Everyone shuffled around us, and the collective sighs of relief made Chase speak louder. “She’s in recovery, surgery went well, took a little longer than anticipated, but I was easily able to evacuate the hematoma, repair the damage to the vessel and stop the bleeding. The bullet was lodged in between some very important structures so the dissection to free it was time-consuming. She required additional transfusions and pressor support. Because of that, she’ll spend the next hour or two down here, and then I’ll move her up to the ICU. Once she’s settled there, you’ll be able to see her. All and all, she was very lucky.” Dr. Colton’s technical recap was fine and dandy, but I wanted more. I wanted details from friend to friend, brother to brother. And he knew it. “She’s good, man. She’s good.”
Good.
There was that word again, talk about full circle. Although, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that word anymore.
“How much longer?” Yeah, seemed Tack and I shared the same page. Until she was in our sights, we weren’t feeling assured by anything or anyone, not even Chase. Tack was done. He was done pacing, done waiting. He was pale, hadn’t eaten a thing, and was visibly crawling out of his skin at hour four after Chase’s case manager came down to let us know how things were progressing, sharing a whole lot of nothing and only adding to the stress. Tal was probably going to kick my ass, but Tack was joining Dodd’s intro to the ropes when this was all said and done. She wasn’t kidding when she said he had an intensity to rival his brother.
“Don’t worry, bud, he knows we’re not waiting. ICU my ass, what bed is she in?”
Mid-eye roll his focus broke toward a young woman jogging down the hall. “Dr. Colton, we need you back in recovery now, please.”
Leaving my question unanswered, his jaw tightened while he ripped off his sweat-drenched cap, locking his eyes with mine.
So much for good.
Whatever relief we experienced was gone and replaced with a new sickening foreboding. Something had to give. It was all too much. I clenched my teeth to stop from screaming. “Go.”
The only question left to ask reeled my mind. But there was no time. He was already halfway down the hall. I let the thick silence slowly suffocate me as I stood and did the only thing I could. Wait.
Shock
Sensation changes
T12
Incomplete injury
Motor strength
Altered reflexes
Sacral sparing
Weeks
Months
Permanent
Simple words, all with easily accepted definitions, yet when spoken as a stream of medical jargon they were fuzzy. In this moment they blended together and got lost. Not so much lost as buried somewhere deep. I wanted to bury them deeper. She didn’t need them. No one needed them. They needed to be eliminated from our vocabulary. I gripped my skull and cursed. Why? Why was this happening?
“Enough!” I growled. I heard or hadn’t heard enough. “I need to see her. Now.” My heart was jackhammering and I was fighting for air again. The knife in my chest was making it difficult to breathe. Chase said nothing more.
Behind a thin white sheet she lay flat on her back. Monitors beeped and chimed from all directions. People in varying colored scrubs, some with white coats, some not, busied themselves around us. The giant open room’s perimeter was lined with patient bed after patient bed. I leaned on one bed rail, Tack on the other. This time she didn’t lift her eyes and give us her beautiful smile. This time nothing sassy escaped her lips. This time her mouth was back to being covered by an oxygen mask. This time she lay comatose.
“I just gave her something for pain to make her comfortable and help with the anxiety, it will probably be awhile before she wakes up again.” A quiet voice spoke to my back.
“Pain?” Tack fired at her nurse. “Why was she in pain? Dr. Colton promised to keep her comfortable.” His choice of addressing Chase sliced straight through me. As much I felt it, Tack did too; it was the neurosurgeon who came to deliver the devastating blow. Chase was detached and factual, referencing literature and statistics. I got why—he was as gutted as me. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t waiting for my friend to surface.
“She was having some nerve pain, but mostly feeling anxious. It’s very common after this type of trauma. We’ve given her the proper medications to give her relief. You can touch her, hold her hand, we just don’t want her body jostled too much.”
Common. Nothing about any of this was common. My woman was not common. I white knuckled the rail and squeezed my eyes shut.
“I’m okay, baby. Come … here.” Her raspy weak voice was muffled by the mask, but it was the shot of adrenaline my lungs needed to keep breathing and to shut down the swirling tornado in my head. That sound, her sound … it could have been lost forever. She could have been lost forever if the night’s events ended differently. But they didn’t. And she was here.
Alive.
Thank fuck.
Her lids were barely open before they fluttered closed again. Tack reached for her hand that was struggling to free her face. “Let me help you. Relieved it’s over, Mom,” he sighed. “Love you.”
“I’m sleepy,” she mumbled.
“You rest. We’ll be right here when you wake up.”
She fought her eyes back open and whispered, “I need a minute with Asher, honey.”
Tack’s expression narrowed. He wanted to object, but instead he murmured, “I’m back in ten, Mom, I’m not leaving you.”
“Thanks, bud.”
Like before. It was just me and her. Exactly the same, yet completely different.
I found her lips. I needed to feel her breath mix with mine. “Hey, you, welcome back. God, I love you.”
“I … I … I’m scared.”
The bile rose so fast I almost couldn’t choke it back down. Only other time she uttered those words was New Year’s Eve when I asked her to take a chance on me. She hadn’t told me the truth yet, so understandably she was nervous, not scared. This was different. Tal didn’t do this kind of scared. She was a rock. Tack’s rock. My rock. And now she was crumbling. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop this landslide.
“I can’t move … I’m … scared … my legs. I’m paralyzed.”
Time stood still.
The pain was indescribable.
I had felt heartache before, a cracking and splintering. This was a full shatter.
Into millions of tiny fragments.
For her.
“Hey, hey. Look at me.” Her eyes were clenched but not tight enough to stop the tears from falling. I frantically tried to kiss them away. I wanted to kiss it all away. I wanted to promise her everything was going to be okay. I wanted to go back in time and tackle Roy Wayne to the ground before he fired that first bullet in the air. Screw the second, he deserved it. Hell, I wanted to switch places with her. “Shh … shh. I’m here. I’m right here with you. We’ll get through this together. I promise.” She sniffled, barely moving her head to nod. “Teeps, please look at me. We don’t know anything yet. We’ll wait, take it day by day, and do whatever we have to do. It’s me and you. You can do this, okay?”
Her eyes finally crept open and her fear hit me square in the chest. I had never seen fear in her eyes before and it was crushing. She lived most of her life tormented by a mistake, but she overcame the odds as a single parent. She faced the hand she was dealt and rose to the challenge. She proved she was stronger. She was Tal.