Not Quite Enough (Not Quite series)

by Catherine Bybee

  As much as Trent wanted to assure his brothers that he was alive, the desire to follow Monica and make sure she was being cared for was stronger.

  “Where did they take her?”

  Someone threw a blanket over his shoulders, which surprisingly he accepted. The cold night and rain should have been a comfort. They weren’t.

  Jason hooked an arm around his shoulders. “The airport. Someone said Miami, but I’m not sure.”

  Trent turned one-eighty and met with the bulk of a man he’d never seen. “Where did they take Monica?” he demanded.

  “Miami General,” the man said with a slight southern accent.

  Trent twisted around. The world lost balance and someone was holding him up.

  “Hold on, brother.” It was Glen talking this time. “Let’s have someone check you out.”

  “I’m fine,” he insisted. He patted his pockets for the keys of his Jeep. He remembered them on the floor of the cave next to their food supplies. “Damn.”

  “Trent?”

  Why were there two of Jason?

  “What?”

  Three… there were three of him.

  The world tilted again and someone called his name.

  Everything came into a fuzzy focus and then everything inside Trent’s stomach emptied.

  Maybe I’m not fine.

  Trent recognized the inside of the family jet. It had been years since he’d been there, and wasn’t exactly happy with being there now. Within one breath, he went from rescued survivor to patient. It was as if the mere mention of gastrointestinal issues made everything inside him twist on itself.

  At some point, someone started an IV on him and he would swear that something soothing had been placed in his veins. The world dulled in flight. The noise of the engine lulled him to sleep. He hadn’t slept much in the past several days, afraid he’d miss the sound of someone passing by. He slept now.

  An ambulance met them at the airport and took him to an emergency room. He noticed the faces of everyone there, pictured Monica in her environment, shouting orders… running around. “Is Monica here?” he asked the treating doctor.

  “The other survivor?” he asked.

  Trent nodded. “Yeah. The nurse.” It had taken Trent a few hours to follow behind her.

  “She’s here.” The man didn’t elaborate, which made Trent even more uncomfortable. “What about the doctor who brought her in? Walt? Is he here?”

  “I’ll see if I can find him.”

  When Walt didn’t come to his bed fast enough, Trent pushed himself off the gurney to search out the man himself. Wearing a blue and white hospital gown with his ass hanging out the back end, he stepped outside the curtained room, and came up against his brothers.

  “What are you doing?” Glen grabbed Trent’s arms as he leaned up against the wall with an IV pole in his hand.

  “Where’s Monica? I told her she’d be OK. No one’s talking to me.” He was getting damn tired of people looking the other way and not answering questions.

  “Mr. Fairchild.” A woman appeared at his side. Her brown hair and pointed finger indicated a wheelchair someone had pulled up behind him. “Sit down before you fall and make everyone in this terribly busy ER work harder.”

  Trent sat… OK he fell into the chair. The woman he had to assume was a nurse stood over him, her hands poised on her hips. “You’re looking for Miss Mann?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She’s in the ICU. And if you want to see her you’re going to have to let us stabilize you first. No one is going to let you go up there and fall all over her.”

  He could envision that this was how Monica scolded her patients. “How is she?” he asked.

  “Stable.”

  Like that told him anything. “Is her family here?”

  “In the waiting room. I’ll tell them you’re asking for them.”

  Trent exchanged glances with his brothers. “Thank you.”

  “Can I get you back in your bed now?” she asked.

  Considering the fact that he didn’t have enough energy to pull his ass out of the chair, the gurney didn’t sound bad.

  Back in bed, the nurse who’d put him in his place returned to hook him up to a monitor that sat above his gurney. His brothers sat in chairs at his bedside and watched him as if he were a fish in a flippin’ tank.

  “What’s that for?” Glen asked the nurse.

  “The doctor wants us to monitor his heart.”

  “It’s still beating,” Trent joked. Yet he wondered why after he’d been in the hospital for nearly an hour they were hooking him up to machines. Seemed like the longer the stay, the less need there would be for wires and tubes.

  The nurse patted his shoulder when she finished and offered a half-assed smile. “Maybe the doctor just wants to keep you in your bed.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

  Jason laughed and leaned back in his chair. “She’s a sassy thing.”

  “Cute, too,” Glen added.

  That she may have been, but Trent couldn’t think of any nurse save one. “Can one of you go and find Jack Morrison or even Dr. Eddy?”

  “I’ll go.” Jason released a heavy sigh and headed out into the ER.

  Several seconds passed in silence. When Trent’s gaze met his brother’s, he squirmed in place. “What?”

  Glen’s appearance always reminded Trent of their father. They shared the same cocky smile and hazel eyes. Glen turned those eyes on Trent now with a mixture of love and remorse. “We’ve missed you.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Glen. I was a few hours away by plane.”

  “You know what I mean. Reynard said you were planning on leaving the island before getting trapped in the cave.”

  “Yeah. I was.”

  Glen smiled, flashed his father’s dimples. “Figure out where you’re going to settle?”

  No, he just knew that home wasn’t on the island any longer. Jason and Dr. Eddy walked in the room. Walt shook his hand.

  “How’s Monica?”

  “Stable.”

  Trent was starting to hate that word.

  “Stable and the ICU sound like the ultimate in oxymoron.”

  Walt pulled up a rolling stool and sat beside Trent’s bed. The doctor glanced over at Trent’s brothers. “You mind giving us a minute?”

  Glen stood and smiled. “I could use some coffee.”

  Trent flashed a smile at his family as they left the room.

  Once alone, Walt’s smile fell. “She’s sick,” he said. “But we’ve managed to bring her blood pressure down. We’re jumping on the antibiotics.”

  “Has she woken up?”

  Walt shook his head. “Not yet. But her fever is coming down, slowly. She needs to rest and we need to get her white count down before we can fix her leg.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Nothing that a few screws and a steel plate won’t fix. They have a great group of orthopedic surgeons here.”

  That’s good.

  Walt glanced up at the monitor above Trent’s head. “It’s going to take a little time for the lab results, but I have the doctor here checking for lead and mercury poisoning on both of you.”

  Trent pushed his brows together. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not. And usually toxicity takes time to occur unless you bite into a thermometer or eat paint. Both of you show signs of liver and kidney involvement.”

  Trent hadn’t thought of his liver since he was in college testing his beer limit consumption. “Anything serious?”

  “We’ll want to keep you in the hospital to run some tests.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” And he wasn’t thinking of himself so much as the woman in the ICU.

  “Serious enough to keep you here.”

  He guessed he didn’t need to understand it any more than that. It sounded like there were unknowns at this point. “The water was bad, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s my guess. The water you sent with Monica
is at an outside lab and we won’t get the preliminary results until the morning.”

  Walt stood and took Trent’s hand in his. “I’m going to check on Monica again, and then find a cot and some food. I’ll find where they put you in the hospital and keep you up to date.”

  “So I can’t see her yet?”

  “Let’s get you fixed up, fed. I’ll bet you’re starving.”

  Trent tried to smile. “I could eat.”

  “I’ll tell the nurses.”

  “OK. And thanks, Walt.”

  Muddy water threatened to pull her under again, but instead of allowing the thick desire for sleep to keep its death grip any longer, Monica forced her eyes to flutter open.

  Bright, shiny light had her blinking several times, as the familiar smells and sounds of a hospital crept into her consciousness.

  “Barefoot?” Her pasty lips tried to stick together as she spoke.

  “Mo?”

  Monica turned her stiff neck to the right to find Jessie on the other side of a guardrail of the hospital bed she lay in. “Jessie?”

  Jessie lifted Monica’s hand to her lips, kissed the back of it. “Oh, God. You’re awake.”

  Her sister had dark circles under her eyes, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she huddled under a sweatshirt that looked like it belonged to Jack.

  Monica squeezed her sister’s hand, surprised at the effort it took to close her hand. “Where am I?” She remembered snippets. Trent’s voice telling her they were going to be found. Him laughing at her attempt to sing the theme song to Gilligan’s Island. Then there was an airplane and faces… some named, many nameless. Then a whole lot of nothing.

  “Miami General.”

  “H-how long?”

  “Only a day.” Her sister’s voice held a plea. “I was so worried.”

  “Ha! You and me both.” Monica did a slow look around the room. The private room held every bell and whistle needed for a critical bed. A large glass door separated her from a center nurses’ station with the rush of nurses, technicians, and doctors milling about. She rested her hand on the bed and noticed the IV connected to her wrist. She followed the tubing and noticed several plastic bags hanging from above her bed. She narrowed her eyes and read the labels. “Pressers?”

  “What?” Jessie asked as she moved to the other side of the bed and turned on a light above the bed.

  “Am I in the ICU?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to tell the nurse you’re awake. They wanted to know when you came around.”

  Monica released a breath and tried to stop being the nurse. “Jessie?” she stopped her sister before she left the room.

  “Yeah, Mo?”

  “I love you.”

  Tears welled instantly in Jessie’s eyes. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Then Jessie left the room and returned a few seconds later with a nurse. With help from a complete stranger, Monica sat up in her bed and waited for the treating physician to make his way to her bedside. By the time the poor man left she’d drilled him on every medication he’d given her, asked for details about her lab work, made suggestions for tests. Yeah, the guy had steam coming out his ears by the time he left the room, but there was something else in the man’s face. Admiration.

  Jessie returned to the room and trailing behind her were Jack, and Renee, her mother.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Their relationship had always been strained, but it didn’t mean her mother didn’t love her. They simply didn’t understand each other very well.

  “Oh, baby.”

  Monica accepted her mother’s kiss and offered a smile. “Sorry to drag you all the way across the country.”

  “Damn inconvenient,” Jessie teased. “Be sure and think about that the next time you’re trapped in a cave and try to die.”

  “No one is dying.”

  “Could have fooled us,” Jack said. “Katie sends her love. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

  Monica shook her head. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Would you stay away?” Jessie asked.

  Why did Jessie have to be so perceptive? Monica tried to roll her eyes and feign indifference. Instead, her eyes closed and she had a hard time opening them back up.

  “I think maybe we should let you get some sleep,” her mother said.

  She was wiped out after only being awake for an hour. It still felt wrong to push her family out the door after she’d scared them half to death. “They want to take me to surgery tomorrow,” she told them.

  “Walt said something about that,” Jessie said.

  “Walt’s here?” Monica opened her eyes again.

  “He flew with us. You don’t remember?”

  Monica shook her head. “I don’t remember much,” she uttered with a yawn. She remembered Trent kissing her forehead. “Trent. Where’s Trent?”

  “Who’s Trent?” her mother asked.

  “The man with her in the cave. He’s downstairs,” Jack told her. “They’re keeping him for a couple of days.”

  “Is he OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  Good. That’s good.

  Damn she was tired.

  The next time she opened her eyes the room was empty and dark.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Trent pulled on a second undignified gown so his butt wasn’t out there for everyone to see, and rolled the pole holding his IV as he trekked up the hall from his room. Jack had visited him earlier in the day to tell him that Monica had woken and that if Trent was going to sneak up to see her he might want to do it tonight as she was scheduled for surgery in the morning and would be out of it for hours after.

  The entry to the ICU was locked and Trent needed to sweet-talk, and name-drop, in order to gain access to Monica’s room.

  When he rounded the corner into her room, she was sitting high in her bed and eating.

  She noticed him in the doorway and the most beautiful smile spread over her lips. “Barefoot!”

  He picked up a slippered foot and wiggled it. “You can take the man off the island, but not the island out of the man.”

  He pushed a chair next to her bed and sat. “You look good.”

  “I feel better. It’s amazing what the right antibiotics can do for you. What about you?”

  Trent waved away the IV pole at his side. “This is overkill if you ask me. Damn yellow bag makes it look like they’re injecting urine into me.”

  She giggled. “It’s vitamin packed,” she told him as she gestured to a like bag hanging over her head. “They’re giving them away today.”

  “I heard you’re having surgery tomorrow.”

  Monica wiggled her foot. “They need to put me back together.”

  “How’s the pain?”

  She blinked a couple of times and he noticed the slight glaze in her eyes. “Good drugs.”

  “There’s something to be said for that.”

  After nibbling on a cracker, she said, “They finally let me eat. I know I won’t want to tomorrow.”

  “This is your first meal?”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t want much earlier.”

  He liked this. The easy conversation and comfortable buzz he felt just by being with her.

  She sighed and placed her hands in her lap. “We made it out.”

  “We did. They tracked your cell phone.”

  “Really? No one told me. I don’t remember anything other than you telling me we were going to be OK and then waking here.”

  Trent recapped what she’d missed. “When they were lifting you up I kept thinking it was a damn good thing you were out of it. I know how much you love heights.”

  “Glad I don’t remember.”

  “There were a few guys from your neck of the woods that jumped in on the search.”

  “Pomona Fire?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Wow. I’m surprised I’ve not seen them.”

  “They didn’t follow us here. You’ll
see them when you get home.” It dawned on him at that point that she’d be headed in one direction when she was well enough to travel, and he’d go in a different one.

  Before the wall crashed down and they’d brushed with death, she’d made it clear that they were a fling, a temporary diversion from life.

  Yet brushing with death changed that. Didn’t it?

  He sat back in the chair and glanced at the newscast that was playing on the flat screen. When he returned his gaze to hers, she smiled. “When are they releasing you?”

  “Walt said I could go tomorrow if the blood work continued to clear up.”

  “It’s scary, isn’t it? I thought the water was fine.”

  “Tasted like city tap water to me,” he said.

  “I’ll suggest that rescue workers leave with water purifying tablets in the future. We were lucky.”

  “Very.”

  The nurse took that moment to come in the room to retrieve the food tray. “Not much longer,” she said to him.

  Monica tsked. “He’s fine.”

  The nurse stared down her nose at Monica and lifted her hand to the monitor. “Your blood pressure is going up as is your heart rate since he arrived.” Then to emphasize her point, Nurse Hard-Ass took a tympanic thermometer, placed it in Monica’s ear, and turned the device around so Monica could see the number. “And you’re spiking a fever again.” Nurse Hard-Ass had a point. She swiveled toward Trent and placed her palm up and spread her fingers. “Five minutes. And no arguments from you, Nurse Mann.”

  The woman left the room in a huff, mumbling something about nurses and doctors being crappy patients.

  “Boy, I thought my nurse was rough.”

  A sad smile spread over Monica’s lips. “She’s right. I’d kick your ass out too if I was her.”

  Trent took the hint and stood to leave. For an awkward moment, he wasn’t sure how to say good-bye. He placed a hand over hers, smiled.

  “You’ll come by tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I will.” Since Trent wasn’t good at white lies, he knew he’d found a reason to see her again. Maybe that was how this would work. One day at a time.