by Lane Hart
“No one has had any luck, but we’ll keep trying,” Sax offers.
“When we find them, see what they need, how much money for the funeral and any other expenses. We’re gonna take care of her kid,” Torin says as he pulls Cooper’s hand from his face to show him the writing on the page. Instead of making him feel better, he falls apart and sobs. “It wasn’t your fault,” Torin says before he scribbles the sentence on the page and holds it up in front of his face. “It wasn’t, okay?”
“Let’s give him some time to process all of this on his own,” I suggest. “Maybe someone can locate an audiologist in the area and call to get him an appointment ASAP since I’m not allowed to have a phone.”
“I’ll do it,” War offers.
“Thanks, man,” Torin says. “I’ll stay here with him if you all want to give us some time…”
“We’ll need to check his temperature soon and change his bandages,” I tell him. “Let me know when you think he’s ready.”
“Thanks, Iz,” Torin says, using my abbreviated nickname like he’s finally accepting me into the group.
That’s when it hits me that I only agreed to stay until Cooper was up and around, which is…today.
***
Sax
“Did you find out anything about her family?” Isobel asks when she joins me outside in the backyard after I made a few phone calls.
“No,” I answer with a sigh. “Jade spoke to a few of the dancers, but none of them knew if her family is local or not. No one mentioned a kid, so she must have kept that to herself. Reece didn’t have any luck either. There were no other Higgins in Durham where she’s originally from. I just called the coroner’s office, and they said no one has been in to claim her body, so either she has no family, or they don’t know yet.”
“Jesus,” Isobel says. “Either way it’s awful, especially since she has a child.”
“We’ll keep trying to track them down,” he says. “Do you by chance have a laptop I could borrow?”
“Yeah, there’s one in my bag, I just haven’t used it for fear it would be confiscated too.”
“I’ll try to get your phone back,” I tell her. “Torin’s eased up and trusts you more now that you robbed a hospital to help Coop and he’s back on his feet.”
“Physically, maybe,” she says. “He’s still going to have to deal with the hearing issue and emotional turmoil. He’s hurting bad, Sax.”
“He blames himself for whatever reason. Jenna was his employee, and now he feels guilty that he couldn’t save her.”
“He shouldn’t,” Isobel says. “There was nothing he could’ve done to stop a bomb that someone else planted.”
“Maybe not, but I get it,” I tell her.
“Right, you wrongly blamed yourself when April died,” she responds.
“Yeah, I got pissed at her for partying, getting high and seeing other guys. I should’ve done more to get her help, been around more. But I was pissed and pushed her away after I found out she slept with someone else.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Sax. Sometimes people do stupid things that they know they shouldn’t, and any consequences fall solely on them.”
I give a nod of agreement but don’t have anything to say to that. April’s death was partially my fault, and that’s always how I’ll see it. Isobel could never understand.
“I didn’t exactly quit being a nurse,” she tells me.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I got fired for showing up drunk or hungover from staying out at bars and clubs too late,” she starts. “Danny knew, and he gave me more chances than I deserved. Honestly, I took advantage of the fact that we were friends and I was certain that he wouldn’t fire me,” she explains before she pushes her still brown hair behind her ear. “But then one day a parent smelled the alcohol on my breath and reported me and Danny to the medical board. I told them he didn’t know anything about my drinking, so they took my license but let him keep his.”
“Damn, Iz. That’s awful,” I say. I had no idea that’s why she left nursing.
“I think deep down I wanted them to take my license all along, which is why I kept drinking to excess. I wanted to finally be free to do whatever I wanted.”
“Why would you want to throw away the years it took to get your nursing degree and all if you didn’t actually want it?” I ask her.
“When I was younger, I thought a career in nursing was what I wanted, to be able to help people like my mother. And then I got the results back from the genetic testing I did on a whim and learned the truth.”
“The truth? About what?”
“My mother never had cancer like my father told me,” Isobel says. “She had Huntington’s disease, and he kept it from me.”
“What’s Huntington’s again? I know I’ve heard of it before, but I don’t remember the details,” I tell her.
“It’s a, ah, rare genetic condition that breaks down the nerves in a person’s brain, which is why it’s always fatal, eventually.”
“Jesus.”
“Children of Huntington’s patients have a fifty percent chance of inheriting it,” Isobel explains. “I have it.”
“Hold on. You have Huntington’s disease, like, right now?” I ask in disbelief, and she nods. She looks and seems so healthy! “Are you okay? What exactly does that mean?”
“I’m okay now, but I’ve already started showing symptoms – the occasionally twitching of fingers, hands and feet, the frequent clumsiness and dropping things, all of which means that over the next ten to fifteen years the nerves in my brain will deteriorate a little more each day until I’m no longer capable of caring for myself and the disease finally kills me.”
“You can’t be serious,” I say. “You’re perfectly healthy. There must be some sort of mistake…”
“There’s no mistake, Sax! I only have maybe ten good years left. After that, I’ll be bedridden until I can no longer speak or eat, and then I’ll die.”
“No. There has to be something doctors can do before it gets that bad.”
“There are medicines to help with the symptoms, but there is no cure,” she says with a shake of her head.
“Not yet, but maybe one day. You can’t just give up hope, Iz.”
“Sax, it’s a rare disease. Not enough people have it to waste billions of dollars on research finding a cure. The only way to stop it is for those who have it to stop procreating.”
“Wow,” I say, still in a state of shock, unable to formulate any other words. So that’s why she had her tubes tied, to make damn sure she doesn’t pass the disease on to her kids.
“How ironic, right?” she asks. “I wanted to work with children, and then I find out that I can’t even have any of my own,” Isobel says sadly. “That’s another reason that deep down I wanted to get out of pediatrics.”
“You could…you could still have kids if you want them. There’s a chance they wouldn’t get it.”
“I’m not willing to take that chance and condemn some poor kid to die in his or her forties!”
“What about adoption then?” I offer.
“No,” she says without hesitation. “Any kids I have, my own or someone else’s, will be destined to the same hell – to take care of me, to watch me fall apart.”
“That’s why you…this is why you have a bucket list,” I say in understanding.
“The clock is ticking,” Isobel replies. “Each day I get closer to the end when I won’t be able to walk or talk or do the things I want to do.”
“And your father knows this?” I ask in horror. “He knows that you have Huntington’s and that your life will be cut short?”
“Of course,” she answers. “He was the first person I told. I confronted him after I received my results and started digging into my mother’s history. Do you know what he did?” she grits out.
I shake my head, unable to speak because I was trying to do what her father wanted, to keep her grounded, to stop her from living her life to the full
est, which is the least she deserves.
“My father printed my mother’s obituary in the paper when I was ten to convince me and everyone else that she was gone. We had a memorial service for her!”
“She wasn’t dead?” I ask.
“No! She didn’t die until almost five years later! He hid her from me and the world in a nursing home because he said he didn’t want me to see her like that – to see what I was going to have to endure in just a few decades! They had tested me when I was a kid and knew what would happen. He didn’t want me to know that my life would end before I hit fifty.”
“God, Isobel. I’m so…I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell her honestly.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she replies with a small smile. “These last few days with you have been some of the best of my life. I hadn’t realized just how isolated and alone I was before you came along. But now you know why I can’t let myself get too close to you or anyone else.”
I have to clear the emotion from my throat before I can ask, “And why exactly is that?”
“Because no one wants to be the man who has to feed and bathe his sick wife for years before losing her. Not even my own father, who I thought loved my mother, could do it. He tossed her into a home so someone else could care for her while he pretended she was dead and went on with his life.”
Panic. All I feel inside me is a growing, suffocating panic as I feel her slipping away from me for good.
“I may have only known you for a few days, Iz, but I would do anything to spend every day of the rest of my life with you,” I tell her honestly.
“Sax…” she starts.
“I’m serious,” I say when I grab her hand. “Stay with me. Or let me go with you. I just don’t want this to end yet.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. Ten years, Sax, that would be the most you get with me before I’ll need around-the-clock care.”
“Then let me have ten years with you. We’ll make them count. They’ll be amazing, I promise,” I tell her.
When tears start to trickle down her cheeks, I pull her close to me, and she tilts her head up to kiss me. Her lips crush into mine, fierce and passionate, but I break away before she can distract me further.
“Is that a yes?” I ask her with a small smile.
Instead of answering, she launches herself at me, tangling her hands in my hair. “Take me to bed,” she demands, her lips pressed directly to my ear.
As she grinds herself against me, I realize this is the only answer I’m going to get for now, and honestly, it’s one that I’m happy to accept. She hasn’t refused me, and her body is telling me everything that I need to know.
Well, everything that I need to know for the next hour.
Chapter Twenty-One
Isobel
Sax and I are still tangled up in bed when a cell phone beeps yet again, snapping him out of a light doze. Torin gave me my phone back, finally, but I know by the tone that it’s Sax’s.
“Ugh, sorry, but I better grab that, baby,” he mumbles, so I slide off of his chest.
“Anything important?” I ask, “Or can we stay here a bit longer?”
“It’s Gabe,” Sax says. “Him and Abe went out and got him a new kit. I mean his needle guns and inks, all that stuff. He says they’re on their way back to the safehouse, and he’d be glad to do your tattoo, if you’re still up for it. What do you say, want to hang out a little longer and get some ink?” Sax asks, excitement and hope lightening his tone. “I’d want you to stay a bit while it heals, make sure it doesn’t need touching up or anything.”
“Tell him I’d love that,” I confirm with a smile. While I do want the tattoo to remember him, what we’ve had together, I know I still need to temper Sax’s expectations. “It will be a beautiful way to remember the time we’ve had together. You really are the best, Sax. These last few days have been…well, they have been some of the best of my life.”
“But you still won’t stay, will you?” he asks, his voice tinged with disappointment and bitterness.
“I know how hard it is to understand,” I tell him as I get up and begin dressing. “I want you to believe this, Sax. If there was any man that I would consider having near me while this disease progresses, any man that I would trust to care for me like a child, an invalid child…it would be you. But I promised myself a long time ago that I would never put anyone through that. No one. Ever.”
“Isobel, listen,” Sax protests, just as heavy footsteps can be heard out in the hall.
“Yo, you guys decent in there?” Gabe yells from outside the door. “I sent that text like half an hour ago. You ready for some ink?”
“Yes, come on in,” I call out before Sax can say anything else. I’m still only in my t-shirt and a thong, but with the idea I have for the placement of my tattoo, that’s the most appropriate thing to be wearing.
Gabe opens the door as Sax is fastening his jeans, first looking over to him before his gaze is drawn to my naked legs. “Whoa, hello there,” Gabe snorts. “You sure you guys don’t need a minute?”
“No,” Sax grumbles as he collapses into a chair. “She’s ready to go.”
“I wanted to get the cherry blossom and a couple of butterflies up my hip, here,” I tell Gabe, pointing out the area to him. “Should I just lie on the bed? Can you do it in here, you think?”
“Yeah, the light is good in here,” Gabe confirms. “Lie down and I’ll get my stuff out, then show you the stencil I worked up.”
Once Gabe is prepared and has placed the stencil on my hip, Sax finally gets up from his seat and comes over to take a look. His stern face instantly softens as he looks at the design. “It’s beautiful,” he sighs. “Does it mean something special to you, Izzie, or is it just for the look?”
I’m so happy to see his mood lighten up that I answer right away, without realizing my answer might bother him. “I wanted the cherry blossoms and butterflies because they’re both so ephemeral and short-lived. While beautiful, you have to appreciate them all the more because they’re so fleeting.”
After I explain my reasoning, I glance up from the stencil to see Sax’s face. His eyes are shining as though he’s fighting back tears, and his face is tight with barely controlled emotion. “You get to work, Gabe,” he says in a thick voice. “I’m going to go get a drink. You want anything?”
“Water, please,” Gabe says as he pulls a chair close to the bed and sits down.
“One for me, too, please,” I add.
“Coming right up,” Sax says with a sniff, swiping at his nose as he leaves the room.
“Didn’t have him pegged as the sentimental type,” Gabe snorts as he tests his tattoo gun, the tiny engine whining to life and almost drowning out his words.
“He’s got some things buried really deep,” I tell Gabe. “But there are treasures in those depths worth exploring.”
“Well, cheers to you, Isobel,” Gabe grins. “Always nice to meet someone else with the soul of an artist, especially among these barbarians. Now, you just relax, and I’ll take good care of this for you.”
Sax comes back a short time later with two bottles of water, which he places on the bedside table. Without making any comment, he goes back to sit on the other side of the room, making sure not to interrupt Gabe’s concentration.
The tattoo is almost painless under his deft touch, the only pain coming when he drags his needle across my hip bone while etching a butterfly. It takes him less than three hours to complete the entire design, his hand never seeming to tire and his attention never wavering.
“That’s it,” Gabe tells me as he leans back and uses a clean rag to wipe the area gently a few more times. “I brought you a bottle of lotion to rub on it several times a day while it heals up, and you probably want to keep it covered the first day or so, unless you want it bleeding all over your clothes. You got any questions for me?”
“Gabe, it’s beautiful!” I gush before I hop up from the bed and walk over to the mirror to see i
t better. “Thank you so much for doing this for me!”
“Thank you for all you’ve done for my boys, Cooper and Sax both,” Gabe replies. “You’ve made both of them better, I think. I’m going to get on out of here; but if you have any trouble, Sax knows how to reach me, okay?”
“Thanks, brother,” Sax says as he finally stands up and goes to open our bedroom door. He slaps Gabe on the shoulder as he leaves, then closes the door behind him.
I turn towards Sax, unable to hide my elation at how well the colors turned out. I quickly pull the t-shirt I was wearing over my head, so that I’m standing by the mirror in only my thong. “Tell me what you think, Captain. Do you approve? Personally, I love it!”
“I didn’t think it was possible for you to be even more beautiful,” Sax says as he crosses the room towards me. “Does it hurt too badly for you to…”
Sax never gets to finish the question as I meet him by the bed, our bodies crashing together as our lips find each other. I fumble at his belt as he gently stretches the waist of my underwear to clear my newly inked hip. “It’ll be fine,” I manage to gasp. “Just let me be on top.”
I can feel Sax nod in agreement as I push him down to the bed, then jerk his jeans off and throw them to the floor. He pulls me on top of him, and together we make whatever lingering discomfort I may have had immediately fade away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sax
While Isobel is still sleeping, looking like the angel she is, I slip out of bed, get dressed and head outside to make a phone call. I never should have accepted her father’s deal, but I didn’t think I had a choice. Now, no matter the consequences to the Kings, I can’t ask Isobel to give up her journey to help us when she only has a few years of an independent lifestyle left. The Kings can hire the best attorneys money can buy to try and get them out of the charges. And I…well, I’m ready to tell them the truth about everything, no matter the costs.
Finding her father’s number in my phone, I press the button to call him and put the phone up to my ear.
