugged.
“Yeah, Billie, there is. Thank you.”
“I have all the papers at home. You can have your own lawyer take a look at it.”
“No need,” he said. “You’re a Jensen. You know, tell the truth and shame the devil. You might’ve kept things—big things—from me, but I trust that you’re telling me the truth whenever you open your mouth.”
It felt good to hear him say that, and he was right. I wouldn’t lie to him, and I really wasn’t out to stiff him on the custody. It would still feel good if he talked to a lawyer of his own, but I doubted he would.
CHAPTER NINE
I Don’t Climb Trees Anymore
oOo
TOMMY HAD SEEN A lot of horrible shit during his active years, but nothing had prepared him for watching his own kid in terrible pain. Nothing. He hadn’t known Felix for long, hadn’t even known he had a kid until recently, but he’d still somehow immediately developed fatherly instincts. He could fully understand why Billie had ended up punching a nurse, because Tommy wanted to punch the fucking world every time Felix cried.
The first morning, he’d thought Felix was getting better and that Billie was a pessimist, since she’d seemed to be waiting for things to turn around. They had, though, and when they did, she’d been two steps ahead of everyone on how to handle it—including some of the doctors. In general, his amazement with Billie had increased steadily during the four days they’d been at the hospital. He had to force her to sleep by literally holding her down until she passed out.
He was equally amazed by Felix. He’d gotten every ounce of the Jensen bravery, and he never complained. He kept them informed about how he was doing, but it was never complaints. When it got too much for him, he cried a little, holding on to Billie, but then he took a deep breath and kept struggling. The first time that happened, Tommy had been forced to leave the room to not roar out his anger and desperation, and Leah had come after him.
“I wish I could tell you it gets easier,” she’d said and gave him a hug. “But it doesn’t.”
“He’s asleep now,” Billie’d said when she came out, too. “Dad’s with him. Let’s get a coffee.”
They’d talked for about an hour, about everything but the situation they were in, and it had felt… like home. Like old times, and they’d done that every chance they’d had since then. It was a breather for them both, and Billie had admitted that she needed it, too. He wondered how she’d been able to get breathers before, but he didn’t ask.
On the fourth day, Brick and Bull came while Felix was having breakfast.
“Hey, Champ,” Brick said with a smile when he sat down next to Felix. “What’s for breakfast?”
Felix leaned over the tray. “I’m not sure.”
“That’s not a good sign. You should know what you’re eating.”
Felix eyed Brick. “Do you have something?”
“You know it, Champ,” Brick laughed and handed him a Tupperware container.
Felix took it and opened it without confirmation from Billie. Mel had sent him something at least once a day, so by now Felix knew it was something he could eat. This
time it was fruit and some kind of biscuits, and Felix seemed to like it. Although Tommy assumed that any food that wasn’t hospital food would make him happy.
Brick and Bull sat and talked to Felix for a while, and then nodded to Tommy to indicate that they wanted to see to him in private. It had struck him as odd that the two of them came to visit. It was usually a grownup and a kid, or at least a slightly younger person.
“What’s going on?” Tommy asked once they were outside on the parking lot.
“Any word on when he’ll get out?” Brick asked with a nod towards the hospital.
“No. They did some tests yesterday.”
“And about your stuff?”
“It’s all good. Still some stuff before they can do the surgery, but… Think they’re still waiting for Felix to be able to handle it.”
“How are you holding up?” Bull asked.
“It’s tough,” Tommy admitted. He took a deep breath and let it out in a tired laugh. “It sucks.”
“I bet,” Brick said. “Can’t fucking imagine watching one of my kids like this. He’s a fighter. He’ll pull through.”
“I know.” He looked at Brick. “Don’t think this is why you pulled me out to the parking lot, though.”
“No,” Brick admitted. “I’m not gonna pull you away from here for mundane club stuff, but you might have to proxy some votes, and if there’s something important, we might need you for a couple of hours.”
“That’s okay.” He knew no one would force him to come in if it wasn’t important. “Anything you know is coming up?”
“Nope. Not at the moment, but there’s a run coming up. Some other shit, but nothing you need to worry about just yet.”
“Think he’ll be out of the hospital in time for the run. Billie said these things usually take a week.”
“If he’s not, you can sit this one out,” Brick said. “It’s just a run, and I’m not gonna pull you from your kid’s hospital bed for that. Might be an important thing coming up, though.”
“I know, prez, and I’m in. Only thing is the surgery.”
“A surgery to save your kid’s life,” Bull chuckled. “That’s not something we’ll keep you from. My concern is safety.”
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