Trusting Tomorrow

by P. J. Trebelhorn

  Logan buried her face in her neck, breathing in her scent.

  “You smell so damn good, Brooke,” she said. She stiffened and sucked in a breath when the words registered, but Stacy was still panting and pressing hard against her thigh. Logan pulled back to look at her, but Stacy just smiled, her eyes hooded and her lips swollen.

  “I’ll be whoever you want me to be, sugar, but don’t you dare stop touching me.”

  Logan took a step away and helped Stacy steady herself. Who the hell doesn’t care when the person they’re having sex with calls them by someone else’s name? Logan couldn’t remember ever even using anyone’s name in the heat of the moment before. It was easier because then she didn’t have to try to recall the woman’s name at all. She tried to think of anything other than the throbbing between her legs. The throbbing she wanted Brooke to take care of for her.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when her phone rang and she began searching pockets until she found it. At least she still had all her clothes on. Stacy grabbed the phone away from her and shook her head.

  “Your turn now,” she said. She began walking backward down the hallway, and Logan had no choice but to follow. She had her phone in her hand. All Logan had been able to see before it was snatched away from her was Jack’s name. “Take your clothes off, Swift.”

  “Give me the phone, Stacy.” Logan was in no mood to play games, and she was certain her tone conveyed her urgency. “No one would call this late unless there was an emergency.”

  Stacy stopped just inside the bedroom and handed it to her, pouting. She went and got a T-shirt to put on while Logan sat on the edge of the bed and started to dial Jack’s number. She wasn’t even halfway through when the phone chimed, indicating a text message.

  Where the hell r u? Call me!

  She finished dialing and Jack answered on the first ring.

  “Jesus, Logan—”

  “What’s wrong? Why are you calling so late?”

  “Henry’s had a stroke,” Jack said, sounding a little unnerved. “The ambulance took him to Saint Vincent Health Center in Erie.”

  “Is he all right?” Logan was trying not to panic. First her father and now this? Hadn’t there been enough death this holiday season? She reminded herself it was a stroke. A stroke didn’t necessarily mean death. People had strokes all the time, right?

  “What’s wrong?” Stacy asked when Logan stood and headed toward the front door.

  Logan asked Jack to hold on and took the phone from her ear. She turned back to Stacy. “I’m sorry, but I need to get home. Family emergency. Thanks for everything.” Logan was struck by the pissed off look on Stacy’s face, but she couldn’t deal with a fragile ego now. She had to get to the hospital twenty minutes ago. She turned without another word and ran out to her car. “Jack, how’s he doing?”

  “It’s not looking too good, to be perfectly honest. Peggy rode in the ambulance with Henry and Brooke followed them to the hospital. Come pick me up so we can be there for them. I don’t think they’re going to take it well if he doesn’t make it.”

  “That might be a bit difficult, Jack. I’m in Buffalo. I can be at the hospital in about ninety minutes.”

  “What the hell are you doing in Buffalo? Jesus, Logan, where is the hospital? I’ll be able to get there a lot sooner than you.”

  “Twenty-fifth street between Myrtle and Sassafras. Tell Peggy I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Logan disconnected and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat before speeding up to merge onto the Interstate. With little to no traffic on the roads, she could make it there in less than an hour. If it was time for Henry to go, she knew Peggy would deal with it better than anyone thought she would. It was Brooke Logan was worried about. She wanted to be there for her, and nothing was going to stop her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Logan entered the emergency room an hour and ten minutes after she’d hung up with Jack. She was pretty sure she’d managed to break almost every traffic law on the books, but luck had been on her side—especially since it started to snow pretty heavily halfway there. She ran through the automatic doors and went straight to triage where she wasn’t happy to find Gretchen on duty.

  “Hey, Tiger, what brings you here so early on a snowy morning?” Gretchen asked when she saw her coming toward the desk. The grin indicated Gretchen was happy to see her, even though their last meeting hadn’t gone well. “I don’t remember calling for a body to be picked up.”

  “I don’t have time for niceties right now, Gretchen. I need to know where Henry Collier is. He would have been brought in about an hour ago, give or take. My brother told me he had a stroke.”

  “Family only, sweetie,” she said after looking it up on the computer in front of her. “Sorry, but I can’t let you go up.”

  “Come on, Gretchen, he is family.” Logan looked around the waiting room for Jack but didn’t see him anywhere. There were less people there than she would have thought at that time of morning. She turned back to Gretchen. “I don’t see my brother here, so you must have let him up, didn’t you?”

  “The doctor did. He’s a fan.” Gretchen rolled her eyes. Just one of the strikes against her—she didn’t like football. Gretchen leaned across the counter and grabbed Logan by the shirtfront before pulling her closer. “Promise to go out with me this weekend and I’ll let you go up.”

  “Seriously? Blackmail when I’m worried about someone I love?” Logan grabbed her wrist and twisted it hard enough to make Gretchen let go, but not so hard she cried out. She did her best to keep her voice down, but it was a losing battle. “Are you really telling me I can’t get in to see the man who’s like a grandfather to me unless I promise to fuck you?”

  “Logan?”

  She turned to see Jack emerging from the elevator and she walked quickly toward him after giving Gretchen a prolonged glare. She swore to herself she’d never see Gretchen again outside of a work setting. And if she did happen to run into her somewhere, she would turn right around and walk out again.

  “Come upstairs with me,” Jack said as he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her onto the waiting elevator. The doors closed before Jack spoke again. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Peggy’s been asking why you aren’t here. Are you going to tell me why the hell you were in Buffalo, or do I have to wait until later for that too? Or maybe you don’t need to tell me. I can smell the alcohol on your breath.”

  “I went for a drive. I needed to clear my head and there’s a good gay bar there.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but Jack gave her one of those looks that said he thought she was full of shit but he wasn’t going to press her about it. He pulled a tin of Altoids from his pocket and gave her one. “How’s Brooke?”

  “She’s trying to stay strong for Peggy, but I can tell she’s pretty upset.” Jack looked up at the numbers corresponding to the floors they were passing before shifting his focus to his feet. “He probably isn’t going to make it, Logan.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “The doctor said it was a hemorrhagic stroke caused by a ruptured aneurysm.”

  “Shit.” She followed Jack down a hallway to the ICU waiting room. “Was it in the brain stem?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s still alive, so that’s a good sign.” Logan came around the corner and saw Brooke holding Peggy. Her heart lurched with the probability Henry had already passed on. She rushed to Peggy’s side.

  “Oh, Logan, thank God you’re here,” Peggy said, standing and throwing her arms around Logan’s waist where she held on to her tightly.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Brooke asked.

  Logan looked over at her and felt a sudden wave of sadness when she recognized the irrational fear in Brooke’s eyes. It was a look she’d seen many times from friends who had loved ones in the hospital.

  “Peggy wanted me here.”

  “You’re wrong. We don’t want you
here.”

  “Brooke,” Jack said in a futile attempt to calm her down. Brooke stood and pulled away from him when he reached out to her.

  “No, Jack, it’s all right. I’ll go,” Logan said. Never mind she was about to suffer another loss in her life. She swallowed the lump in her throat and extricated herself from Peggy’s grasp, but Peggy grabbed her hand before she could back away and refused to let go.

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” Peggy said sternly before turning her attention to Brooke. “You may not want her here, Brooke, but I sure as hell do. And so would your grandfather. She’s family to us.”

  Brooke never took her eyes off Logan while Logan finally got her hand out of Peggy’s vice-like grip. Brooke was obviously upset with her, and Logan knew this wasn’t a conversation to have in front of the wife of a possibly terminal patient. She assured Peggy she would stay if it was what she really wanted, but then Logan took Brooke by the elbow and led her down the hall back toward the bank of elevators.

  “Brooke, I understand your fear, I really do,” Logan began in the calmest voice she could manage. She took a deep breath and tried to put a cap on her emotions. Brooke was going to have enough to deal with without Logan breaking down too.

  “How can you possibly understand?” Brooke asked with venom in her voice.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve had someone freak out at me when I’ve shown up at the hospital to visit a patient.”

  “I really don’t care about what you’ve dealt with in the past. I want you out of here. He doesn’t want to see you.” Brooke took a step back with a horrified look on her face. “Have you been drinking?”

  “I had a couple of drinks, yes, but I promise you I’m not drunk.”

  “Why did it take you so long to get here, Logan? Were you in Buffalo, or Pittsburgh? I bet if I got close enough to you I’d smell sex too, wouldn’t I? Leave. Just go home. I can’t deal with this right now. He’s still alive so we don’t need you here.”

  Logan felt her heart break a little at the hurt and rejection in Brooke’s expression and her tone. She couldn’t think about any of it now. Henry and Peggy were the only people who mattered. They didn’t need to deal with whatever shit was happening between her and their granddaughter.

  “Brooke, I take care of the dead, I don’t cause their deaths. I know if you would simply think about this in a rational way you’d see my being here isn’t going to make him worse, nor is it going to make him better. I’m just a family friend who wants to be here for Peggy. She needs everyone by her side right now.”

  Brooke stared at her for a moment before giving her a curt nod and going back to Peggy. Logan didn’t know if there would be any kind of an apology down the road or not, but she didn’t really need one. It was merely the way some people dealt with the fear of losing a loved one. Logan hadn’t been to visit anyone in the hospital in over five years because of the irrational fear people seemed to have with an undertaker being in the hospital. But this was Henry. She wasn’t about to let Peggy go through this without her.

  *

  Brooke was grateful Logan chose to sit on the other side of the room. She felt like an ass for reacting the way she had, but her stress levels had gone up exponentially in the past few hours. All she could see when Logan entered the waiting room was the funeral director part of her coming to collect her grandfather’s body. Deep down she knew her fear was irrational, but the knowledge of it didn’t change anything. She’d owe Logan an apology, but not now. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall.

  “Mrs. Collier?” the doctor said, his voice waking Brooke up from her doze.

  Brooke quickly rubbed her face and stood to help her grandmother to her feet. The doctor looked at Brooke with a sympathetic smile that caused a hitch in her breathing. She knew the look well. She knew what he was about to say and she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want her grandmother to hear it either, but there was nothing she could do to shield her from the news. That look was something she was sure they taught doctors in medical school because she’d seen it way too often in her time as a nurse in Philadelphia.

  “Is Henry awake now? Can I go see him?” her grandmother asked, her tone hopeful. Brooke could see she was fighting back tears though, and she put her arm around her grandmother in an attempt to comfort her.

  Brooke breathed a sigh of relief when Logan and Jack came to stand on either side of them. Maybe it was a good thing to have these people so entrenched in her grandparents’ lives. She should probably make an effort to be nicer to Logan because she was going to need all the help she could get in guiding her grandmother through this.

  “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Collier, we did everything we could for your husband,” the doctor said, his eyes darting back and forth between the four of them. “The fact is his brain was simply denied oxygen for too long. As you know, he was unresponsive when he arrived here at the hospital, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to bring him back.”

  “No, he can’t be gone,” her grandmother said, her tone brusque. She tried to push past him, but Logan was there with a hand to stop her. Her grandmother turned and looked at her. “He can’t be gone, Logan, he has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.” Her eyes went wide and she clutched Logan’s arm tightly. The tears came as the realization of the doctor’s words seemed to finally register. “I didn’t get a chance to tell him good-bye. I need to tell him how much I love him.”

  “I’m sure he knows how much you love him, Peggy,” Logan said gently as she put a hand on the side of her head and encouraged her grandmother to lean on her. Brooke watched with interest as Logan held her grandmother and encouraged her to cry, to let it all out. There was a part of her that wished Logan would hold and comfort her too. Logan spared a glance for the doctor.

  “I’m so sorry, Logan,” he said, sounding as though he truly meant it. Perhaps the doctor knew of the loss Logan had already suffered. “Will you be handling this, or should I send a nurse out to get the information?”

  “We’re good. I’ll take care of it all.”

  The doctor walked away and her grandmother continued to cry and buried her face in Logan’s chest. Logan held her for a few moments before helping her into a waiting room chair. Brooke sat in the chair next to her and held her grandmother’s hand.

  “Jack,” Logan said quietly. Jack was at her side in an instant. “Do me a favor and give Billy a call. He knows what to do.”

  Brooke was grateful her grandfather had made his own funeral arrangements because she knew she wouldn’t be able to take care of it. And she knew without a doubt there was no way her grandmother could deal with it. Nothing in her training as a nurse had prepared her for the loss of a loved one. It was one thing to comfort the family of someone who’d died, but quite another to deal with the loss yourself. She stayed with her grandmother until Jack returned from making his phone call. Brooke stood and motioned for Logan to follow her, and Jack moved closer to her grandmother. She moved them far enough away so they could speak without being overheard.

  “She’s in no condition to deal with any funeral arrangements.”

  “There’s no need. They’ve already planned everything. Neither one of you will have to do a thing other than show up for the funeral.”

  “Thank you, Logan. You were amazing with her just now.” Brooke could feel the tears welling up inside her. The last thing she needed right then was to allow Logan to see her so vulnerable. “I’m sorry about how I reacted earlier.”

  “There’s no need for an apology,” Logan said with a quick glance over her shoulder. “Stress can do crazy things to people sometimes.”

  “It’s no excuse for the way I behaved, but saying I’m sorry doesn’t seem like enough to me.” Brooke grabbed Logan’s arm but quickly pulled away again when she felt a wave of dizziness.

  Brooke found it impossible to hold in her emotions any longer. When the tears started flowing, Logan wrapped her arms around her, and Brooke didn’t have the strength to r
esist her. She allowed Logan to hold her as she cried. Neither of them said anything, and Brooke was sure she felt Logan’s tears as well as her own. After what felt like forever, Brooke finally took a step back and wiped away the tears.

  “I feel like I need to make it up to you somehow.”

  “Have dinner with me again.”

  Brooke was surprised by Logan’s request, not because of the timing, but because she looked so serious. It was apparent Logan was slightly taken aback as well. Brooke found herself smiling through her tears.

  “I’m sorry. That was very inappropriate,” Logan said and shoved her hands in her pockets.

  “Then you don’t want to have dinner with me?”

  “Yes. I mean no. I mean…” Logan sighed in obvious frustration. “I would love to have dinner with you, Brooke. I think you know that, but this wasn’t the right time to ask you out. Please forgive me.”

  “We went out once, and it ended badly.” Brooke knew she didn’t really need to remind Logan of it. She closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly how bad it ended, but all she could picture was the two of them kissing. “And then when you finally got up the nerve to ask me again, I kind of put you in your place, didn’t I?”

  “I’m sure I deserved it.”

  “So…you’re really asking me on another date?” Brooke thought the shade of red Logan’s face turned was adorable.

  “It can be a date, if that’s what you want, or it could simply be two friends having dinner together.”

  “Which do you want it to be?”

  “A date,” Logan said without hesitation. “Definitely a date.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  They decided it would be better to wait until after the funeral to go on their date because they agreed it might be hard for her grandmother to see them enjoying themselves while she was still mourning the loss of her husband.