I patted Nicole as I watched the nurse interrogate the flustered aide. The nurse kept saying “Que? Que?” until her hands flew up to her mouth. She turned astonished eyes in my direction. I locked onto her gaze, silently begging for an explanation, when a smile took hold and stretched wide across her face.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
The nurse stepped toward Ty’s room and motioned me to follow. Conner wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and together, with Nicole still wailing, we joined the nurse. She directed me forward into the open doorway. I peeled my eyes from Conner’s and peered into the gloom of Ty’s darkened room.
Nothing appeared any different. Ty still lay immobilized in his bed, his face turned away toward the covered window. Nicole’s bawling morphed into hiccupping sobs as the dimness of the room enveloped us. I felt Conner place his hand on my shoulder near his sister’s head. The nurse scampered past and tugged on the cord, opening the vertical blinds and allowing soft gray light to brighten the space. Nicole protested. She obviously preferred the darkness.
“Sh, sh, shhh,” I whispered as I patted her back. “You’re going to scare your daddy.”
“Too late,” croaked a rough version of the voice I’d been praying to hear for over six months.
My heart fairly leapt from my chest, startling it into a pace my lungs couldn’t seem to keep up with. I stumbled to a halt, Conner at my elbow to keep me from falling, though he was shaking equally as hard as I was—for staring up at us, his sky-blue eyes all crinkly at the corners as his cracked lips pulled into a smile, was Tyler, awake and alert.
A feeling like I’d never experienced before washed over me, like warm water from a South Pacific tide. It enveloped me, cradled me, nourished me, and pinged my entire being back to glorious life. I felt like I’d been holding my breath for six long months, and now, I was finally able to inhale, a weight lifting from my chest, making me feel like I was about to float to the ceiling.
Conner nudged me toward Ty’s bedside. Ty raised a hand and placed it along the arm I had holding Nicole up to my chest. He squeezed, and tears rolled from his eyes into those enticing little creases that shot nearly to his temples. I shifted a now-hushed Nicole forward in my arms and placed her facedown onto Tyler’s stomach and chest. She lifted her big head and stared into her daddy’s eyes, a perfect match to her own. As he grinned down at her, she lifted her pudgy finger to her daddy’s mouth and slipped it in between his lips then let out a loud, “Bah bah!” before she clonked her noggin back down and inserted her thumb into her own mouth. Her lids grew heavy and fluttered closed, and Nicole fell sound asleep listening to her daddy’s heart beat beneath her tiny ear.
Ty gazed at me, then at Conner, who dipped down and placed a sweet kiss against my cheek. I took both Ty and Conner’s hands in mine, and we just stood there, watching Nicole gently snore in Tyler’s embrace.
There were no words adequate enough to be spoken at a moment like this. It was the purest of love, wrapping its arms around all four of us—Ty, me, Conner, and Nicole—drawing us together, finally making us whole.
We were a family, finally and completely, and, by God, nothing would ever tear us apart again.
***
Biography
Nancy S. Thompson began her writing journey with her debut novel, The Mistaken, a dark romantic thriller released in 2012, and she’s continued the saga in Leverage. While Nancy loves to write, she pays the bills as an interior/architectural designer, as well as a freelance book editor. She’s a Bay Area California transplant, currently living with her husband near Seattle, Washington.
Leverage (The Mistaken Series) Page 42
