by Nicky Shanks
***
“He’s crashing!”
“Get his heart back online!”
“We’re losing him! Come on, get those fucking paddles on him!”
“I have to repair this tear while he’s open…I have to keep going. I said get those paddles on him right now!”
“But, don’t you see—”
“I see it, dammit! Do what I tell you to do!”
I think about my mother.
How could she possibly know about this?
Where the hell has she been for twenty years?
The only time I ever heard about her was when my grandfather complained that he was still paying her money because of me.
She’s here for money.
Julie is smarter than that—she won’t let her in.
My Julie.
***
“Yeah?” I hear her say from a room at the end of a hallway. I sit in a home office and lean back in a chair so comfortable that I don’t want to stand up.
“Where are you?” I yell for her and hear a shuffle from above me in the attic.
Her sneeze leads me toward the ladder that touches the floor. When I make my way up, I see her taking things from a large chest and throwing them next to her in a frenzy.
“Where are they?” She shakes her head and I step next to her, dodging her flailing arms that come inches within my face.
“What are you looking for?” I ask. She huffs and sits down cross-legged on the floor.
Her eyes are tired as she looks up at me. “I put Colin’s journals up here so we wouldn’t lose them, and look…I freaking lost them!”
She starts to cry, but I smile and sit next to her. “Don’t cry, baby.” I wipe the fat teardrops from her cheeks. “The journals are safe…I sent them to be rebound. No need to cry.”
Her tears stop and are replaced by giggles. “I just didn’t want you to lose the only thing you have left of him.”
My chest starts to burn and it feels like someone has punched a hole straight through my body, setting my chest cavity on fire. I feel myself screaming and thrashing around—
I’m fucking awake.
***
I thrash around on the operating table and several pairs of arms try to hold me down. They all yell at each other frantically.
“What the hell? He’s awake…he’s awake!”
“Get him sedated again!”
I hear a blood-curdling scream fill the room and realize…
It’s coming from me.
I can feel the openness of my torso, the chill that surrounds me and tries to suffocate me while I scream. I start gasping for air and I can literally feel the life draining from my body as they all scramble frantically around me, tripping over each other in the process. Dodging my flailing arms, they are trying to save me from more pain, but it’s not working.
I still can’t see a damn thing.
“He ripped out his IV!”
“Get it back in him! Now!”
“I’m trying! His arms are moving too much—hold him down!”
“Mr. Jackson, please stay still, okay? We need to sedate you again.”
“Don’t make him have a heart attack, just put the damn needle—”
Silence.
Where is everyone?
Where are all of the voices?
Where are all the doctors and nurses?
Where the fuck am I?
I’m alone…that’s where I am.
I miss Julie.
Is she biting her fingernails and anxiously waiting for me to wake up? I have no doubt that she’s tried her best not to fall to pieces; I hate that she’s under so much stress. That isn’t good for her body or the baby.
Our baby.
Is there a baby?
I’m breaking so many rules now that I can’t keep up.
Rules between the living and the dead.
I broke my second rule and I took life for granted.
My father is rolling over in his grave knowing that I won’t be there for my kid…if there is one.
“Finally, he’s back online. Gave us quite a scare there, Mr. Jackson.”
“Let’s get this over with so he doesn’t flatline again.”
I listen as they work on my insides but I feel nothing. I’m back to just hearing their voices and wondering what the hell is going on. As long as they can fix me and send me back to Julie, I’m fine with whatever they’re doing to me. I laugh at myself—obviously no one can hear me—because this shit is torture. I know I’ve done some messed-up shit in my life, but this…this is fucking torture.
I don’t deserve to die.
Breaking the rules shouldn’t have this much punishment.
I have to get back to Julie.
She needs me.
I need her.
We need each other.
I’d like to think that Julie can’t even live life without me, but that’s a little too real to think about right now, inches from death. I thought death was supposed to be graceful and filled with bright lights and comforting music playing over loudspeakers as you walk toward the white marble gates to meet your maker.
So far…nothing like that has happened.
I’m just stuck in between.
I’m not coming or going.
I’m not living or staying dead.
It’s crazy being this alone. I could probably hear a pin drop from miles away with how quiet it is in my head. I can’t even hear the doctors around me anymore, but I can feel my life still clinging onto me.
I start to make a mental list of things I’m going to do when I wake up.
A new set of life rules, maybe.
First, I’m going to tell Julie I love her every single fucking day.
Second, I’m going to write Julie into my will.
Third, I’m going to ask Julie to marry me and never let her go.
Lastly, I’m going to run my tragic mess of a mother off without giving her the money that she wants.
I wonder why I haven’t had any memories of my grandfather. I think about moving into his house after my dad died, and I hardly saw him the first month I lived there. Anita, the maid, was the only contact I had with him. She would always lie to me and tell me he was out of town on business, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was shacking up with someone he shouldn’t be—somewhere he shouldn’t be.
It wasn’t hard to figure out Victor Jackson.
There were a few times where I seriously should’ve been taken away by CPS, but nothing happened that was worse than what my mother did to me. I remember Greta Miller’s eighteenth birthday party that I hosted at my grandfather’s mansion; I distinctly remember him snorting a line of cocaine and having sex with Greta’s married mother in the hot tub—not even a hundred feet from the party and her own daughter.
That was good ol’ Vic for you.
I hardly remember his face anymore, really; I do remember the awful stench of his whiskey and cigars that smelled like mint cloves and oranges so badly that I had to have his house steam cleaned from top to bottom before I sold it.
I wonder where Anita ended up.
I know where Mrs. Atchley is; I made sure she was taken care of when Vic died. I bought her an apartment down the hall from mine so she could be close.
I owe Mrs. Atchley my life.
“Okay, let’s get him stitched back up.”
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
“That’s good, keep going. Be careful not to move him too much; it’s imperative that he doesn’t rip those stitches.”
“There, he’s all done.”
I hear sighs of relief and cheers from the distant crowd. The doctors and nurses around me laugh with each other and tell me what a good job I did…even though my eyes are still glued shut and they don’t know I can actually hear them.
“Mr. Jackson?” I hear the second-voice nurse say to me. “I’ll let your wife know you’re out of surgery and she can see you soon, okay?”
Thank you,
second voice.
It’s still cold around my body, but I can hear the beeps of my monitors so I know I’m still alive. He’s fixed what he went in for; I might have a fighting chance now.
“You heard the doctor, everyone. He wants us to monitor Mr. Jackson for the next day so he doesn’t rip out his stitches. We can take him out of sedation around that time.”
Yes! When can I fucking go home?
“I’m going to let his wife know he made it through.”
“Sure thing, Mary.”
Mary. Second voice’s name is Mary.
I’m going to give Mary a huge bonus when I wake up.
When I wake up!
My possibilities might be endless again soon.
“Okay, let’s get him to recovery. His heart is still pretty weak, but that will change hopefully as his organs start to heal.”
The people transporting me chatter about the surgery and what was going on the entire time. Little do they know I’m aware of everything that happened.
“No one can explain it, man. It was like his body just said, ‘Wake the fuck up,’ and then he just…woke the fuck up.” A man chuckles. “Poor bastard…I hope he wasn’t in too much pain, though. That shit can’t be just a bee sting, ya know? He’s lucky he didn’t code and die in there.”
Another man laughs and I shiver inside. I know that laugh from somewhere.
“Yeah, this little shit’s lucky, all right.”
Mac.
Holy shit, that’s Mac.
I pass out as the other guy says something about me having magical powers because I didn’t die. I’m more focused on why that asshole is helping transport me into a damn recovery room. This can’t fucking be good.
I wake back up in a quiet room; I still can’t see a damn thing because my eyes won’t function, but I don’t hear any shuffling or talking around me.
I really need to wake up now.
Chapter Eighteen
Casey
The moment Nora told me we were over was it for me—the one moment that everyone has when they realize they’ve majorly screwed themselves out of something good. No matter what they do—or how hard they try—nothing can bring back that happiness.
I did that to myself.
I self-sabotaged everything with her after chasing her for over three months. I played every little cat-and-mouse jealousy game she managed to throw at me. I learned her quirks and her mood swings, and for what? Nothing feels worse than knowing I stand in the way of my own damn happiness.
Now there’s Julie.
And Lucy.
More importantly…Julie.
I don’t know why I do this to myself; I know I can’t have her. I know that I’ll always be staring at her when I can and thinking about Oliver touching her when I want it to be me. Even now, as I lie in the darkness of Oliver’s apartment waiting for the sun to rise, I think about her. Oliver doesn’t know how lucky he is to have someone like her.
Even in high school, I was never one to dwell on something for too long. Oliver always got the girls while I was left to catch the ones that had time to kill before he got to them. I’m a few years younger than him, which made it even more exciting—and harder to swallow sometimes.
Well, not anymore.
I want someone to just…love.
Someone I can get close with and keep for more than a week at my side—someone who I don’t have to worry about anything with except for how happy I can make her. I want someone to laugh with and share inside jokes…someone who looks at me like Julie looks at Oliver. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m not jealous of Oliver, but jealous of what they have together. It’s hard to see people happy when you’re doomed to be miserable.
I know deep down that I have no chance with her. But that’s not going to stop me from thinking about it every damn second.
I try and focus on Lucy. Her vibrant red hair is sexy…I do like that. Her wide lips pout out without her even trying, and she tantalized me with the way she licked them when she caught me looking over at her in the car.
After we hung up hours ago, she sent me a smiley face and I had to force myself to put down the phone and let her think about me overnight.
Will she even think about me?
Will she even remember me?
What has Nora done to me?
What have I done to myself?
I feel so pathetic and alone right now.
I think back to Lake Reed and how happy Nora and I were.
How happy we were supposed to be.
I can’t believe this is who I am now.
I care about everything while caring about nothing at all.
The hours tick by slowly as the sun grazes the halfway open curtains. I email the detective sometime during the early morning and he answers around six with the details of the wreck. I text Harley and arrange for one of his shop guys to fetch the Jeep from the police lot just in case Oliver wants it back for some reason. I get up and gather the things Julie asked for and take a look around the apartment before leaving.
This should all be mine.
There are things that Oliver doesn’t know that I do know.
My phone rings as I get into my car and my heart skips, hoping it’s Julie.
No, hoping it’s Lucy.
“Hey, it’s Harley.” I frown because it’s not one of the girls. Disgusted with myself for even thinking that, I try and shake them both from my head. “Is Ollie okay, man? I got his Jeep and fuck man, this thing is wrecked. Was he drunk? I know when I left him at The Tavern he was smashed.”
My eyes narrow. “When were you guys at The Tavern?”
I can hear his lumberjack fingertips pounding on the front counter of his shop. “Two nights ago, but when I left he was with some chick and she seemed sober enough.”
“You left him with some girl? Was it Julie?”
Harley sighs. “No, it wasn’t. I warned him, man. I tried to get him to let me take him home, but he wasn’t havin’ it. So, is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” I hiss. “I haven’t talked to Julie this morning. I’ve been busy helping her out…you know, since she’s his fucking girlfriend.”
“Hey, don’t be pissed at me. I tried to tell him.”
I know Harley likes casual flings, but I know he likes Julie too. He always encouraged Oliver to be with her because she’s so good for him.
But she could be good for me too.
“He’s getting surgery to repair some tears in his lung, so I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I find out,” I say. I want to throat punch him through the phone. “Is the Jeep too fucked up to salvage? I really want to do something special for Julie right now.”
He sucks in hard air and blows it out slowly. I know I slipped and said something that might tip him off on my sudden infatuation with a woman who’s not mine. “Yeah, this thing is too messed up. I’ll text you the number of my rental guy…they’ll need a car. Ollie won’t like it if you replace his Jeep permanently for him.”
“I know that.”
I pull the phone from my ear and get ready to hang up on him. The way he nonchalantly accuses me of being a bad friend grinds my insides. I can’t even believe after all the advocacy he’s done for Julie that he’d allow Oliver to cheat on her. For a split second, I think about using this to my advantage, but Oliver is still my best friend—no matter how much I think I want her.
“Hey, Casey?” Harley’s voice booms. “That other part…can you just forget—”
“—Already forgotten,” I say, and I do hang up on him this time. I focus my energy on driving to the hospital and what I might walk into when I get there. My phone makes a dinging noise as I pull into the parking lot, and I don’t bother checking it until I walk into the main entrance where it’s warm.
Lucy: Good morning. How did you sleep?
A goofy smile grows on my lips. Okay, I can handle this. I blush, looking around to make sure no one is watching me and edging in on my private thoughts. I throw the bag I stuf
fed all the things Julie asked for over my shoulder to answer her.
Casey: I had a lot of stuff going through my head. Sleep wasn’t one of them.
The security guard eyes me as I pass him and push the elevator button. When I step inside and look back at him, he tips his gray hat toward me as an indication that I’m doing something right in life for once.
Thank you, random security guard.
Lucy: I’m sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?
I smile and hear the elevator ding.
Casey: Can I take you to dinner tonight? I’m checking on my friend right now.
Lucy: Pick me up at eight?
Casey: It’s a date.
I shove the phone into my jeans and smile bigger. When the elevator door opens, my smile fades and panic settles in my bones.
Julie.
She’s standing in front of the doors. Her face is pale and stained with tears. I step out to meet her and reach out for her, my fingertips grazing her arm. “What’s wrong? Is he okay?” I search her eyes, but they’re so tired that I can’t tell what’s happening. “Julie, tell me he’s okay.” She lets out a deep breath and falls into me, clutching me around the waist and sobbing into my shirt. “Please tell me what’s going on.” I stroke her head.
Her grip tightens on me and I know I have to let her go.
“He made it,” she whispers. “He made it through the surgery.”
I pull away and look down at her; the tears in her eyes are happy ones. I want to use my thumb to wipe them away so damn bad. She flings her arms around me again and I hold her as tight as I can…knowing that I’ll never have this chance again without Oliver’s watchful eyes on me. He’ll be able to see right through me at first glance.
“I told you he’d be okay.” I smile and tuck her hair behind her ear. “He wasn’t going to leave you like that.”
She wipes her eyes and they sparkle like sunlight on the ocean. “I’m glad you were here for me, Casey. I don’t know what I would have done without you. You’re one of my best friends; I’m so happy I have you in my life.” Her lips touch my cheek and it takes every single ounce of restraint I have not to move my head and let her lips graze mine. I know that once I go there, I won’t be able to come back from it. She’s not like Heather, though; she won’t hold it over my head for years.
