Crocus

by Amy Lane

  She was texting furiously.

  “Olivia?” Larx asked after about fifteen minutes. He wouldn’t tell anybody, but he was dying to do something—even if it was just play a game on his phone—but both sides were taken.

  “Yeah. I asked her if she wanted to come visit Aaron, and she said she would, but Elton John—”

  “That’s not really his name,” Larx chided dryly.

  “I don’t care. It’s a stupid name. It’s the name of the bad boyfriend pick in Emma, and I’ll never forgive her for getting knocked up by a guy named Elton. Anyway, Elton McJohnson—”

  “Christi!” he warned.

  “He used his Johnson, Dad—she’s pregnant, you can’t argue—”

  “Aaron said he was a very sweet boy.” Larx let out a strangled laugh. “He called him a wombat.”

  Christi was one of the best people Larx knew. But she was still human.

  The laugh she let escape was the epitome of evil.

  “Heh… heh-heh… heh-heh-heh… wombat. Oh, Dad. We’re going to have to run with that.”

  Larx pinched the bridge of his nose. “Honey, the wombat—I mean Elton McDaniels—may be living in Aaron’s house with your sister and the baby for a little while. Nothing’s been set in stone, but anybody can see where this is heading. It would be… I dunno… politic to not call the poor kid Wombat Willie before we get to know him.”

  His daughter gazed at him with worship in her eyes. “Wombat Willie,” she said, the thrill of ecstasy in her voice.

  “No,” he said staunchly. He was not going to let this happen.

  “Wombat. Willie.”

  “Christiana, please—being awful to this poor kid is not going to help anyth—”

  “The wombat. With the willie. That knocked my sister up.” She nodded, eyes closed in happiness. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “May I remind you that the young man has a concussion and is in Critical Care and I haven’t even met him yet?”

  “Daddy wants to meet Wombat Willie,” Christi voiced as she texted. “But first—” She bit her lip and looked at Larx beseechingly. “—we need to make sure Aaron’s okay.”

  Larx let out a slow breath. She was doing the same thing he’d been doing for the last two hours—warding off the terrible fear that this person, this terribly important person they’d let into their lives—might possibly leave them without anybody’s permission.

  “He’ll be okay,” he said, with the same oomph in his voice that he usually reserved for those days when he hadn’t tried this lesson plan before and wasn’t sure it really did what he hoped it did.

  “Yeah, Daddy,” Christi said wisely. “He’s got to be. We need an Aaron in our lives.”

  Larx tightened his grip on Kirby’s hand. “We do.” Kirby returned his grip, and his breath shuddered against Larx’s shoulder. Larx turned toward him for a moment. “Kirby, you will never be alone, you know that, right? Your room will be your room until you bring your kids to the house and they sleep there. Don’t ever doubt it.”

  “I’m not,” Kirby said softly. “It’s the only reason I’m not losing my fucking mind.”

  Larx let go of his hand and pulled the boy’s head against his chest and looked back at Christi.

  She was begging him with her eyes not to get serious on her. “So, how is Wombat Willie?” he asked, silently asking poor Elton McDaniels’s forgiveness.

  Christi gave a watery smile. “His head hurts, but he’s not slurring his words. She thinks they may let him go tomorrow after they take some X-rays.”

  Larx gave a groan. This kid was Olivia’s age. “We’re going to have to call his parents,” he said, hating where this was going. “Tell her to ask if she wants us to do that for him.”

  Christiana grunted. “God. That’s gonna suck. ‘Hi, welcome to the family, we’re sorry your son’s got a concussion, excuse us, our other dad got shot.’”

  Larx’s whole body felt too weary to laugh at that—but a bitter chuckle escaped anyway. “Wow. This has been the strangest year.”

  “You are telling me,” Kirby said, his voice muffled against Larx’s chest. Their shoulders all moved, together, like it was choreographed, and then they fell silent again.

  Christi spoke a few moments later. “She said she’ll call them in the morning. The roads are impassable anyway—they won’t be able to get here for another week.”

  “So Yoshi’s sleeping at our house and we’re all sleeping here. There is something fundamentally wrong with that,” Larx mumbled, closing his eyes. He was surrounded by warm kids, he was bored, and his brain wanted to shut down and shut out the worry over all the people—all the people. Aaron, Olivia, Candace Furman, Wombat Willie.

  For fifteen minutes he took the narcoleptic’s way out and slept.

  That’s what he was doing when he got a tap on his shoulder. The relieved-looking doctor—the same graying, wiry, practical man who had taken care of Kellan’s boyfriend—friend—Isaiah, had pulled up a chair and was waiting patiently for the lot of them to wake up before he spoke.

  “Oh God,” Larx mumbled, for once waking up fully cognizant of his surroundings. “How is he? He’s okay, right? You wouldn’t look like that if he wasn’t okay. Please tell us he’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” the doctor said, nodding. “Yeah. He had some internal bleeding—we had to tie off some puncture wounds and set his ribs, inflate his lung and insert a breathing tube, as well as a whole lot of shunts to let everything drain. But I can say with 98 percent certainty I got everything. He’s coming out of the anesthesia now. He’s been asking for you.”

  Larx swallowed and nodded. “I wanted to be here before he went under,” he confessed, feeling wretched.

  “We took him straight from the ER to the OR,” the doctor said. “You wouldn’t have seen him then anyway.”

  Larx swallowed past the bitter regret he’d tried to keep at bay. “Just as well. Had to gather the troops.” He squeezed Kirby and Christiana as they lay against him and reached out to ruffle Kellan’s hair. Not children, but definitely his kids.

  The doctor smiled faintly. “Excellent. They’ll be good for the morale. Kids, how about you go in first while I talk to Larx here, okay? Follow the nurse back.”

  Larx squeezed Kirby’s shoulder and nodded for the kids to go in and then turned to the doctor, his stomach cramping with anxiety.

  “What?”

  “You know what,” the doctor said quietly. “We went through this with Isaiah too, but with a lot less trauma this time. We both know the biggest risk here is infection. It might not happen—we were in and out of there as quickly as possible. He’s healthy and strong, and I have all the hope in the world—but don’t forget to pray, Larx. To whatever God you’ve got. I’ve got skill, but I’m not too proud to take whatever help I can get.”

  God can kiss my ass—it was Larx’s first thought, always, when someone told him that. Thoughts and prayers were great for politicians, but the world ran on science and good works.

  Except… this was Aaron.

  Larx could sacrifice a little bit of pride for Aaron.

  “Me and the kids will do our best,” he said, trying not to shake.

  The doctor grimaced. “Like I said—take it seriously. But I’ve got faith. You need to as well.”

  I have faith in Aaron. “I hear you,” he said numbly. “Can I go back there now?” It was the wail of a child, and he knew it. Maybe the doctor knew his adulthood had been stretched to the limit.

  “Sure. Send the kids out when you get there.”

  Aaron was holding his son’s hand, natural as breathing, and smiling faintly as Kirby gave him instructions for how not to die in recovery.

  “So they’ve reinflated your lung, and you need to breathe normally—not too deep and not too shallow, because oxygenation is really important when your internal organs are traumatized. We learned that in chemistry, okay?”

  “One more thing I can thank Larx for,” Aaron murmured, voi
ce weak. There was a tube in his lung, reinflating it, and talking probably hurt.

  “Hey!” Christi said brightly. “We’ll get to donate blood!” Her face fell. “Except me. I’m always low on iron. But the guys will. It’ll be totally awesome—I’ll tell you if they pass out.”

  Aaron chuckled weakly. “Take pictures. I wanna see.”

  “Time to go, guys,” Larx said, swallowing hard. “Tell Aaron you love him and you’ll see him in the morning.”

  Because that was how it had to go, right? There wasn’t any choice here. The other option was fucking unworkable.

  Kirby went first, and Larx could see by the way the boy’s chin trembled that he’d need Larx most of all when Larx came out. Christi next, uninhibitedly burying her face in Aaron’s throat and then pulling back to kiss his cheek. Kellan next, shyly, but he grasped Aaron’s hand and kissed his cheek too.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, right?” Aaron asked, voice still a shallow, breathy imitation of what it usually was.

  “You’ll have to,” Larx said, injecting false bounciness into his tone. “The roads are shit, and I’m not driving them again until county gets out there with salt and the plows. I should have made everybody pack jammies, because I think we’re doing cots in the waiting room—or in Wombat Willie’s.”

  Aaron’s laugh sputtered without the air behind it, but Christi let out a quiet burble that helped make up for his weakness. “You love it, right?” she teased. “It’s going to stick. The entire family will be calling him that before the baby’s born. It’ll be beautiful.”

  “You’ll feel bad,” Aaron breathed. “But that’s—” Breath. “—a mistake—” Breath. “—you’ll have to make.”

  His eyes were closing.

  Larx turned to the kids. “Guys—a minute?”

  “We’ll go ask the nurses for those cots,” Kellan said, voice gruff. “I know which cots won’t screw up your back—I slept there a lot when Isaiah was here.”

  “So you’ve got an expert,” Larx said quietly. “I’ll be out soon.”

  The kids retreated, and Larx was left alone, finally, with the man he’d been missing like a lung, a heart, a kidney, his frontal lobe, ever since he’d bailed out of the SUV and walked confidently into the darkness.

  “Wombat Willie,” Aaron mouthed. “She’s diabolical.”

  “I’m saying!” Larx took his hand gently and, mindful of the IV tube in his arm, pulled his knuckles up to his lips.

  “How you doing?” Aaron rasped.

  Larx closed his eyes and fought the temptation to say it was all hunky-dory.

  “I am not okay,” he said, surprising himself. “This is not okay.”

  Aaron nodded, eyes closed. “But are we okay?” he asked, and his voice made Larx ache.

  “We will always be okay,” Larx whispered back. “As long as there’s enough of you to stitch back together, I will always be here when you wake up. It’s not great, but it’s better than living without you.”

  Aaron’s smile was a little dreamy, a little drugged. “Anything’s better than living without you,” he whispered.

  And a part of Larx spoke up. This would be it. The perfect time to say, Hey! Push him! He can quit his job in law enforcement so you don’t have to worry! But Larx hadn’t gotten in the back of the ambulance because there were kids who’d needed him. He was just as guilty as Aaron about being more to the world than just a lover and a father.

  “Amen,” Larx whispered, kissing his knuckles again. And for a few heartbeats, his lover’s hand in his, he did what the doctor ordered.

  He closed his eyes and prayed.

  A NURSE woke him up about a half an hour later.

  “We’re moving him out of recovery in an hour,” she said softly. “When we get him into ICU, we’ll move your family there so you can be with him. Right now there’s a bunch of kids in the waiting room settling down for a slumber party, and a young woman who really needs to eat asking for you.”

  Larx groaned. “God. Olivia. Do we know how her boyfriend’s doing?”

  “That sweet-looking woodland creature who keeps asking us if the telemetry robots have AI?” the nurse asked dryly.

  “I haven’t even met him,” Larx confessed. “But he sounds like a treat!”

  Aaron made a sound that pulled him away. “Be nice,” he whispered.

  Larx kissed his forehead. “You’re nice. I’m Larx.”

  Aaron smiled, eyes still closed. “You’re nice.”

  “I love you,” Larx said rawly. “No scary surprises between here and ICU.”

  “Roger that.”

  Larx turned reluctantly and followed the nurse out into the waiting room, where the kids were, indeed, bunked down like refugees in a horror movie.

  Olivia huddled, wan and thin, on the end of the empty cot, her nose buried in her phone.

  “Hey,” Larx said softly, not wanting to wake the others if they could get sleep. “Want to see if the cafeteria is open?”

  Olivia looked up and shrugged. “Okay, Daddy.”

  The sharp-eyed nurse spoke up. “Honey, if you were mine, I’d have you on IV fluids. They’ve got turkey and gravy tonight. I’d make it a priority.”

  Olivia nodded meekly and swung her legs over the cot. Larx looked up at the nurse, who had taken her place behind the counter at the admitting window. “If anybody wakes up looking for me, tell them where I am?”

  She nodded soberly. “The taller boy—the one who looks like Deputy George?”

  “Kirby—his son.”

  “He wanted to make sure you were coming back here.”

  Larx sighed. “Hold up, Olivia.”

  He squatted over Kirby’s cot. “Kirby—son?”

  Kirby’s eyes shot open with alacrity. “Larx? Is my dad okay?”

  “He’s fine. I’m taking Olivia to the cafeteria to eat—I didn’t want you to wake up missing me.”

  Kirby nodded, eyes closing. “Thanks, Larx. Just… thanks….”

  He drifted off to sleep, and Larx nodded at the nurse. Then he looked grimly at his oldest child, who stood waiting in the doorway like she knew the hammer was about to fall.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked as they made their way down the beige hallway. What time was it? They passed a clock. Four? It was 4:00 a.m.? Holy hell, how did that happen?

  “Not breakfast,” she said.

  “Dinner?” He recognized evasion—he was a master.

  “No.” Her shoulders slumped with defeat.

  “We’re eating. Sausage, biscuits and gravy, and fruit.”

  She nodded meekly, but it didn’t assuage the anger building up in his chest, and she could feel it too. Larx had never spanked his girls—not once. But he’d yelled a few times—and each time, he’d been terrified. Afraid. He’d yelled when Olivia had tried driving home without her lights on. He’d yelled when Christi had used the pressure cooker without him there the first time and had nearly blown the stove up. He’d yelled when both girls had gone “exploring” in the middle of fire season without telling him.

  His daughter was in danger—every parent sense he had was screaming that something was desperately wrong. He’d tried to be gentle, tried to be positive, but his hold on his temper was thin and sad this inky black morning, and he knew the lid was going to come off.

  It had to.

  It was the only thing he could think of to wake his girl up.

  “Is Aaron going to be okay?” she asked quietly in the elevator.

  “I hope so,” he said softly. “They had to operate—broken ribs, perforated kidneys, a punctured lung. Lots of bruising. He’s going to be here for at least a week until they’re sure he’s going to heal.” He swallowed and shuddered, trying not to let his own fear seep through. “Kevlar is good, but the gun was small, or….” He knew this. He’d looked up statistics. A .22 at close range was still a formidable weapon.

  “He was so nice tonight,” she whispered. “He brought Elton in, called me up. Told me I needed to be a grown-up a
bout everything. Elton thought he was my dad.”

  Larx could still feel Kirby’s head resting on his shoulder. “He loves you girls. I love Kirby and Mau.”

  “Not Tiffany?” she asked slyly, but he couldn’t play that game. Not now.

  “I have hopes for her,” he said bluntly. “Whatever is going on in her head, it can’t be pleasant. We should cut her some slack.”

  Olivia grunted like he’d gotten her where it counted, and he wiped his palm across his eyes.

  “Is that what you want?” he asked after a moment of letting some of his mad slip away. “Do you want me to cut you some slack? Let you keep sleeping in your room? Tell your young man that you’re just not feeling it right now and he should come back in a few months?”

  “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  Oh God. He felt like he’d smacked her. With a sigh he lifted his arm, and she leaned against him like a reluctant cat. They were quiet as the elevator doors opened, and they followed the smell of cooking food to the cafeteria.

  It didn’t look bad. He made her take the sausage and some fruit, and he took biscuits and gravy because he needed the high-carb comfort.

  Together they sat at a small table near one of the even smaller windows and looked out into the night, where the snow continued to drift down with purpose.

  He ate a few bites and sank into the food—it was everything wrong with a person’s diet, and he needed that buttery biscuit in the fat-filled gravy with the salty sausage pretty much more than he needed his next breath.

  Then he needed to talk. “There’s a girl out there in that,” he said, staring into the blackness. “Someone she should have trusted—her stepfather or someone else—abused her, and scared her, and she decided that taking her chances in that was better than staying at home. It’s cold out there. Freezing. And she ran out of a woodshed and into that madness and didn’t look back, not once.”

  “Oh God,” she whispered.

  “It’s bad,” he admitted, letting his fears out, since he had food to protect him. “I’m worried. I didn’t know her well—she was Yoshi’s—but Yoshi’s at our house with a boy whose brother saw Aaron get shot, saw the guy who shot him die. Both boys are terrified and traumatized and… and Jaime was just so glad for the kindness of strangers, you know.”