Angel (Pieces #1.5)

by Canosa, Jamie

  “I’m coming to get you. Meet me outside.”

  “What happened?”

  That was something I would have rather left unsaid until I could do it in person, but I’d already stirred the pot just by calling her. I couldn’t leave her hanging until I got there. “Kiernan had another seizure. They took him to the hospital.”

  Neither of us were strangers to Kiernan’s seizures. We’d both witnessed them before, but this one just felt different. Maybe it was brotherly intuition. Maybe I’d been subconsciously picking up on changes in him for a while and part of me had been expecting this. I don’t know. Maybe it was the universe, trying to warn me about what was coming next. As though that could possibly make up for any of this.

  “Angel?” I don’t know how I knew. I simply knew. “It’s bad.”

  ***

  I drove like a raging lunatic the whole way to the hospital. I probably should have stopped. Or, at the very least, slowed down. Hell, I should have let Jade drive. She didn’t even have her license, but she couldn’t have put us in any more danger than I had.

  It didn’t seem to bother her. There was no backseat driving, no grabbing for the handle bar. In fact, she leaned forward in her seat the entire way, straining against her seatbelt as though that would somehow get us there faster.

  By some miracle, we made it to the hospital in one piece. Jade was prepared to continue the mad dash straight through the front doors, but I shackled her wrist before she could escape the car.

  “Angel . . . You heard me, right? This morning when he . . .” Memories of that god-awful scene would continue to haunt me for the rest of my life. “It’s bad, Jade.”

  “He’s had seizures before. I saw him have one and it looked really bad, but he was—”

  “This is different. This time . . .” This time I knew what was coming. I’d always imagined that losing Kiernan would be the greatest pain I’d ever have to suffer, but now I knew it. If only for a fraction of a second, I’d endured it. Felt the loss of a future that was never meant to be. Cheering him on as he crossed that stage on graduation day, having him stand beside me at my wedding, spoiling my nieces and nephews. Games, vacations, family barbeques. Things that were doomed to failure. Nonsense notions that led to nothing but disappointment and bitterness.

  My knuckles cracked when they collided with the steering wheel, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as hearing Jade yelp beside me like a kicked puppy.

  “I’m sorry. I’m . . .” I was such an idiot. She gaped at me across the car with wide, frightened eyes. I was screwing this up. Probably one of the most important things I’d do in my entire life, and I was already screwing it up. “You just . . . You need to be prepared because . . . I don’t know if he’s coming home this time.”

  There, I’d said it. Put voice to my greatest fear. And hers.

  Tears flooded Jade’s eyes, but she blinked them all away before a single one fell. “Cal?”

  “Angel?” My entire body vibrated with raw need. I needed her. God, how I needed her.

  “We can do this.” Her nose twitched as she sniffled back the last of her tears. Her tiny chin lifted a fraction of an inch and she looked me right in the eye. “We can do this. For Kiernan.”

  Strength and courage poured off of her and I soaked it in. She was giving that to me. Giving me what I needed most, the ability to support the people I loved. And, right that moment, I loved her for it.

  “You’re right. We can do this. We have to do this.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s inside. She rode in the ambulance with Kiernan.”

  “Alright.” She gave a gentle tug and I released her so she could finally open her door. “Let’s go find out what’s going on, and take it from there. One step at a time, okay?”

  “One step at a time.” Maybe I could do this, if I looked at it only one moment to the next. With Jade by my side, maybe I could do anything. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  Mom looked like something right out of the Walking Dead. Her hair was a knotted nest of snares and tangles. Her makeup painted her face in shades of blue and black and gray. It ran and smeared in random patterns until she looked like a walking, talking piece of abstract art.

  “Mrs. Parks?” Jade approached with caution. She was timid and as fragile as the rest of us felt, but she took that first step. And it freed my feet from the cement shoes they’d been encased in, allowing me to do the same.

  “Oh, Jade. Cal. You made it.”

  “Where is he?” I took Mom’s arm and escorted her away from the desk, where a line was beginning to form, to find a place to sit.

  “They’re looking at him now. They won’t tell me anything. They just keep saying—”

  I knew what they kept saying. The same things they always said. “You know how this works, Mom. They do the same thing every time. No use making yourself crazy over it.”

  Hollow words coming from the complete basket case I was. It was true, this was just like every other time. Except . . . it wasn’t. And I wasn’t sure I could handle that.

  “Hey, Cal.” Jade glanced over my shoulder at something near the far wall. “Why don’t you get us all some coffee, while your mom and I make a run to the bathroom?”

  “I don’t think I—”

  “If anyone comes with news, I’ll come get you right away.” I knew what Mom was afraid of, but I wasn’t about to let her pass up this opportunity. She was in desperate need of a moment to regroup. And, truthfully, so was I.

  “See? It’s okay. Come on.” Jade took her arm and eased her from the chair like you would an elderly person. “Come with me. We’ll only be a minute.”

  Mom looked like one, shuffling down the hall beside her. I watched them go. Angel never once let go of her arm.

  Three paper cups sat on the floor by my feet, while I rubbed at the ache in the back of my neck. The coffee machine was out of milk, and creamer, and sugar, and pretty much everything else. I hoped Jade didn’t mind drinking it black.

  Mom more closely resembled a human being when they returned from the ladies room. She even managed to force a smile onto her face as she accepted her cup. And then, we did the only thing we could do.

  We waited.

  ***

  My phone battery was nearly dead from how often I’d turned it on just to check the time before a doctor finally came to talk with us.

  “Mrs. Parks?”

  “Yes.” We all stood to greet the short, blonde woman in the white coat. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Parks. And this is my son. And my daughter.”

  Jade gasped and I wanted to reach out and squeeze her. She was a part of our family. Permanently. I hoped like hell that she knew nothing could ever change that.

  “Let’s have a seat, shall we?”

  We sat and she talked. The longer she talked, the dizzier I felt. I don’t know when all the medical mumbo-jumbo stopped sounding like a foreign language and started to make sense, but it did. And I was right.

  Things were worse.

  Things were a lot worse.

  At some point, I reached out and held on to Jade. I didn’t think about it, I just did it. She probably had no idea what we were talking about, but I needed to hold on to something. And she was it.

  “He’s been moved upstairs to a private room and he can have visitors, but I must insist on only one at a time.”

  Jade stiffened beside me and I knew what she was thinking. I felt it growing inside of her. That vicious, twisted, pitiless thing called ‘hope’.

  Eighteen

  “You know this doesn’t change anything, right?”

  Mom had gone with the doctor to see Kiernan, leaving Jade and I alone in yet another waiting room. At least this one was private. No crying children. No old men hacking up a lung in your lap. Just me, and Jade, and silence so loud it was deafening.

  “What I said in the car—”

  “He’s awake, Cal. She said he’s awake.”

  “Yes, she did.” It was probably the cruele
st thing that had come out of the doctor’s mouth. “But did you hear what else she said? Did you understand any of it?”

  “Not really.”

  “She agrees that this time is worse. That Kiernan is worse.”

  “Did she say he won’t get better?”

  “No. Of course not. She can’t say that because she can’t know that.” And because medicine is essentially a business. One that thrives and feeds on false hope. I wanted to be a doctor, but I swore to myself right then that I would never, ever sugarcoat anything for anyone. People needed to know the truth. No matter how painful it was.

  “Then neither can you.” Jade was in denial. A dangerous place to be. Instead of bracing herself for the truth, preparing for impact, she was going to be blindsided by it.

  “Angel . . .” All of my energy seemed to abandon me at once. It would have been easy to let it go. To stop arguing and let Jade tell herself whatever she wanted to. But that would have been crueler than making her hear me. “I’m not saying this to upset you. And I’m not telling you not to have hope. I’m just trying to warn you that this may not turn out the way everyone wants it to. I know there’s no way to prepare for that. I’ve been trying to find a way for a year. It doesn’t exist. But there will come a time when we have to face it. And if that time came, and caught you off-guard . . . I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay, my ass. I could see her reinforcing those walls around her heart, refusing to let my words sink in.

  Mom’s return was the first blow to Jade’s barricade of denial. She staggered into the room, pale faced, with this distant stare that I doubt even saw us sitting there. She looked . . . defeated.

  I felt the emotional strike it dealt. Felt the reverberations shudder through Jade’s body.

  Her gaze was fixated on Mom, horrified by what she saw, what it meant, yet unable to look away. Feeling some of that strength return—some of that strength she’d given me—I turned her to look at me, instead.

  “Hang in there, Angel. You want to go next?”

  “No.” She sucked in a deep lungful and shook her head. “You’re his brother. You should go.”

  “Are you sure?” The color was beginning to drain from her own face. Maybe if she talked to him . . . “I can wait if you want to see him.”

  “I’m okay. You go.”

  It was a physical effort to force myself out of that chair. I was no more ready to face this than she was, but time wasn’t standing still and we couldn’t afford to waste a single second of it.

  I’d only made it halfway to standing before Jade’s warm fingers wrapped around my wrist, pulling me back down. “We can do this, right?”

  Brushing away some of the silky smooth strands from her face, I found the ability to smile at her. We had this weird symbiotic relationship. Each of us feeding off of whoever happened to be stronger. At the moment, that was me again. “Yeah, Angel. We can do this.”

  “The open door on the left.” Mom’s voice was robotic. She pointed down the hallway behind her without even looking at me.

  “Mom?”

  “Go. Talk to your brother.” She continued forward toward Jade and I let her go, trusting an Angel to watch over one member of my family, while I went to check on the other.

  The room was cold. Not just temperature wise, but a bone deep chill of foreboding crept over me as I stepped inside.

  Kiernan was lying in one of those stiff, mechanical beds with the stupid side railings. Like sick people were too dumb to remember how not to fall off their mattress. It’s not that I’d never seen him in one before, but this time there were cords and wires still attached to him that were normally removed before we were allowed into the room. Cords and wires I doubted deep in my gut would ever be removed.

  “Hey, bro. How are you feeling?”

  He struggled to sit up straighter as I crossed the room.

  “I’m fi—” He took a second look at me and rethought his answer. “I’m tired. I feel really, really tired.”

  He looked it, too. In fact, he looked a lot like Mom. Defeated. I wondered if I looked the same. But Kiernan would never really be defeated. He couldn’t be. He’d fought so hard for so long . . . No matter what the outcome, he’d already won. Each and every day since his diagnosis had been a victory. And to the victor went the spoils. In this case, the spoils might just be some long overdue peace.

  “Do you want to rest? I can . . .” I hooked my thumb toward the door, but Kiernan shook his head.

  “No. Stay. There’s something I have to talk to you about.”

  “Okay.” I pulled up the chair beside his bed and settled in. “What’s up?”

  “What you said the other day . . . at Jade’s . . . about being there for her. Did you mean it?”

  “What?”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “Yes. Of course I meant it. Where is this coming from, Kier?”

  “I just . . . I need to know. I need to know she’s going to be alright. I have to.”

  “She’ll be alright.”

  His eyes met mine and though he’d been struggling to keep them open only moments before, his gaze held steady. “Swear it.”

  “Kiernan—”

  “Swear it, Cal. Swear you’ll take care of her. Swear you’ll be there for her. She’s stronger than she thinks, but I don’t want to leave her alone. No one should be all alone. Swear you’ll protect her. Even from herself. That you won’t let anything bad happen to her. Swear, Cal. Please.”

  I looked into my brother’s watery eyes and saw the fear behind the sorrow. He was so afraid. My little brother was terrified, and there was very little I could do to make it better.

  So I did what I could. I swore.

  And it sickened me to my soul that I didn’t do it entirely for him.

  “Thanks, bro.” Some of the more immediate panic eased away and he settled back onto the hard pillow. “Do you think you could send her in here? I really need to talk to her.”

  “Of course. I’ll go get her. You rest.”

  “Thanks, Cal.” Kiernan reached out and grabbed my arm as I rose to go. His grip was so weak, I wanted to grab his hand and hold it, and promise to never leave his side. “Cal? I mean it. Thank you. For everything. I know what you’ve done. I know you stepped up when Dad left. I know you gave up everything to move here. I know I put you through hell.”

  “Kiernan, you never—”

  “And you never once complained. You never got mad. You could have left, too. You could have gone away to college. You could have stayed at home with your friends. But you didn’t. All you’ve done for the past year-and-a-half has been for me and Mom. I know I didn’t always act like it, but . . . I wanted you to know that I know it. And that it means more than you can ever know.”

  My little brother—the one human being on the planet that it was my duty to protect—laid in that damn hospital bed, staring up at me through tear-filled eyes. He was fighting a losing battle. I was watching him get pummeled and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I wanted to reach inside his body and tear out that tumor with my bare hands. Stand between it and him, and refuse to let it have him. Not my brother. I wanted to beg it to take me, instead. There was so much more Kiernan could do in this life. More than I could ever hope to. He had people who counted on him. Who needed him. I was nobody. Lost. Confused. Angry. Nothing. Why was it fair that I lived when he didn’t get to?

  Then he did the most unexpected thing. Kiernan threw his arms around my waist and he hugged me. He hugged me with all of his strength and he must have borrowed some of mine, as well, because my legs gave out and I sank down to kneel on the floor beside his bed. Memories of him as a snot-nosed kid, running around, driving me mad, played through my mind as he buried his face in my neck.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was speechless. So I just held onto him as hot tears soaked my skin.

  “You’re my hero, Cal.”

  No. His
words tore through me like a razor blade. Anger welling fast in their wake. No, dammit, I was no one’s hero. I was a failure. As a brother. As a son. As a friend. I’d failed. All of them.

  “You’ve got that backward, little brother. You’re the hero here.” A shudder that I couldn’t suppress wracked my body. “I love you, Kiernan.”

  “I love you, too, Cal.”

  ***

  When I left his room, I knew. I knew I’d seen my brother for the last time. Spoken to him for the last time. Touched him . . . for the last time.

  I went straight to the closest bathroom, locked the door, braced myself against the cold porcelain sink, and I breathed. Anything more, anything less, and I wouldn’t have survived. So I just breathed. The scent of piss and Clorox filled my nose, and still I breathed. Deeply. Again and again. Reminding myself that I could.

  I was going to survive this day. Life was going to go on from here. I just couldn’t see how other than one moment at a time. The first of which included getting Jade into that room where Kiernan was waiting for her.

  I startled her when I stepped into the waiting room, and she stared up at me with this crushing combination of hope and dread. Her shields were up, but they were practically transparent. “How are you feeling?”

  She took a moment to think that over. A range of emotions flickered over her face, but the one she settled on was, “Helpless.”

  There wasn’t a more perfect word in any language to accurately describe exactly how this felt. “Yeah. Me, too. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.” Bullshit. She was nowhere close to ‘ready’. None of us were. “I’m ready.”

  “Last door on the left.” But whether or not we were ready, this was going to happen. “And, Jade?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take a breath before you open the door.”

  It was pointless. I was trying to prepare her for something I, myself, wasn’t prepared for. Something there was no way to prepare for. We were all about to hit a brick wall, head-on. And we were going to do it full speed ahead.

  ***

  “Caulder?”

  I blinked and realized I’d been staring at nothing for what felt like a long time. Mom was sitting beside me and I hadn’t even seen her come in.