The Christmas Vigil

by Chris Taylor

  The door to the ICU opened and his mother hurried out. Riley stepped forward, but she averted her gaze.

  “Mom! How is he?”

  She looked up. Tears shimmered in her eyes. Riley’s gut clenched at the pain and sadness and deep concern that shadowed their bright blue depths. As if beyond words, she shook her head in silence and rushed past him, headed in the direction of the elevators. A moment later, he heard the elevator ding and watched as she stepped inside and disappeared from sight.

  A few minutes later, the doctor Riley had briefly spoken to earlier filled the doorway of the ICU and came toward him, his face grim. The fear Riley had done his best to keep at bay for the last hour surged through him.

  “Commander Munro,” the doctor greeted him.

  “Riley. Please, call me Riley.”

  “Riley.” The doctor nodded. “I’m Jordan Holland, one of the ICU registrars. Sorry, I didn’t have time to introduce myself earlier. We were a little…busy. I wanted to catch your mother, but she left before I could speak to her. I told you your father’s had a ruptured brain aneurysm. I wanted to make sure you understand what that means.”

  Riley nodded. A block of concrete lodged itself in his gut. He swallowed against the panic and tried to answer. “Isn’t that some kind of bleed?”

  “Yes. Aneurysms occur when there’s a weakness in the artery wall and when they rupture it causes a bleed. They can appear anywhere, but in your father’s case, there’s been a thinning of the blood vessel near the base of his brain, forming a ballooning where pressure builds. Today, it decided to rupture.”

  Riley stared at the doctor. He looked about Riley’s age. The man sported thick, dark hair that was in need of a cut and looked like he’d run his hand through it more than once. His brown eyes were serious, but Riley saw the kindness in them…and the fatigue. It couldn’t be easy working in such a high-risk area of medicine, where life and death often hung in the balance.

  Riley closed his eyes and braced himself for what he had to know. A moment later, he opened his eyes and forced the question through his lips. “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes, but he remains unconscious. The surgery went well. We located the source of the rupture and have repaired it. We’ve also managed to stop the bleeding. He’s still showing signs of normal brain activity, but at this stage, we can’t tell what kind of long-term damage he’s sustained, if any. I believe he was unconscious for a couple of hours, maybe more, before he was discovered. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

  “He will wake up, though, won’t he?”

  The doctor shrugged. “I’d like to hope so, but it’s too early to tell. We’re going to monitor him closely and see how it goes.”

  “C-can I see him?” Riley asked.

  “Yes, of course, although we’re restricting his visitors to one at a time for now and for no more than a few minutes each.”

  “Thank you. The nurse told us. I promise I won’t be long.”

  The doctor nodded and appeared satisfied with Riley’s answer. “Follow me, I’ll show you the way.”

  Within moments, Riley was inside the quiet, sterile environment that was the ICU. The only sounds came from the beeping of the machines that stood beside every patient and the occasional, low murmur of voices from staff. The room was large and open and well lit. Riley supposed that the patients in the beds were mostly unconscious and wouldn’t know day from night anyway.

  The nurses’ station was positioned in the middle of the room and afforded a view of every bed. His father’s was the closest.

  “He’s right here,” the doctor said quietly, indicating Riley’s father with a slight movement of his head. “I’ll leave you with him.”

  “Thank you,” Riley muttered, barely able to concentrate on anything other than the man who lay in the bed. His head was swathed in bandages. Tubes protruded from his arms. Another one went up his nose. A large tube, attached to a respirator, filled his mouth. He was ashen and still. He looked like death had already come to claim him.

  Riley stared at the man he loved and admired more than any other and was still shocked by what Joel had told him. He felt just as strongly as his mother that somehow, they’d got it wrong. Despite the evidence pointing to the contrary, it was inconceivable his father could be having an affair.

  He clung to his knowledge of the man who laid so deathly pale in the bed. His father was his idol, his inspiration. It had always been that way. Out of all the Munro children, Riley looked the most like his aboriginal father. He’d taken strength and courage from his father’s achievements to help him get through the difficult times when schoolyard bullies had been less than kind about the color of his skin.

  Now that he was an adult, his bi-racial heritage was no longer an issue, but as a child and a gawky, uncertain teenager, he’d held onto the realization that his father had faced similar challenges, and maybe worse, and had risen far above that. It had given Riley the strength and determination to do the same.

  Riley was proud of the man he’d become and of the life he’d made. At thirty, he’d been the youngest ever New South Wales Police Officer to be appointed to the position of Local Area Commander. Three years on and he was the loving husband of his beautiful Kate and the proud father of Daisy and Rosie. The twins were were the center of his world. He couldn’t imagine doing anything to hurt them. They were his family; they were his life. And his father would feel the same about them…surely?

  The evidence was purely circumstantial and facts could be made to lie. Couldn’t they? He was a detective, trained to observe and draw logical conclusions from the circumstances in the absence of any other explanation, but he refused to accept there was any truth to his father’s infidelity, despite what had been discovered in the hotel.

  He thought of his mother’s reaction to the news and it pained him anew. It was obvious the woman his father had been expecting wasn’t her. The news had blindsided her as much as it had blindsided Riley. But if not her, then who? And why?

  Renewed despair and frustration rushed through him and he had to turn away. With clenched fists, he tried to breathe through the pain. “You need to wake up, Dad,” he gasped. “You need to tell us what happened.”

  The list of incriminating items found in the hotel room spun madly through his head, over and over in a blur of black and white words until it was all he could do not to cry out. With a ragged breath, he turned back to face the man in the bed, wanting to shake him, to demand answers, to demand the truth. But his father remained unmoved, pasty and still and silent, except for the machines that kept him alive.

  A sob escaped Riley’s tightly compressed lips. Tears burned behind his eyes. He blinked hard, refusing to let them fall.

  “Don’t leave us hanging like this, Dad. We need you to wake up. We need you to tell us the truth.” With gritted teeth and clenched fists, he stumbled away, unable to stand by another moment. He headed back in what he hoped was the direction he’d entered. Finding the exit, he shouldered the door open.

  He staggered into the corridor and gasped in relief to be out of there, away from the sickness, away from the pain, away from the questions that hammered in his head—the questions his father might never get to answer. The phone in his pocket vibrated against his chest and he snatched at it with fingers gone clumsy from shock and from grief. He checked the Caller ID and had to lean against the nearest wall for support.

  It was Clayton. His twin.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Clayton

  Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

  Clayton rubbed at the ache in his shoulder and tried to concentrate on the thick file in front of him. A monster was luring a string of young Canberra girls into their clutches and then savagely beating them to death. As a senior profiler with the Australian Federal Police, he’d been asked to put together a profile of the perpetrator, but try as he might, today his mind wouldn’t stay focused.

  It might have had something to do with the stupid argumen
t he’d had with his wife, Ellie, that morning or the fact that all three of his young children had been up half the night ill with a virus, but the sense of foreboding had been with him since lunchtime and no matter how hard he tried, he’d been unable to shake it. Giving in to the urge to call his twin, he picked up the phone and dialed Riley’s number. It seemed to ring forever before it was eventually answered.

  “Hey, Clay, how are you?”

  Clayton frowned at Riley’s subdued tone. “Not bad, big brother. For a moment there, I didn’t think you were going to answer.” He stretched out in his chair and stacked his boots on his desk. When his twin didn’t reply with his usual quick banter, Clayton’s sense of unease went into overdrive. He sat up straight and took a deep breath, refusing to believe it could be anything serious. He was being stupid, overly sensitive and beyond tired. That’s all it was.

  Despite the silent reassurances, he wasn’t convinced. “Talk to me, Riles. What’s wrong?”

  The silence lengthened. Dread began to form in the pit of Clayton’s gut. He heard Riley’s quick intake of breath. A moment later, his brother spoke.

  “I-I was just about to call you. It’s Dad. He…he’s been taken to the hospital. He’s not good.”

  Clayton’s heart pounded so hard he could barely hear Riley’s words. Fear rushed through his veins and dried the saliva in his mouth. He swallowed and tried to speak. “W-what happened?”

  “The doctor says he suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. An artery blew out and caused a bleed. We…we don’t know much more than that. He’s been unconscious since they brought him in.”

  “Shit.” Clayton shook his head in disbelief. “Is he okay? I mean, he’s not going to die or anything, is he?”

  “At this point he’s in the ICU, recovering from emergency surgery and they don’t know anything for sure. He still has normal brain activity, which is a good sign, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Images of his father—tall and broad shouldered, a mountain of a man—ran through Clayton’s head. Larger than life and fit as a bull, he couldn’t imagine him lying sick and helpless—maybe even dying. No, not dying. He refused to believe that.

  “Where is he?” he asked, instinctively reaching for his keyboard. He needed to book a flight.

  “He’s at the base hospital in Grafton.”

  “Where’s Mom? She must be going out of her mind. Was she the one who found him?”

  Again, the silence stretched between them. A fresh wave of foreboding held Clayton immobile. His fingers froze on the keyboard.

  “Riley? Talk to me. Where’s Mom? What the fuck’s happened?” He couldn’t keep the urgency out of his voice, or his escalating fear. His hand clenched the phone so tightly, he was afraid it might snap.

  His brother sighed heavily and Clayton’s anxiety ratcheted up another notch. Before he could speak again, Riley answered him.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Clayton’s mind was still reeling with shock. He’d listened while Riley recounted the events up to the time his father collapsed and he was stunned beyond speech. It couldn’t be true. No matter what the facts were, it couldn’t be true. His parents had been married four decades. They were wholly devoted to each other. It had always been that way.

  As a teenager and even as a young adult, he’d sometimes envied their closeness. They were often so totally and completely focused on one another, there were times when it seemed there was no one else but them. It wasn’t that he hadn’t felt loved. All his life, he’d known that he very much mattered to both of them and with seven loud and rambunctious children in the house, it had taken a couple of very special people to ensure each one of them felt valued. Somehow, his parents had managed it.

  His mom and dad understood their children’s struggles and had been just as devastated as Clayton had been when he lost his first wife at a young age to suicide. And later, when he found Ellie, the love and support from his parents and their sheer happiness for him had been nearly overwhelming. They were his yardstick for measuring his success—as a husband, as a father, as a friend. Without even being aware of it, even now they pushed him onward and upward, and he was always challenging himself to be the best man he could possibly be.

  All his life, he’d aspired to be like them—strong and determined, kind and compassionate. Born to aboriginal parents, Duncan Munro was proud of his native Australian heritage. Intelligent, charismatic and loyal, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

  His mother was just as admirable. Born and bred in Sydney, she was the only daughter of wealthy Caucasian parents. Blond and tall and beautiful, she could have been a model. But the inside of her was just as beautiful as the outside and all she wanted to be was a nurse.

  Caring and considerate and compassionate, she spent her young adult years tending to the sick and the lame. White or black, rich or poor, it made no difference to his mother. She cared for them just the same.

  Now, knowing what his father had done, or at least, what it appeared that he’d done, Clayton had no answers. The very thought of his father’s treachery made him ill. It didn’t make sense. Clay studied people and personality traits for a living and he was darn good at it. He hadn’t earned the right to be known as one of the best profilers in Australia by getting it wrong.

  It didn’t matter how he looked at it, the thought of his father being unfaithful rebelled against everything inside him. It was inconceivable, and yet the facts were damning. Riley had been quick to point out that all the evidence was circumstantial and that was certainly the case, but it was very hard to argue with the facts, no matter how much the two of them wanted to.

  With a groan of disbelief, he finished booking his plane ticket. With no direct flight to Grafton from Canberra, he’d fly to Sydney and take a connection. He’d be in Grafton later that night and would pick up a rental car from the airport. Riley had offered to collect him, but Clay had politely turned him down. While he appreciated his twin’s offer, Riley, his wife and young children, lived nearly a two-hour drive away.

  No, it was better that Clay fend for himself. That way, he could come and go as he pleased and deal with whatever was necessary. Knowing there were more calls he needed to make, he dragged the phone toward him and prepared himself to break the news to his wife and to the other members of the family.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Brandon

  Sydney, New South Wales

  Brandon Munro’s legs pounded the pavement and his breath came fast. He swiped at the sweat that ran down his face, before the salt could burn his eyes. The December heat scorched his neck where it was exposed by his Nike T-shirt. One more mile to go and he was done.

  The main street of Bondi was decorated for Christmas, reminding him the holiday was less than a week away. A smile pushed through the strain of his breathing. He couldn’t wait to give Alex her gift. He’d designed it himself, with the help of a local jeweler.

  The heart-shaped, sterling silver disc had been engraved with a man and a woman’s hands entwined, interspersed with diamonds. He’d included an engraved message on the back. It was just the kind of simple piece that Alex loved. He was counting down the days until he could give it to her.

  A light breeze blew in from the ocean, cooling his heated skin. He breathed in deeply of its salty tang and relished the relief it brought, however slight. He was on a day off from the Child Protection Unit where he worked as a Federal Police Investigator. It was a stressful, demanding job and by the end of the week, he was usually totally drained. Not that he regretted his transfer. After all, the CPU was where he’d reconnected with his wife, Alex. He smiled again at the memory. The phone in the pocket of his gym shorts rang, interrupting his thoughts. His heart stopped cold.

  Oh, Christ. The baby. Was it already on its way?

  Alex’s due date was only three days away. It was why she’d insisted he take his phone with him when he left for his daily jog. ‘It could happe
n at any time,’ she’d said to him. Not that he needed the reminder.

  Having already been through the drama of a birth when Alex had been pregnant with Bella, he thought he’d be much more casual about the imminent arrival of this baby, but the truth of it was, even the mention of his wife enduring another birth, had him almost quivering with fear.

  For reasons beyond his control, he hadn’t been there when his first child, Sam, had been born and even though he’d been present when his daughter arrived, the labor had been long and difficult, for both Alex and the baby. He was terrified that might happen again.

  Alex’s pelvis was narrow, or so the doctors had said by way of explanation the last time, and the risk that the baby might get stuck was higher than normal. An emergency C-section was always a possibility and as Alex’s due date came ever nearer, the stress of the impending birth was getting to him. He’d suggested, more than a month ago, that Alex consider a planned C-section, where they could prepare themselves ahead of time. There would be no emergency, no panic, just a mom and a baby who were both safe and happy. But Alex would have none of it.

  Despite the risks, she was adamant their baby would be born naturally. She’d managed it twice before; she was sure she could manage it again. Brandon wasn’t so certain, but he agreed to let her have another go. It was her body, after all. He prayed he wouldn’t regret it.

  He slowed his steps and tugged the phone out of his shorts and then sighed in relief when he spied the Caller ID. It was Clayton, his brother. It wasn’t Alex at all. The baby was right where it should be, safe and sound inside his wife’s belly. The tension gripping his insides eased and he pressed the button to answer the call.

  “Clayton, how are you mate? What’s happening? How are Ellie and the kids?”

  * * *

  Brandon ran the last few yards and pulled up at his front gate, his breath ragged and his heart pounding. His face burned from exertion and a smoldering anger. He could have caught a cab home and the thought had crossed his mind for a second or two after he ended the call from Clayton, but his head had been spinning with shock and he’d needed the time to calm down.