by Marci Bolden
For a moment, she recalled being a teenager on a ride at the county fair. She was with her brothers, screaming as they spun the seat they were in as fast as they could. She could hear their laughter—Paul’s and Matt’s. Smell the fried foods. Then gravity pulled at her so strongly, she couldn’t help but fall back.
Instead of leaning into the seat of the ride, she felt the memory slip away, and she was on the floor, staring up as Marcus leaned over her, his blue eyes wide and his face pale. His mouth moved, but Annie couldn’t hear anything over the shrill sound reverberating in her ears.
Something had happened. Something was happening. She didn’t know what. Couldn’t seem to think.
Confusion grew heavier, thicker, clouding her mind. Darkness, starting in her peripheral vision, filled her eyes, and she stopped trying to think, stopped trying to understand what was going on, stopped trying to hear Marcus’s voice through the ringing.
Whatever was happening around her—to her—didn’t matter. Whatever Marcus was saying didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
Except the sense of peace enfolding her.
Marcus pictured Annie’s face. Her smile. Heard the sarcastic bite that he loved so much. No comment ever went unanswered with her. At least not until she was lying on the floor, her eyes glazed over as she stared at the ceiling, not responding. He’d caught her as she crumpled, eased her down, pressed his hand to her forehead as blood oozed from the hole half an inch or so above the arch of her left eyebrow. He’d talked to her, begged her to stay with him while the frantic couple called 911.
He’d told the medics everything he could. He’d talked to the police several times. He’d relayed the events over and over as her family rushed in. He’d done everything right. He’d done everything he was supposed to.
But as the hours ticked by while she was in surgery, his mind started making him doubt himself.
What if he hadn’t barged in? What if he’d let Annie talk to the couple instead of allowing her to pass them off to him?
“One last sale,” she’d whispered and winked at him as he followed them to the kitchen.
He hadn’t seen the kid for more than a split second, but it was enough to realize that he hadn’t intended to shoot Annie. He looked just as shocked by his actions as Marcus had.
And in the split second, why didn’t he take more notice of the kid’s appearance? He’d had on a nice shirt. Jeans. A baseball cap. That was it. That was all he could tell the police. It wasn’t much, but he’d never forget what little he had seen.
But that didn’t matter. None of that mattered.
Annie was lying in an operating room as a bullet was removed from her brain.
Her brain.
Jesus.
If it’d been her stomach or her shoulder or just about anywhere else, Marcus might have some sense of hope. But the punk shot her in the head.
Marcus didn’t snap out of his internal debate until Mallory called his name. She’d been packing up her car, preparing to drive to California in the morning, when he’d called her. She’d answered, the excitement evident in her voice as she prepared to set out on her own. Then he’d told her to rush to Stonehill Hospital. Her mother had been hurt.
Giving her a soft smile, he accepted the cup she held out to him even though the last thing he wanted was more coffee. Jenna had shown up with thermoses filled with “decent” coffee and platters of food. She and Mallory took up playing waiting-room hostesses, offering drinks and snacks, which seemed to stop them both from falling apart.
Even so, Marcus took Mallory’s hand and pulled her to the chair next to him. “Sit for a few minutes, kid. You’re wearing out the linoleum.”
They gave each other sad smiles as she eased into the hard plastic chair next to him. He thought for the thousandth time in the last five years how much Mallory looked like her mother. This time, though, the thought was like a fist clenching his heart. His stomach tightened as the vision of Annie lying on the floor, staring blankly through him, flashed through his mind again. He tried to contain it, but a sob ripped through him.
Mallory squeezed his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly and dragged his free hand under his eyes. “I just keep seeing her lying there.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t imagine how horrible that was.”
He shook his head to stop himself from saying more. She didn’t need to hear this. The poor kid was going through enough. Sniffing, he looked at his watch. Annie had been in surgery for over eight hours. What the hell was taking so long?
As if on cue, a woman walked in wearing scrubs. She was immediately crowded by O’Connells.
The look she gave them wasn’t encouraging.
Marcus’s breath caught as he stepped into the ICU. Paul and Matt had warned him, but he still wasn’t prepared for what he saw. Annie’s face was barely visible for the layers of gauze and all the tubes running from her bruised face and head.
Coma.
The word kept running through his mind, but it didn’t really sink in until he saw her.
Annie was in a coma, and they didn’t know how deep or how long or if she’d ever wake up. They really didn’t know anything.
Except that at this moment, right now, she was alive and that, in and of itself, was more than the surgical team had expected.
He tried to block the memory from filling his mind, but it rushed in. The sound of the shot. The smell of the gunpowder. The sight of Annie stumbling back, falling into his arms, her eyes staring at nothing as he called out to her.
“Jesus,” he choked out. “Oh, God.” Moving to the bed, he sank down in the hard chair and took her hand. He kissed it, closed his eyes, and cried.
Chapter Nine
Annie licked her parched lips. Damn, she was thirsty. A moment later, something cool and wet pressed against her lips. She sucked at it, pulling as much water as she could. She managed to get enough to barely count as a sip, but she swallowed the liquid gratefully.
“Annie?”
The man sounded like he was at the other end of a long tunnel. She tried to call out, but her own voice didn’t sound right.
“Annie, can you open your eyes?” someone else asked. This voice, thick with an accent—Polish, maybe—and quivering like an elderly man’s, said her name again as cold fingers settled on her forehead. Suddenly, her left eye filled with a light that was so bright it hurt. She winced and tried to fight the pressure keeping her eyelid open. Blessedly, he released his hold on her and the light faded, leaving starbursts behind her eyelid. But then the bastard did it again with her other eye.
“Annie,” the old Polish man said again, “can you squeeze my hand?”
The cold hand grabbed hers. She tried to pull away, but his cool skin still rested on hers. What the hell was going on?
“Annie, squeeze my hand. She’s moving.” He sounded far too excited about her achievement.
Of course she was moving. What was he talking about?
She wanted to look at him, but her damn eyes wouldn’t cooperate. She didn’t know how long she’d struggled before she finally was able to lift her eyelids, but it was long enough that she was tired of hearing the chatter around her. The voices were talking over each other, mixing and bouncing around in her brain. She couldn’t quite decipher one from another to understand what they were saying.
Her vision wasn’t much better. The figures looming over her were blurry and the room was so damned bright, but slowly she was able to focus. Marcus smiled like a goofball and looked as excited as the Polish man had sounded.
She tried to speak, but her mouth was so damned dry, like she’d eaten a pack of crackers without a drop of water to wash them down. And her body was so heavy, as if something were weighing her down.
What. The. Hell.
Panic washed over her like a tsunami. It came out of nowhere, and she was suddenly drowning in it.
What was happening? What was wrong with her? She looked around her
until she spotted a man. He was blurred, but she could tell he was wearing a white coat as he talked to a woman in pink scrubs.
Was she in the hospital? Breathing became more difficult as fear started to overtake her confusion. She was in the hospital. Something had happened. She gripped the hand that was holding hers as hard as she could.
“Annie,” Marcus said with a sickeningly patronizing tone, “you’re safe. You’re okay.”
She must have appeared as scared as she felt. He kissed her forehead and hugged her as much as it seemed he could with her lying in a bed.
“You’re okay. You’re just fine.”
Clearly she wasn’t. People didn’t insist that someone was okay that many times unless they weren’t. She scanned the room again. Her brothers? Mallory? She closed her eyes with frustration when she again failed to form the words she wanted to say.
Her confusion was heavy, like a blanket, as it pressed down on her. The more she tried to figure out what was going on, the foggier her mind became. She closed her eyes and welcomed the soothing darkness that surrounded her.
The next time Annie heard voices calling out to her, they came to her more clearly. Closer. Her mouth was still that sticky dry that reminded her of waking up after a night of too much drinking. She considered her eyelids for a few moments. They felt like bricks. Heavy and rough. Lifting them seemed impossible, but she finally managed. When she did, Marcus was standing over her.
It seemed that they’d gone through this before. This routine seemed familiar. Her waking up from what felt like a dead sleep with Marcus hovering, smiling like she’d done something amazing. She wanted to ask, but her parched mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
“Hey, Mal,” he said quietly. “Look who’s awake.”
And then Mallory was staring at her.
“Mom? Mom, can you hear me?”
Finally, Annie was able to make a garbled noise—not exactly what she had intended. Mallory sobbed and dropped her face. Marcus put his hand on Mallory’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you go find your uncles? I’m sure they’ll want to see your mom.”
Mallory sniffed and stood, still crying as she disappeared from Annie’s field of vision.
“She’s okay,” Marcus said, running his hand over Annie’s head. “So are you.”
But she wasn’t okay. She didn’t understand why but did understand that she was not okay, and that terrified her.
He must have been able to see the panic on her face, because he stroked her face and kissed her head. “You’re okay, Annie.”
Why did he keep saying that?
Another unrecognizable noise left her.
“Here,” he whispered as he put a damp rag to her mouth.
She pulled water from it, enough to wet her mouth, and closed her eyes as she struggled to swallow. Her muscles didn’t quite seem to know how. Finally, she managed to push the meager drink down and opened her mouth. He understood what she meant and put the cloth to her lips again.
Why was everything so confusing? She felt as if some barrier were keeping her from completely engaging in what was going on around her. Medicine head. That’s what it reminded her of. She felt like she’d had too much cold medicine on an empty stomach. Her brain just wasn’t connecting to reality properly.
Marcus glanced over his shoulder. “There’re some people here who want to see you.”
“Hey, you,” Matt said from Annie’s other side.
It took effort—too much effort—to find him. He took her hand, and she finally felt some measure of consolation. Having Marcus with her was comforting, but he wasn’t her brother. The O’Connell siblings were a unit. They were an unbreakable trio. Having Matt there made her feel one step closer to being whole. But where was Paul?
Another foreign noise left her.
She opened her mouth. Paul. His name was right there, in her throat, but it was stuck somehow. The word wouldn’t leave her. But then he said her name. Her gaze finally found him next to Matt.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” Paul said.
She tried again. Paul. Matt. Marcus. Why couldn’t she say their names? The warmth of tears trickled from her eyes and down her temples. Dear God, what was happening? She was trapped inside her own body—unable to speak, to move.
Her eyes slowly turned to Marcus, because, damn it, they couldn’t seem to move faster. She pleaded with him, as much as she could manage without speaking, to tell her what was happening.
He gave her that stupid reassuring look that they all seemed to be wearing. “You got hurt, Annie,” he said softly.
Hurt?
“But you’re okay,” Marcus said. “You’re safe now. Just take a few deep breaths, honey.”
She tried, but her heart was pounding and everything was so heavy, even her chest. She wanted to get up. Get out. Get away from whatever was happening. She tried, but her body didn’t do what she demanded. Looking at Marcus again, she made another of those stupid fucking noises.
“Sweetheart, I know you’re scared,” he said soothingly, “but I promise you are okay. Just try to relax. I’m here. Your brothers are here. We’re with you.”
She wanted to scream. Demand the truth. She just needed the truth. She wasn’t okay. She most definitely was not okay. And nobody, not even Marcus, was going to convince her otherwise. She turned her attention to the other side of the bed. Matt was looking down as Paul put his hand on his shoulder. They both looked upset. Which confirmed, in her mind, that she should be upset, too.
Paul leaned close to her. “Do you hear that beeping?”
She listened until she could focus enough to hear the rhythmic ping-ping of a machine.
“That’s your heart monitor.” He laughed softly. “It’s going a little bit crazy right now, Annie. If you don’t calm down, your nurse is going to come in here and kick us out for upsetting you. I know you’re scared. You have every right to be, but you’re not alone, and you’re not in any kind of danger. We’re all right here, and we are going to take care of you, so just take some breaths and do your best to calm down.”
She looked beyond him to her youngest brother. Matt nodded. Marcus agreed as well.
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. At first, her attention fell on the scruff of his unshaved face as it brushed over her skin, and then she noticed how pale he was, how red his eyes were. How aged he looked. His hair was longer than she remembered—not scraggly, just longer.
He looked unkempt. Marcus never looked unkempt.
Taking in her brothers’ appearances, she saw they were clearly tired. Stressed. Whatever was going on was bad. It was very bad.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled slowly, deeply, and let herself fall away.
Marcus stroked the hair from Annie’s face, smiling when she looked up at him. She licked her lips and visibly struggled to swallow.
“Thirsty?”
She nodded just enough for him to understand, and he grabbed the cup of ice chips a nurse had brought in. Most of them had melted, but he managed to fish out a few. She parted her lips, and he slipped the ice in her mouth. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
His movements stopped. Returning the cup to the table was no longer important.
She’d just spoken to him. Her whispered answer was barely discernible, but it was a word. A real word, not a grunt.
Hearing her voice lifted his spirits higher than anything else could have. The doctor continually cautioned Marcus and her family about getting too excited—the odds of her coming out of this unscathed were very slim—but he didn’t know Annie. Annie was a fighter, and there was no way she was going to just lie back and not do her damnedest to get better.
“The nurse went to get the doctor. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Confusion filled her eyes. “Doctor?”
Each time she woke, she seemed to be more aware, but each time was also the same. Confusion. Fear. Panic. Sleep. That was her cycle, but he hoped it was broken now that she was
actually speaking. He tried not to get his hopes up too high—he didn’t want them crushed—but she seemed to be there. To be seeing him, hearing him, communicating with him. That was more than the doctors thought they’d ever see from her again.
He traced his thumb lightly over the mark left from her surgery. “You got hurt, honey.”
“Hurt?”
“Yeah, but you’re on the road to recovery now.”
Her eyes drifted closed. He wanted to beg her to stay awake, to keep looking at him, but he didn’t have to. She blinked a few times, and he was certain that some of the fog in her mind cleared a little as she looked at him.
“Mal?”
“She’s home right now, but I’m going to call her in just a minute.” He grinned. “She’s going to lose her mind when she sees you.”
“My brothers.”
“Matt’s here. He’s getting coffee. I can go get him.”
She lightly squeezed his hand. “Wait.”
He glanced back when the door to her room opened. “This is Doctor Oritz. He’s been taking care of you.”
She moved her eyes around until she focused on the elderly man standing on the other side of her bed.
“Well, look at you,” he said in his thick accent. “How are you feeling, Annie?”
“Tired.”
He smiled and patted her hand. “I bet you are.”
Per the ritual, Oritz moved around Annie’s body, asking if she felt this and that as he poked and pressed on her, asking questions about her and her family and Marcus, and doing it all over again. This time, however, Annie was much more alert throughout the exam. She actually answered with words instead of sounds and nods.
Marcus’s heart was damn near the point of exploding with happiness by the time the doctor finished.
“You’re doing great, Annie,” he reassured her. “You’re doing just great.”
