Deepest Scars: A Being Me Stand-Alone Companion Novel
Page 28
At the Boston stadium the next week, the players head out onto the field for warm up, and I start cleaning up my station. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I slide it out, thinking it should be silenced. Brad’s name appears on the screen. My pulse quickens. I scan the area and squat behind a bench. My hand shakes as I tap the screen to accept the call. Taking calls at game time is one of the worst things I can do as a trainer, but I’d only taken Brad’s number because he’s Liz’s emergency contact. He’s never called me before.
“Brad?”
“Zack?”
“Yeah. Is everything okay?”
“There was a car accident.”
My heart thumps in my chest. “Is Liz okay?”
“We’re transporting her now. She’s stable. I need some information from you. Do you know her medical history? She never told me about a heart surgery.”
“Yeah.” Ears buzzing, I tell him everything Liz has shared about her two surgeries and the medications she’s taking. “Brad, is she going to be okay? Tell me everything.”
“She hit her head and has some bruises. Everything else looks good. Maybe a concussion.”
I lower my head between my knees. “Brad, did she ever tell you about her parents?”
“Luis and Elizabeth? You were my first call. I can call them next.”
“No, her real parents? They were killed in a car accident along with her younger brother. Listen”—I jump to my feet—“I’m in Boston, but I’ll get a flight right now. I’ll be there in five hours. Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll call Luis and Elizabeth.”
“Okay, we’re transporting her to Mayo. I’ll call you with any updates.”
“Please do. Thanks for calling.”
“No problem.” Brad ends the call.
At the doors to the office, I freeze for a micro-second. We’ve been happy, but I’ve been holding her at arm’s length. I know I have, and it’s never been so obvious as when Brad said those words. There was a car accident. All I can think about now is getting back home and seeing her. What an idiot I’ve been. What if something really happened to her? What if I lost the love of my life and hadn’t even told her I loved her in months.
Heart racing, I dial the team’s travel person. Within five minutes, he has me booked on a flight that leaves in an hour and I’m walking out of the stadium to meet a car. I dial Brad’s number as I lower myself to the seat.
“Hey, any update?”
“It’s been five minutes, man. We just rolled her into the ER.”
“Fine, I’ll call back.” I bounce the phone on my thigh. In five minutes, I call Brad again.
“Hey, man. Her spine and everything else looks fine. No signs of internal bleeding. She threw up, so definitely has a concussion. They’ve ordered a CT scan, so we’ll know more soon.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Is she awake?”
“Yeah, you want to talk to her? I told her you were on your way.”
After a second or two, I hear Liz’s voice. “Zack?”
“Hey, Liz, I’m in a car headed to the airport. It’s a long flight, but I’ll be there in five
hours.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to mess up your job.”
“Liz, I’m coming. I want to be with you. Know that you’re okay. You want me to come, right?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” I hear sniffles through the phone, and my heart feels like it’s breaking all over again. How could I be so stupid? She’s given me no reason to doubt her, but I’ve feared getting hurt again.
“Zack?” Brad’s voice comes through the line.
“Yeah?”
“They’re wheeling her out for the CT. I’ll call you after.”
I hold the phone to my temple, waiting for his call. It’s forty-five minutes before the device buzzes.
“Hello?”
“It’s me again,” Brad starts. “The CT was clear of hemorrhages, but they’re going to hold her overnight for observation.”
“Good. Can I talk to her?”
There are some shuffling sounds, and Liz speaks into the phone. “So, Brad says the CT is clear. No bleeds.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay, so you can stay there.” I hear her take a deep breath.
“I’m already on my way.”
“But what about your job?”
“People have stuff all the time.”
“But you wouldn’t miss work unless you were dying.”
“I’ll be there in five hours. Don’t worry about anything.”
She clears her throat. “Okay, thanks for coming.”
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“I hope I can get out of this place soon.”
“Let them take care of you. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“I hate hospitals.”
“You work at one.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s one night, right? I’ll be there in five hours.”
“Thanks again.”
We pull up to the curb at the airport, and I exit the car. “Liz, I do love you.” It seems weird, I know. Sort of out of place. But I had to say it.
“Thank you. I love you too.” Her voice cracks. “I’ll see you tonight.”
My leg bounces the whole flight, and I’m sure the guy next to me is ready to cream me. As soon as we land, I dial Liz’s number.
“Hey, she’s right here,” Brad answers, and then there’s a pause. “It’s Zack,” I hear him say.
“Hey.” Her voice is faint.
“How are you?”
“My head hurts like crazy.” Her voice cracks.
“I just landed. I’ll be there in under an hour.”
I get a car and go straight to the hospital. Brad and a guy I don’t recognize sit in chairs beside her bed. Her eyes are closed as if she’s sleeping.
“Is she asleep?” I whisper to Brad.
Brad stands and offers his hand. “She fell asleep about twenty minutes ago. She wanted to stay awake till you got here, but her head was throbbing, and she took some pain medication.”
“That’s good.” I can’t take my eyes off her ashen face. She has a cut on her left cheekbone in the center of a large blue bruise.
“Hi, I’m Fulton.” The other guy stands. “I pulled her from the car.”
I focus on Fulton. “Thanks. You know Liz?”
“Yeah, we’d hung out before at Brad’s place.”
“Glad you were there. Thanks.” I shake his hand, and my eyes cut back to Liz. “I feel like I should let her sleep.”
“She probably needs it.” Brad motions to the hall, and we exit her room. “It’s good that you’re here. She never told me about her surgeries or her family. I had no idea. I didn’t tell her you told me.”
“It was a really private thing for her. I’ll tell her you know. Can you tell me about the accident? What happened?”
Brad explains that a driver behind her was texting and didn’t see her stop at a red light. He rear-ended her SUV and pushed it into the intersection. Another vehicle from the crossing street hit the front passenger side of her SUV. “She was in there a while. The fire department had to get the jaws of life to pull her out.”
“Oh, God. I hate this for her.” My stomach feels sick, and I rest my hand on my torso. “How are the other drivers?”
“About the same as her. No serious injuries.” Brad pats my shoulder. “She’s going to be okay.”
“Did she say anything? How she was emotionally?”
He shakes his head. “Not really. She called her, well, I guess her parents. She seemed glad you were coming.”
“Good.” I nod. I pace away from them and back. Staring into her room, it feels selfish, but I want her awake. To know how she is, what she’s thinking.
Brad grips my shoulder. “I’m glad she has you. I think she may be traumatized. She’s been kind of staring at the wall. These things take a while to work through sometimes.”<
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“Yeah. I had another friend who had a pretty bad trauma.” I face him again. “Thanks. I’m glad you were there.”
“Okay, well, we’ll go.” Brad extends his hand to me.
I shake Brad’s hand and turn to Fulton. “Good to meet you.”
Inside her room, I pull the chair to the bed and sit with my hands beside her arm, scared I’ll wake her with a touch. Eventually, I rest my head on my folded arms.
“Vitals check.” I open my eyes to see a nurse entering the room. Pushing up, I squeeze Liz’s hand.
Her eyelids flutter and open. Blinking, she pushes up to a sitting position. “When did you get here?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“You should have woken me.”
“Brad said you just fell asleep.”
“Did Brad and Fulton go?”
“Yeah, they said they’d come by tomorrow.”
Liz holds her arm out as the nurse checks her blood pressure. “Everything looks good. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” The nurse rolls her mobile stats unit out the door.
Standing, I wrap my hand around hers. “How do you feel?”
“My head still hurts, but it’s better.”
“That’s good. You should sleep as much as you can. Someone will be back to check your vitals every couple of hours.”
“Yeah, I know the drill. You should go home and get some sleep.”
“I’m happy to stay.”
“Thanks.” She nods as tears fill her eyes. “Will you lie beside me?”
I sit beside her and swing my legs up to the bed. Rolling onto my side to face her, I rake her hair from her forehead to expose her eyes.
“Thank you for coming.” She takes my hand. “It means a lot.”
“Are you kidding? Where else would I be? If you need or want me, I’m going to be here.”
“It was nice that Brad and Fulton stayed.” Tears form in her eyes.
I squeeze her hand. “I told him about your parents. I hope that was okay. I wanted him to know in case, I don’t know…” I shrug.
“Yeah, that was fine.”
“I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“Brad’s a good friend.” Tears stream from her eyes, and she swipes them away.
Kissing her forehead, I wrap my arms around her shoulders. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not. Nothing is okay. I didn’t tell my parents I loved them before they died. It was late, and I was in a bad mood. I’d been acting bratty the whole night because there were all Mom’s friends at the dinner and no one was paying attention to me. I sat there coloring with my brother. It was a long evening, and I was tired. My patience wore thin, and when my brother snatched my doll in the car, I hit him. Mom looked back to scold me, and that’s when the car hit us. The next thing I know she slammed into the dashboard. The look on her face…” Liz buries her head in her hands, and I hug her to me. “My dad was sandwiched between the steering wheel and his seat. When I looked over at my brother, I saw his head was bleeding. I took his hand, and he looked at me for a second and then nothing. I screamed over and over, wake up, wake up, don’t leave me. You don’t get second chances to tell people you love them.”
“They knew.” I kiss the top of her head, trying to hold back my own tears. “You should get some rest. We can talk more tomorrow.”
She closes her eyes, but tears still stream down her face. I snag a tissue from the table and blot her cheeks.
“I’m a mess,” she whispers.
“It’s okay.” I hug her to me.
She snuggles into my side and rests her head on my shoulder. As she fades into sleep, I realize I was doing exactly what Doug did with Amanda. He couldn’t fully trust her, and I hadn’t fully committed to trusting Liz either. I hope she can forgive me. We’d had three good months of hanging out, spending every possible minute together. It felt good, and I’d compartmentalized my fears by telling myself I’d see how things went. But really, I wasn’t being fair to her. I kiss the top of her head, vowing to be a better boyfriend.
The nurse comes in again at five. I move to the chair for her to get Liz’s vitals.
“Do I have discharge orders yet?” Liz asks the nurse.
“Nope.” She taps on her electronic pad. “The doctor ordered a CT scan, ECG, and echocardiogram. The cardiologist will come by to see you after the tests are finished.”
“Thanks.” Liz forces a smile at the nurse.
“You’re welcome.” The nurse exits and closes the door.
“Of course they ordered a list of unnecessary tests.” Liz sighs and looks to the ceiling. “This is what I was afraid of. I just want to go home.”
I sit beside her. “They’re being thorough. When’s the last time you saw a cardiologist?”
She rolls her eyes. “Et tu, Brute.”
“Hey, don’t get Shakespeare on me.” I nudge her leg.
“Sorry. Last June, before I moved here.”
“So, you’re due anyway. Two birds, one stone and all. Are you hungry? Can I get you anything? Probably not coffee, but a pastry?”
“Sure, a bagel or something.” She swats a tear from her eye.
Kissing, her head, I squeeze her hand. “I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be okay. I’ll only say I love you.”
Tears stream down her face. “Yesterday was the first time you said you loved me since February. That’s not really fair.”
I take her other hand. “I was scared of getting hurt. Afraid I loved you more than you did me.”
“So, why the switch? Because I almost died? You can’t care about someone when you think you’re losing them.”
“I know. The thought of losing you”—I blink hard to keep tears from forming in my eyes—“I don’t want to ever feel that way again.”
“Losing me or losing anyone?”
“Losing you.” I kiss her lips. “Please tell me I didn’t mess things up.”
She shakes her head. “My therapist said to give you time. May has been hell.” She twists away from me. “I thought about moving to Seattle.”
“When?”
“This past week. You’ve seemed distant, and I always thought I’d like to live there. I mean, when I started this nursing position, that was sort of the plan, a different city every year.”
“I can fly to and from anywhere.”
“Really?” Her eyes meet mine.
“If that’s what you want. If you still want us to—” I can’t finish the sentence.
Taking my hand, she kisses me. “I do want us. I think wanting to move was more about being scared to get close to people. I sort of have abandonment issues.”
“Well, that’s warranted.” I squeeze her hands. “But, if you want me around, I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry I’ve been holding you at arm’s length. It’s stupid really. I can’t fight the fact that I love you.”
“I love you too.” She kisses me.
Her stomach gurgles, and I stand. “I should get some food.”
“Yes, food. Thanks.” She squeezes my hand, and I back away, holding it until she’s out of arm’s length.
When I return with the bagels, she’s on the phone with her parents. I wait outside, giving her space for a private conversation. I enter when I hear her say goodbye.
“How are your parents?”
“Freaking out. Talking about coming to see me.”
“It wouldn’t be a horrible thing, right?”
“My head is pounding again just thinking of having guests in my house.”
“Yeah, you really need to take it easy for a while. You probably could use some help for a week or so.”
“Not them, though. They’re too New Jersey for this job.”
I hand her the bag of pastries. “I could stay with you if you want.”
“Really, you could take time off?”
“Are you kidding? What’s the worst thing they would do, fire me? I could go back to doing PT shifts at hospitals.”
“So, we’ll do other stuff. Hikes are probably still on the table after a week or so.”
Her CT scan, ECG, and echocardiogram look normal. I feel guilty that I think the echo of her artificial valve is so cool.
“I could literally have a picture of your heart on my fridge,” I tease.
The ultrasound tech prints two out and hands them to Liz. “That guy is really cheesy, but in case you want to give him one.”
Brad and Fulton visit when Liz is napping in the early afternoon. When she wakes, I sit with her. For a few minutes, she stares at the wall. I hold her hand, waiting for her to engage.
“Being in that car, waiting for them to get me out, all I could think about was how that was supposed to be how I die, in a car, like my family.”
“I can’t imagine how scary it must have been.”
“I was thinking about Elizabeth, Luis, my sisters, and you, and how I hadn’t talked to my family in days, and how we’d hardly seen each other the last few weeks.”
I slide in beside her. “I didn’t like it either.”
The doctors finally come around four and give her a clean bill of health. The discharge paperwork takes a few more hours. Brad drives us to her place. He stays with her for an hour while I circle back to my apartment for some clean clothes.
The first day Liz seems dazed and numb. On the second, when Brad brings by all the stuff from her car, she enters an angry phase that lasts two days. It’s not until the fourth day that the loss of her car and activity level sink in, and she spends the day teary-eyed in bed. I stay with her and help her through the best I can. She calls in to her therapist and that seems to get her by on the sixth day when we have to venture out for her doctor’s appointment. After another CT scan, they suggest a week’s more of rest before returning to work. Even then, she’s supposed to start with a four-hour shift.
“I’m never going to be able to pay my bills this way,” she exclaims as we leave the doctor’s office. “I hate this.” Her hands go to her hips as we reach the car. “I’m scared of riding in a car, I’m scared of driving, how am I going to get to work?”