Amanda had indeed wanted to settle matters quickly and quietly. It wasn't that she'd had a change of heart, more that she understood the likelihood of her dying before the lawsuit was even over. Kelly made it happen. Ryan signed a bunch of documents. It was going along swimmingly until Vic showed up and tried to cause a scene. It involved him trying to pin some prescription meds on Ryan, but hospital security cameras showed the truth.
Ryan wasn't surprised.
But she was irritated because it had wasted a lot of time and all she could think about was that Sway needed her. She knew it. She could feel it.
But his phone was off and she didn't have Gran's number.
The rain hadn't stopped and now there were no flights leaving before midnight and she was still wearing this ridiculous hat! She took it off and crossed her arms over her chest.
This sucked.
It more than sucked.
It was the worst.
She just wanted to get to Sway. Or at least hear his voice, take his pulse, know where he was mentally—do the things for him he did for her.
Lighting struck the tarmac outside, burning her eyes. She swallowed the burn in her throat down and tried to call him again.
***
Sway didn't remember the drive to the airport or returning the rental. He had no memory of buying the ticket or getting on the plane. He was unaware of the hours of waiting in the ER or what time they had been moved out of the ER.
All he knew now was that he was standing in the hallway in the SICU at Massachusetts General, his parents in two separate rooms. He was only allowed to look through the window.
Gran and Pops were in the waiting room.
Sway was alone.
And he felt it more than he had ever felt it before.
Chapter 35
1000 Miles Away
Harrison brought his own coffee this time. It wouldn't be the Double Blind life if it didn't involve a trip to the hospital. But he'd finally learned to come prepared.
It had only been an hour since Ryan had called Zelda. Zelda, in turn, alerted the troops, and they all began showing up at Massachusetts General one at a time.
Sway was still in the SICU and they had been instructed by a very flabbergasted nurse to remain in the designated waiting room. Luke had stared her down pretty hard, but eventually agreed to not charging back there.
As far as Harrison knew, Sway had no idea they were even there.
Which was bugging Harrison. A lot.
Why hadn't Sway called them? Why were they hearing about his parents' accident from Ryan who was a thousand miles away?
“Did you bring enough coffee?” Mike asked sardonically as Harrison set down the box containing six full-sized Thermoses and a stack of paper cups.
Harrison surveyed the contents skeptically. “Probably not.”
“It's okay, we have enough pastries to make up for it,” Zelda said setting down three boxes of donuts and muffins next to the coffee.
“But that's exactly why we might need more coffee,” Harrison pointed out.
“You're over thinking this,” Mike said seriously.
“Am I?” Harrison asked. “I'm not sure... There are twelve of us...”
“I can always go get more coffee and pastries,” Zelda said, touching his arm.
“Yeah,” he agreed with a frown. “Has anyone talked to him yet?”
The room responded in murmured negatives.
“So no one knows how he's doing?”
Harrison sat down and rubbed his palms against his jean-clad thighs. He'd brought the coffee. That was his gig. He always made sure everyone had coffee in the waiting room. He'd never been the one to give the rousing speech or comfort the afflicted. He was coffee guy. So why didn't he feel like he had served his purpose yet?
His knee bounced up and down as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Maybe it was because he came from a close family. Maybe it was because he'd gotten closer to Sway during the previous tour. Maybe it was because he hadn't had a lot of sleep and the last thing he'd watched before going to bed was Captain America. But Harrison had the very strong desire to do something.
He stood up. “I'm going back there.”
“You can't go back there, family only,” Lenny said calmly with watchful eyes.
“Yeah?” Harrison looked to Zelda who gave him an encouraging yet subtle chin lift. He was doing it. He was going to go back there and find Sway. “Well, he's my brother.”
Harrison strode down the hall, though the doors, past the nurses' station, and into the SICU. Most of the room lights were off, the nurses' station quiet and subdued. He paused, listening to the still sounds of the unit. Beeping, breathing machines—the static energy of lives interrupted.
He spotted Sway standing outside of a room, his hands deep in his pockets, staring sightlessly through the window of a room with the lights dimmed. Harrison approached slowly, his heart aching for his friend. It was no secret that Sway's family life had been tense, but he'd never said a bad word about his folks.
“I brought coffee,” Harrison said, trying to be quiet but sounding abruptly harsh to his own ears. Sway blinked slowly, the definition of defeated hanging from his continence. “From home,” Harrison clarified. “Because hospital coffee is, you know, bad.”
Harrison turned to the window and saw a woman in the bed. A breathing tube taped to her mouth, her head bandaged, her body so still it hurt to watch. He took a breath, as if reminding himself that he could do that without assistance and feeling strangely guilty and relieved at the same time.
“My mom.”
“I'm so sorry, Sway,” Harrison whispered, the weight of what Sway was facing not hitting him fully. How could it? He could only imagine, and that was enough to make his chest burn.
“Drunk driver.”
Harrison slowly turned to look at his motionless friend, exhausted confusion leaking out of his eyes. Sway licked his lips and it left no moisture there.
“Driver walked away.”
Harrison clenched his jaw and swallowed around the burn that was creeping up his throat. “Where's your dad?”
Sway moved for the first time since Harrison's arrival, pivoting slowly on one foot to face a room kitty-corner from where they stood.
“He has some lacerations on his arms from the airbag, a concussion, some broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen. Should be okay. I think.” He shrugged halfheartedly.
He turned back to his mom's window and the silence of the SICU resumed. Harrison settled himself mentally to stay with his friend. He had no wise words of encouragement. He had no idea what to say during times like these. But he could be there. As a show of love and support. It was all he had to offer, really. But he'd offer all of that and anything else that Sway might need.
Sway was his brother, always would be. And brothers stood beside each other.
***
Ryan was focusing on being angry. Because if she could stay angry, then she could think clearly. If she let her mind go to the place it wanted to go, she might not come back. That place was ugly. It was empty and dark and hopeless and she refused to even glance in that direction.
The weather had finally cleared enough for a flight to take off, but once in the air, they were rerouted to Nashville for another weather delay. It was beyond frustrating, it was infuriating. She thought about trying to get a rental car and driving the rest of the way, but there was no guarantee that would actually get her there any faster.
All she wanted was to hear Sway's voice. She'd know by the tone exactly how he was doing. But she couldn't get through. The texts she'd been able to exchange with Zelda had been limited in information. She knew the band was at the hospital, but no one had actually seen Sway yet.
It was starting to freak Ryan out. It was like he'd left for the airport in Tampa and promptly disappeared. Why the hell hadn't he called her?
He was must be so scared.
She needed to get to him.
***
It was about 3:30am when Sway noticed Harrison had nodded off, curled up on the floor at Sway's feet.
As far as good friends go, Harrison was the best.
A nurse tried to rouse him, probably to get him to leave. But Harrison curled tighter into a ball and the look on Sway's face must have been enough to at least get the nurse to try again later.
Sway knew the rest of the band was out there, he wasn't surprised when Harrison had come to find him.
But it was like Sway was locked inside his own head. He could see everything and hear everything, but his reaction times were either very slowed down or nonexistent.
He was trapped, watching nothing happen.
Nothing.
While every beep on the heart monitor in his mom's room seemed to signal the inevitable end of a life that he hadn't realized mattered so incredibly much to him until that moment.
Until she was almost gone.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard movement behind him. Bustling, arguing, then silence. He didn't look away from his mom.
His whole life she had been perfect.
Perfectly put together, perfectly presented. Her manners impeccable. Her grace unparalleled. Things he had a bitterness for, but now wished he could have back, because those were the marks of being alive.
Not this still, vacant body hooked up to equipment. A pile of white linens, all laid out on display like a perfectly broken museum piece.
At the careless actions of a drunken driver, the same way her sister had been taken.
It wasn't fair.
“No,” came a tortured whisper beside him and he turned, startled to find his dad and a frustrated nurse standing behind him.
“Dad, what are you doing?” Sway asked, shocked and terrified.
“Grace,” his dad said, voice cracking. The cuts that had been stitched up on Ethan's face seemed out of place. Sway had never even seen him unshaven. The disheveled hair, the burning blue eyes, the absolute horror on his face made him look younger, ironically. Like he'd stepped out of the nightmare of his youth and found it in his future.
“You should be in bed, Dad,” Sway said, afraid to touch him, not sure where it would be safe to do so.
Then something happened that Sway had never experienced. Two large tears dropped from the rims of his dad's swollen eyes that were suddenly fixated on Sway.
“More than thirty years,” he said. “I haven't slept without her since the day we were married. My body doesn't know how to breathe without hers next to it.”
“Dad...,” Sway said, because he didn't know what else to say. He'd missed something. In his youth, somewhere, something important was lost and he had missed it.
Ethan stepped around Harrison and closer to the window, pressing his palms against the glass. “This can't be happening again. Tell me it's not her heart.”
“Traumatic Aortic Disruption,” Sway repeated the words the doctor had told him. The force of the impact had torn her aorta away from her heart. She could die at any minute. Or in the next 48 hours. Or in a week. It was impossible to tell. They'd done the surgery, but now they had to wait. The additional trauma of a punctured lung and two broken arms could make the recovery take that much longer.
But it was her heart that would decide the fate of the rest of her body.
And wasn't that exactly how all of life went?
The heart, so small and soft, was responsible for all of a person's most important moments. Whether it beat, or didn't—it made the whole world turn for some.
“We followed all of the rules,” Ethan said brokenly. “Living recklessly had taken away so much. We wanted to get old together.” He pressed his forehead against the glass. “Me and you, Gracie. Us against the world.”
Sway didn't know this man. But he wanted to. He wished he'd known him all his life. This man in front of him was lost and wounded, but he was passionate and sounded an awful lot like Sway. Maybe Sway just hadn't been paying attention. How had he missed this?
“I love you, Dad,” Sway said thickly.
Ethan turned around, his face twisted with grief. He held out his arms to his son and Sway went there.
Chapter 36
Where You Are
Sway's eyes burned every time he blinked. His head felt so heavy that his neck was getting sore from holding it up. Yet he remained rigid and upright. Harrison had tried to get him to come out to the waiting room, but he wouldn't be moved.
He couldn't take his eyes off of them.
Ethan had gone into her room and had his head on the side of the bed. His hands wrapped around the one of hers that wasn't bandaged. He was whispering, talking, acting like she could hear him. Nurses fussed around him, but let him stay.
And Sway couldn't stop the steady flow of memories that contradicted this moment. Or was it his own limited perspective that made it seem so contradictory? Had he really only seen from one small perspective his whole life? His head couldn't wrap around it. It was like it got to a certain point and got stuck, sending his thoughts to circle back to the beginning.
Why couldn't he think? Why was everything so messy and out of order? He could have sworn that he wasn't normally like this. His head worked once—at least once before.
Arms wrapped around his middle, easing his body with their soft comfort. Sway closed his heavy eyes and buried his face in the golden hair pressed to his chest.
“I'm so sorry, Sway,” Alexa whispered. “I got here as soon as I heard.”
Sway didn't respond. He heard her words, but his wouldn't work. His arms closed around her and he breathed deep. He wanted to thank her, but he didn't know how. So he just held on.
***
Ryan was throwing money at the taxi driver while yanking on the door handle before the cab had even come to a stop.
It had taken her too long to finally get here and she was running on fumes. The longest day of her life had been followed by the longest night. It was afternoon, nearly twenty-four hours since Sway had found out about his parents and she was just now getting to Boston.
Why were hospital directories always different? Shouldn't they get together and decided to call all the same things the same thing? Ryan rubbed the last remnants of mascara off as she tried to clear her blurry eyes and figure out exactly where she was supposed to go. Thinking she had it somewhat pinpointed, she charged off in that direction.
“I just need to get to him,” she muttered to herself, reminding her nearly disengaged brain why she was still moving. It wasn't like she'd never stayed up this long in a row before. Writing would sometimes discourage sleep for a couple of days in a row.
But the fatigue she was fighting was so much worse than simple lack of sleep. There was a certain amount of physical toll the body took when experiencing an emotional crisis. Her adrenaline had been in high gear, without a break, for an entire day.
She'd done everything she could think of to be there for Sway without actually being there. He was the only thing on her mind. The longer she went without knowing how he was, was making her feel incompetent—but more than that, it made her feel worthless.
The muscles in her arms twitched so she crossed them over her chest as she turned down another hallway and another. She had also developed a small muscle tick in her left eye during one of her many exercises in patience as she tried to talk to the lovely people at the airline counter.
Rounding the corner, the family waiting room came into view and something in her heart settled when she saw all of Sway's family there. The band, their women, his grandparents. He was so loved. She hoped he could feel it, their presence and concern for him.
“Ryan, you made it!” Lucy stood and hugged her immediately.
“Where is he?” Ryan asked, swiftly embracing the brunette.
“He's still in there. He hasn't come out at all since he got here last night,” Harrison said, approaching them. “I can take you there.”
“Please,” Ryan agreed immediately.
“Ryan,” Lucy said softly,
drawing her attention and watching Ryan warily. “Alexa showed up a little while ago. She's been back there with him.”
The tightness in Ryan's chest eased and she cracked a small smile. “Good.”
Lucy's eyebrows went up.
“I'll explain later,” Ryan promised, motioning to Harrison to lead the way.
Through the doors and around the nurses, Ryan stayed focused. She didn't look around or get distracted by the other families and patients whose lives were probably being similarly altered in those moments.
Her steps faltered as Sway came into view and her heart twisted. She had no way of knowing how seeing him with his arms around another woman would affect her. In all the ways imaginable.
She couldn't tell if the pain in her chest was from seeing him look so broken or seeing him being comforted by someone that wasn't her.
Also, she'd never met Alexa. She'd heard stories and mention of her, but had never met her. Until a few hours ago, they had never even spoken before.
So many thoughts poured through Ryan's head. Too many for her to keep track of. They were just there, bombarding every cell in her body. A mixed up hurricane of images and feelings and questions.
“Sway,” Harrison said, interrupting their embrace. “Ryan is here.”
Alexa's head jerked up and her brown eyes sought Ryan's. They exchanged a look that held a thousand words. Ryan tried to thank her, but her own eyes were burning with emotion that she wasn't sure was entirely healthy. She'd never been jealous, but in that moment she was. Even though it was needless, which she could easily see by the way Alexa nodded at her. She understood, and she wanted to reassure, but there weren't words or time.
Ryan's eyes moved to Sway and her heart broke for him. The normal stormy blue irises were flat and lifeless. They blinked slowly, as if trying to blink away her presence, like he didn't believe she was actually there.
“Hey,” she said, filling the spot that Alexa had quickly and silently vacated.
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