“Well, hopefully they’ll let you in to see him soon. I mean you saved his goddamn life. That should earn you a little bit of visiting time.”
I heard a woman that sounded agitated at the other end of the hall and I walked around the corner to get a better view. There was a small dark haired woman banging on the desk asking for assistance. “I’m looking for Dillon Jackson! He was brought in an ambulance from a fight. He’s my son!” She had her hand on her heart and I thought she might faint if someone didn’t help her soon.
“Naomi, I have to go. I think Dillon’s mom is here. I have to tell her what happened.”
“Well that’s one way to meet the parents. Good luck, and call me when you want me to come get you. I’ll have my phone on me all night.”
I took a deep breath and ended the call before walking dutifully down the hallway to the frazzled woman. “Excuse me, ma’am? Are you looking for Dillon?”
She turned and looked up at me, almost a half a foot shorter than I was. Tears filled her eyes and worry lines were etched around them. The same sparkling blue that Dillon’s eyes contained were looking up at me, but her pain dulled them. She was terrified that she was going to lose her child, and I couldn’t blame her. “My name is Berkley. I was with him when it happened. I came to the hospital with him from the fight.”
She didn’t speak, just stared up at me blankly like I was talking in a different language. A nurse walked up behind the counter with a chart. “Corina Jackson? You’re the mother?”
The small woman just turned and nodded silently. “Dillon is in critical condition. His airway collapsed during the fight, and he has a partially collapsed lung. His left eye socket is ruined and he’ll need reconstructive surgery once they fix his airway. The doctor’s main concern at this point is that he was deprived of oxygen, and there may be damage.”
I knew it wasn’t my place to ask but I couldn’t help myself, “What type of damage?”
The nurse scowled at me. “And who are you?”
“I… I came in with him. I was the one who was at the fight, I saw it all happen.”
The nurse frowned at me. “I’m sorry, but unless you’re family I can’t share any of this information with you.”
Suddenly Dillon’s mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. “This girl might have saved his life. You can tell her anything that you can tell me.”
The nurse shrugged and scanned through the document once more. “There could be significant brain damage, but we won’t know how much until he wakes up after surgery. A doctor will be out to update you once they finish.”
She gave us a sad smile as she closed the chart and walked away. I felt Corina’s grip lessen and she started to lean into me.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, ma’am? The coffeehouse here is pretty good.” I remembered that from when my father had been here for surgeries. We’d literally spent weeks in this hospital, one of the best in the state.
She nodded and held my hand as we walked down the hallway together. Once we were in the waiting area, I sat her down in a plastic chair and was about to leave her but she wouldn’t let go. So instead I sat down next to her and we waited. We waited for hours without saying a single word to each other. Until finally the doctor came out pulling a mask off of his face.
“Ms. Jackson?”
Dillon’s mother rose from her seat and shuffled slowly over to him. I knew we were both praying for good news, but if it was bad? We would both fall apart on the linoleum floor.
“Dillon is in stable condition. His brain doesn’t seem to have swelled quite as much as we had anticipated. He’s still going to be unconscious for several hours, but it looks as though he’ll make it out of this. Your son is a very lucky man.”
I felt the relief flood my system as the waves of tension began to leave my body. Dillon was going to make it. And that was all that I needed to hear.
THIRTEEN
DILLON
I took a deep breath and winced. It felt like my insides were on fire. A machine buzzed next to me and Leo’s angry whispers came from what may have been the right side of my bed. I was in the hospital, I just knew it. I hated places like this, where people always try to make you feel better even though you might never be fixed. I remembered feeling like this when I broke my shoulder. Completely helpless, at the doctor’s mercy. I took another breath and again my lungs shuddered under the pain. Whatever those assholes had done to me, I would get them back for this. I had to.
Apparently I was asleep for almost three days. When I finally came to, they were able to remove the tube that was going down my throat so I could finally talk again. My mother was there, gripping my hands tightly between her own frail fingers. She was going to be really angry when she got a chance to get over the fact that I hadn’t died. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. I’d lied to everyone. The only person that actually knew that I was going to match was Berkley.
Berkley. I had seen her in my dreams a hundred times over the past few days. But now that my eyes were finally open and I was taking in the landscape around me, there she was, asleep in a hospital chair in the corner. She hadn’t been a dream. She was real. She’d been at the fight and had seen everything go down. She had been with me at my absolute worst. But she’d stayed, just like I wanted her to, even though I pushed her away. Jesus, I was lucky.
Leo was the first to notice that my eyes were open. “Berkley, wake up! He’s awake. How do you feel, son?”
“Like pickles,” I barely croaked out. My throat felt like there were needles all through it. I would consider that before I talked again.
My mom looked at me with sad eyes. She looked a lot older than she had last week. That was my fault. “I’m just glad you’re okay, honey. It’s going to take a while, but you’re going to be okay.” I realized I could only see out of my one eye, and I lifted my hand carefully to touch the other side of my face but was met with gauze instead. “They had to do surgery on your face, but they said it should heal in a few weeks. You’re alive, that’s all that matters.” I could hear the restraint in her voice, chasing away the tears. She was trying to be strong for me, and that meant that things were a lot worse than she was letting me know.
Somehow deep in my belly I knew that I’d almost died. Or maybe I did, maybe they brought me back to life. And that was also my fault. I always was my own worst enemy.
Leo gave me a loving look which I knew was going to be followed by serious talking to. He always took care of me, so it was his duty to be the one to let me have it. “What the hell were you thinking? Going off by yourself like that! To an underground fight! You knew what those chumps wanted to do to you. You had a death wish going there. And now you had your mother and Berkley and me worried. That’s on you.”
The pain in my throat was too severe to speak again so I simply nodded and cast my eyes down, trying to relieve myself of some of his shame. He was completely right. All of this was on me.
He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
I knew that he meant it too. “Corina, why don’t you and I take a little walk? Give him and Berkley a minute alone.”
My mother kissed me on the forehead before she followed him out the door, looking over her shoulder at me as the tears welled up in her eyes. I’d hurt her so badly.
Berkley sat down on the side of my bed with bags under her eyes from lack of sleep. I couldn’t believe she’d stayed after how I had treated her. She deserved so much better than this.
“You scared the hell out of me. I came to that fight to stop you. Those guys wanted to kill you, to knock you out of the competition permanently. Did you know that?”
I slowly shook my head, the room spinning as I did so.
“Don’t ever do something so stupid again. I just don’t think my heart could take it.”
She chewed on her lower lip, and even in the hospital bed it still turned me on. Berkley was everything I wanted, but nothing I deserved. Once
I had my strength back, I would explain that to her and let her make her choice. I wouldn’t make it for her, not this time.
FOURTEEN
BERKLEY
“Wake up!”
“Why? I asked groggily.
“Girl, you made me promise not to let you sleep all day. You’re going to miss your two PM class. How much longer are you going to keep this up? Dillon’s going to be in the hospital another three or four days. And you’ve been dragging your ass for a week. I don’t know how you’re keeping up with your class schedule and spending most of your nights at the hospital.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to control the burn from lack of sleep. Naomi was right. I hadn’t been sleeping much. Dillon’s mother was at the hospital anytime she could be, but when she was working her shifts as a waitress, I spent as much time there as I could. He had finally started to talk again and his face was healing up well. The doctors were impressed with his progress, and they felt that they would send them home by the end of the week. I knew it was killing him to just lie in a hospital bed, but I was hoping that every second he had to lie there made him think about making poor choices again. But there was something blossoming between us at the hospital, the way his fingers intertwined with mine and how he seemed so peaceful when I was there. Somehow I knew that deep down he was thankful I’d been there that night, and he knew that we were even now. A debt for debt.
“I know I said that, but I need to sleep sometime.”
She shook her head, “Yes, but you need to sleep at night so you don’t miss your classes. I know you’re like totally hung up on him, but you barely know him. He’s obviously dangerous, doing some illegal fight. You have to watch yourself, before you get too involved.”
I was already involved. That was a big part of my problem.
“I promise that I will take care of myself. I just have to take care of him for a little bit longer too. He gets out this week. Then things will go back to normal.” I was excited to see his apartment. I had a feeling it would be was ridiculously clean and probably didn’t have a lot in it, since he spent so much time at the gym. But I was hoping I would find a couple small pieces of him there, something that would give me more information than he did. Dillon was still mostly a mystery to me, regardless of how much time I spent up a hospital talking to him.
“Fine,” she muttered before walking out of our bedroom and going to her own class. I pulled myself up into a sitting position—thank God for multiple pillows—and looked down to check my phone. My dad had called me again, second time this week. That was unlike him, and I had a few minutes before class, so I thought I could talk to them on the way there. I grabbed my bag and shoved my laptop inside before pressing the call back button and walking out of my room.
“Hi Daddy. How are you?” I could almost feel his smile from the other end of the line.
“Berkley! I’m wonderful, darling, how are you? Your mother’s been worried about you. You didn’t call us back earlier this week. Is everything okay?”
Did I tell him that I potentially had a new boyfriend who was a well-known MMA fighter? Probably not. “I’m fine. Just trying to get back into the swing of things with classes. It’s only the second week, you know. And I really have to focus this semester, get my career back on track.”
“And what career is that?” He sounded concerned. He had every right to be; I still hadn’t made any final decisions about my future. I’d been so wrapped up in Dillon that I hadn’t even opened my résumé yet. That wasn’t doing me any good. “I’m taking an accounting class right now, I like that a lot. Maybe I’ll try to get a job in a firm.”
“A firm is a solid choice. But don’t you think you’re wasting your talents a little bit? What about law school?”
Law school. I hadn’t even thought about it since freshman year. I certainly didn’t have the course load to prepare myself for that. “Daddy, I don’t want to be a politician. That was Jake’s dream. I was just going along for the ride.”
“But what is your dream? Berkley, you really need to decide what you want to do with your life. You’re running out of time to make hard decisions. And as much as your mother and I would love to have you come home, I don’t think that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know, I wouldn’t mind living with you guys are just a little bit longer. I mean if you would have me.” Rent free of course, because without a job I couldn’t afford anything. My little brother would hate if I came back home though. Totally ruin his run of the household vibe. “How is Logan, anyway?” Last time I’d heard he was getting into some serious trouble at school and with girls.
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
“Yep.”
He laughed, “Well your brother is always a good subject to talk about. He’s going to play lacrosse in the spring; hopefully that will give him something to do. He needs to put his energies toward something positive.”
I was guessing that my father didn’t find my brother’s drinking a positive avenue for all of his excess energy. “Is he still going out with that girl? You know the girlfriend that he was planning on taking to prom?”
“No, she broke up with him at a basketball game. I guess it was some sort of big scandal. Turns out your brother likes to kiss other girls while he has a girlfriend. Now I doubt he’ll have any date to prom.”
“Serves him right. You and Mom certainly taught him better than that. I bet she was livid.”
He laughed again. “Your mother grounded him for three weeks. Including taking the phone. She gave in on the phone though after only a week, because she got sick of him hanging around us all the time. But she monitored him closely. The woman makes an impression, you got to give her that.”
I smiled to myself. I was lucky to have parents still involved in my life. Just like Dillon’s mother was, but in only slightly different ways. My parents had raised me with morals and the will to work hard. Dillon’s mother had obviously tried to do the same.
I sighed. I needed to bite the bullet and just tell him. “On the girlfriend note, I’m seeing someone. I don’t need you to freak out, but he’s not my typical type of guy. I mean, he’s definitely not Jake.”
“Well that’s a relief. I wouldn’t want you seeing someone like him again. The way he treated you, Berkley…”
“I don’t want to talk about him. But anyway, when you tell Mom I called, I want you to tell her that I’m seeing someone and I don’t know if anything’s going to come of it, but I like him. He makes me feel… alive.”
My father didn’t say anything for a minute and then finally cleared his throat and said, “Whatever makes you happy.”
“He does Daddy, I promise.” I arrived to class so I cut our conversation short. “I gotta go. I’m at class, don’t want to miss the beginning of the lecture. I’ll call Mom later this week, I promise. I love you.”
“Love you too, baby.”
FIFTEEN
BERKLEY
It was another few days before Dillon came home. I’d wanted to be at the hospital as much as possible, but I had so much schoolwork to catch up on. Luckily Dillon’s mother had gotten my phone number and had been sending text updates. I ran to his apartment right after class as soon as he was home. When I got there she was just settling him into bed, with Leo at her side.
“Now remember, you are on bed rest for another two weeks. And I’ll take you to your doctor’s appointment at the end of the week to make sure all your incisions are healing properly. Do not do anything dumb, Dillon,” she said sternly. For such a small woman she certainly put the fear of God into her son.
“Of course, Mama. And again, thank you for all of your help.”
She smiled at him dearly, “All of your medicines are on your bedside table, and I’ve already poured a glass of water for you. When you get hungry, you call me. I’ll bring you some soup later. But for now you need to rest.”
I waited by the door as I looked around at the very small studio apartment and saw mostly what I expect
ed: bare walls, and just one picture of him, Leo and his mom.
His bed was along one wall with a recliner sitting next to it and a small table between them. His TV was on the other wall right next to a small kitchenette that had a washer and dryer attached. The bathroom was on the right side of the wall near the hallway. It wasn’t much, but it was his.
Leo sat down in the recliner and started clicking through television channels, and Dillon noticed my presence. “You’re here.”
I gave him an encouraging smile. “So are you.”
“Finally.”
“Yeah, it took you long enough. You know, I’ve wanted to see your apartment for a few weeks now. It would’ve been nice if you could’ve shown me around, instead of being so lazy.”
He smiled at my joke but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. His mother gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I have to go to work. Leo will be with you today, and I’ll be back later with dinner. You three behave.”
I nodded to her, “Yes ma’am. I promise I’ll keep an eye on these rascals.”
She smiled at me and squeezed my arm as she walked past, closing the door behind her. There wasn’t really anywhere else to sit but Dillon scooted over in his bed just enough that I could perch myself on the edge. He started whispering to me almost as soon as I sat down. “I feel like I’m in high school again.” He turned his eyes towards Leo. “I haven’t had a chaperone on a date in a long time.”
“Is that what this is? A date? I mean, usually I don’t get into some guy’s bed for quite a while. I’m a classy lady after all.”
He moved his hand over to my thigh and squeezed it. “I remember. Don’t you worry, it’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about an awful lot. One of the reasons I need to get better so quickly.”
7+Us Makes Nine: A Nanny Single Dad Romance (Baby Makes Three) Page 77
