After Victory: A Searching for Glory Novel (A Second Chance Love Story) (6 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Jake

It was unusual for me to be working on a Sunday. In fact, John tried to convince me to stay home. But I knew that we were understaffed at the shop and that my friend would be too considerate to guilt me into giving up my Sunday. So I volunteered to spend my morning working while Julia watched the younger kids at home. We had a pretty good deal worked out where she did free babysitting in exchange for me paying her phone bill. I’m not sure which of us had the better end of the deal.

“The Toyota in four is done,” I said, dropping into the chair across from John’s desk. “Bad brake line.”

“I’d say you’ve earned yourself a break. Five minutes.” John finished making a note on his clipboard and then grinned at me.

“You’ve been smiling like a goon all day. What’s going on?” I kicked my feet up on his desk and leaned back in the chair.

He looked almost bashful when he said, “I asked Glory to marry me last night.”

“And?” I raised one curious eyebrow, hoping this story was going to have a happy ending.

“She finally said yes.” He smiled again. “I guess that makes me the marrying-kind.”

“I never doubted it.” For the first time in a long time, I smiled automatically. It was the way I used to smile before I lost Vic and began needing to remind myself to show an emotion other than grief. “Congrats, John. I owe you a drink.”

“I think I’m done drinking with you for a while,” he said, his grin turning to a smirk. “You nervous about your big date? Do you even know how to date anymore?”

My feet dropped to the floor and I stood. “Alright. Time to get back to work.”

I could hear John chuckling softly as I left his office. He may have meant it as a joke, but it wasn’t all that funny to me. It truly had been a long time since I’d been on a first date. Almost eighteen years, in fact. I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

I was elbows deep in a transmission when John appeared. “Hey, Mary Claymore’s car broke down again. I’m going to drive over there. Can you keep an eye on things until I get back? Glor is supposed to stop by in about an hour with Jack. I should be back by then, but if I’m not-”

“I can handle it.” I waved him away. “By the way, Mary Claymore’s car is just fine. She’s just making up an excuse to get a house visit from you.”

“Good thing she’s my type,” John said with a wink as he headed toward his truck.

Mary Claymore was a woman in her eighties that had a big crush on John Carter. She called about a broken down car at least twice per month, and he always dropped everything to pay her a visit. As far as I know, he had never once sent her a bill. Glory liked to refer to Mary as his mistress, but everyone knew he just liked to make the old widow feel like she had people in her life that cared about her.

Only ten minutes had passed when a familiar motorcycle screamed into the parking lot. The bike belonged to one of our best mechanics, Nate Stevens. He tore his helmet off as he jumped from the bike.

“Jake, there’s been an accident.” His eyes bounced around wildly.

“Really? Are you alright?” I gave him a good look and didn’t see any injuries. His bike also looked unharmed.

“Not me.” He sounded breathless. “John’s truck flipped over down the road. An ambulance was just arriving when I came up on it. They were trying to get him out-”

I was already running to my car. “Watch the shop, Nate!”

“Yeah!” He stood helplessly with his helmet in his hand.

Everything was a blur as I drove in the direction where Nate had pointed. I decided not to call Glory until I had something to tell her. John drove a big truck and there was a good chance he was fine. No need to cause panic just yet.

As I got close to the accident scene, I knew that it was time to panic. The entire area had been roped off and a dented semi was parked on the shoulder. John’s truck was flipped upside down in the middle of the road. I nearly forgot to put my car into park before hurrying toward the ambulance. They were just loading John onto a stretcher. He wasn’t moving.

“Whoa. Stay back.” One of the police officers that I vaguely recognized put a hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“That’s my brother,” I said, even though it wasn’t exactly true. “Is he okay?”

“He’s still alive. Barely.” The cop gave me a sympathetic look. “You should call family and have them meet you at the hospital.”

I waited to call Glory until I arrived at the emergency room. Besides not wanting to use the phone while I was driving, I also needed a few minutes to compose myself before we spoke. When I did call her, she ended up being the more composed converser.

After she hung up, I hurried inside to find out more information. Because of the many trips I’d made to the hospital during Vic’s illness, I knew most of the doctors and nurses. It wasn’t hard to convince one of them to give me an update.

“He has a lot of internal bleeding,” a nurse named Monica told me. “They are trying to stabilize him long enough to get him into the O.R.”

“He’s going to be okay though, right?” I knew that she couldn’t possibly know the answer to that question, but I just needed someone to tell me that everything was going to be fine.

She patted my arm and said, “He’s in good hands. We’re doing everything we can.”

It took almost thirty minutes for Glory to arrive and when she did, she came running inside, breathless. “Where is he?” she demanded.

“They just got him stable and are going to operate.” I put my hand on her shoulder and she barely seemed to notice.

“How bad is it?” She bit hard on her lower lip, presumably to keep it from quivering.

There was no sense lying to her. “Bad.”

The doctor came out and let us know that John was being moved into surgery. He had internal bleeding around his liver, broken ribs, and bleeding in his brain. Glory was quiet as we took the elevator to the waiting room. It wasn’t until we stepped into the bright room, filled with uncomfortable chairs and worried family members, that Glory started to crack. It started with a soft tremble in her shoulders. My arms went around her just as she began to shake, tears finally falling from the glassy pools in her eyes.

“This is my fault,” she said between sobs.

“How could this possibly be your fault?” I asked, rubbing her back. She felt small and frail in my arms.

She sucked in a big, halting breath. “Because my life was too good. It couldn’t last.”

“Glor.” I pulled back and held her at arms’ length. “John was in an accident. That had nothing to do with you.”

“I can’t lose him, Jake. I just can’t. He’s my everything.” She started crying harder and I pulled her back into my arms.

“I know,” I whispered, remembering how that same thought had nearly brought me to my knees when I lost my wife.

It took almost ten minutes for her to pull it together enough to stop crying. When she finally composed herself, she called John’s father to tell him what was happening. She didn’t go into a lot of details, probably because Mr. Carter was already in bad health and she didn’t want to overly-worry him. We sat next to each other on torn vinyl chairs while holding untouched Styrofoam cups of coffee.

“I didn’t even ask. Where’s Jack?” I couldn’t believe it had taken me that long to think about anything happening outside the walls of the hospital.

“With Kate. I was with her when you called. She dropped me off here and offered to take Jack and pick up the boys.” Glory’s voice was hollow. “I need to find someone to get him. John’s dad is coming here and he’s our usual babysitter.”

“I can have Kate drop Jack and Chris off at the house. Julia can watch him.” Even as I said it, I realized it would never work. Asking her to watch her three siblings was a big enough task, adding a one-year-old to the mix was a recipe for disaster.

She shook her head slowly. “No, I’ll think of something else.”

John’s father arrived a short time later and then there were three of us sitting in anxious silence. A nurse came by about an hour into the surgery and let us know that it would be a while. There was a lot of damage to repair.

“I forgot to say congratulations,” I said when the sparkle from Glory’s left hand caught my eye. Mr. Carter had left the room to find a bathroom.

“Oh?” She was confused for a second until she caught where my gaze had landed. “Right. Thanks.”

“John told me this morning.” I wasn’t sure if I should keep talking, but it seemed better than the silence we had been enduring. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him that happy.”

Glory kept staring straight ahead as she muttered, “It didn’t last long.”

“Everything is going to be okay, Glor,” I said, trying to sound confident.

“You know, I can still remember the first day I met him. That was, like, 25 years ago. How crazy is that?” Her head shook slightly as if she couldn’t believe it. “I literally don’t have a memory from my childhood that doesn’t include him.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “You are going to make so many more memories with him. You and Jack and your little girl. A lifetime of memories.”

“Maybe we already had our lifetime.” She leaned her head back until it touched the wall, closing her eyes.

“I’m going to call Julia and make sure my kids haven’t maimed each other. You’ll be okay on your own?”

Her eyes opened slowly. “I guess that’s the question of the day, isn’t it?”

I was glad that Mr. Carter came back right then so I didn’t have to worry about leaving her alone. At the end of the hall, I found a secluded spot near a window where I was able to get decent cell reception.

Julia didn’t sound too frazzled when she answered, so I asked if she could stay with the kids longer. When she asked why, I gave a vague answer about John being in an accident. I didn’t let her know how serious it was just yet.

After I hung up, I stayed at the window, staring at the falling snow. I couldn’t go back in that room yet. It was too hard. I felt this need to try to make Glory feel better, meanwhile I didn’t believe anything I was saying. I used to think everything happened for a reason, but that changed when I lost Vic. Now I knew that things just happened. People died.

Not for the first time, I felt overwhelmingly alone. All I wanted to do was talk to Vic and have her put her arms around me. I didn’t want to be the strong one anymore. I didn’t want to lose another best friend.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Glory

It took four hours to complete the surgery. I hardly moved the entire time. My body was too numb. When the doctor entered the waiting room to give us an update, it took all of my strength to stand up.

“He’s still in very serious condition, but the surgery went as well as we could have hoped. They are moving him into Intensive Care. You’ll be able to see him in a little while.” The surgeon delivered the words like lines from a speech. I wondered how many times he had done this exact thing. Did he even notice the people he spoke with or were they all just nameless faces that vanished from his head the second he turned around?

I took a second to call Kate, getting her number from Jake. She still had Jack and insisted she was fine watching him for as long as I needed. When she asked how Johnny was doing, I nearly broke down as I answered.

We were escorted to the ICU by a young nurse that didn’t look much older than Julia. She gave me several sympathetic smiles as we walked and I wondered how traumatized I must look to her. If I looked as bad as I felt, I was sorry to be inflicting it upon her.

“You can go in,” she said when we stopped in front of a small room. “He’s still unconscious, but you should talk to him. It might help.”

Mr. Carter led us into the room and marched straight over to the bed. Jake stood near the foot of the bed, uncertain what to do. I stayed near the door, unable to move forward. I had expected to find Johnny lying under a sterile white sheet, a few bandages here and there. Instead, I found something much more horrifying.

Johnny lay on the bed, mostly exposed except for thin sheet that covered his lower-half. His torso was covered in bruises and bandages with wires seeming to run in every direction. His head had been covered in thick white gauze and his face was bruised. In fact, it seemed every inch of exposed skin was bruised. If the nurse hadn’t told us it was Johnny, I wouldn’t have recognized him.

“Glor.” Jake turned to me, waving me forward. “He needs you.”

That was the moment that it clicked. This accident wasn’t something that had happened to
me.
I had been sitting around feeling sorry for myself, but it was Johnny that was a whisper away from death. He was the one that was fighting to live and he needed me to be strong. I owed him that.

Jake stepped aside as I moved forward, taking my place next to the bed. I looked down at Johnny- my best friend and the love of my life. His hand rested on the bed, the only part of his body that seemed to be uninjured. My fingers crept forward slowly until I was touching him. His hand was cold, so I covered it with mine, clutching it like a drowning person would clutch a life preserver.

“I’m here, Johnny,” I whispered, gently squeezing his fingers. “It’s going to be okay.”

It didn’t matter that I didn’t believe it. It only mattered that
he
believed it. If there was any chance that he could hear me, I wasn’t going to let him know that I was afraid.

After a long time standing that way, Jake retrieved two chairs. I sank into one of them gratefully, surprised that just standing for that long had made me so tired. Mr. Carter sat in the chair next to me and patted my knee.

“It really does look wonderful on you,” he said, eyeing my hand which was still holding onto Johnny.

“I’m still getting used to it,” I admitted. “I will look down and see it and be surprised. We never even got a chance to tell people.”

“There will be time for that,” he said with a soft smile. “This is just a bump in the road. Soon enough, you’ll be dancing together at your wedding.”

Somehow when Mr. Carter said it, I believed him. It occurred to me then that my two biggest supporters happened to be men that had lost their wives too soon. If they could keep hope that things would work out, so could I.

“Do you need to check on the kids?” I asked Jake, reminding myself that life was still happening out in the world.

“Julia said she’s got it under control.” Jake moved over to the wall and leaned against the windowsill.

“Kate offered to keep Jack for me. Is it weird that I accepted the offer?” I was surprised when Mr. Carter answered.

“Kate is a sweet girl. If she’s offering to be part of your life, you should accept the gift.” He looked down at his son. “I know that John did the right thing ending his relationship with her. He was meant to be with you. But I always felt bad for Kate. She deserves to be happy.”

Despite the circumstances, I felt myself wanting to smile. “You might be interested to know that our boy Jake here has a big crush on Kate.”

My smile grew as Jake blushed all the way to the tips of his ears.

“Is that so?” Mr. Carter said thoughtfully. He added, “She could do worse.”

“Yeah, she could,” I agreed.

The nurse came in to check Johnny’s vitals and mentioned that it would be at least a day or more before he woke up. We were welcome to stay, but we might want to consider taking breaks to get food and to sleep. I appreciated her concern, but there was no way I was leaving Johnny’s side.

Jake reluctantly left to check on his kids at dinnertime. He had some concerns that they hadn’t eaten anything all day except chips and candy. He was right to be worried. Julia was pretty good at keeping the kids from killing each other, but a chef she was not.

An hour after Jake left, I convinced Mr. Carter to go home as well. His own health wasn’t great and he needed to take care of himself. I promised to call him if anything changed, but we both knew this was likely to be the status quo for a while. Alone with Johnny, I moved my chair even closer to the bed. With the tips of my fingers, I traced his cheek softly.

“Hey, lover boy. It’s just you and me now.” Emotion caught in my throat and I forced it down. I was going to be strong. “I know you need to rest right now, but just don’t make me wait too long, okay? I miss your beautiful blue eyes and your sexy smile.”

I lay my head on the pillow next to him and whispered right into his ear. “I love you, Johnny. I can’t do this without you. Come back to me.”

The next few days passed in a blur. I spent the days in the hospital with Johnny while Jack went to daycare. Then I picked him up in the afternoon and spent a couple of hours with him while showering and eating whatever I could find in the house. Jake stayed at the hospital while I was gone. Then we met in the hospital parking lot and traded off duties. Jake took Jack home with him for the night and I slept in the chair next to Johnny’s hospital bed.

The first couple of days I was able to stay optimistic. The doctors expected him to stay in a coma for at least 36 hours until the swelling in his brain subsided. But mid-week I started to worry. He was breathing on his own after they removed the breathing tube. That was supposed to be a good sign, but no matter how much I talked to him or squeezed his hand, he showed no sign of awareness. The doctors said I just needed to give it more time. He had been through severe trauma and his body was still recovering.

By the end of the week, I was running on empty. I was exhausted and worried. Jake had volunteered to pick up Jack from daycare, hoping to give me a little relief. While I appreciated his help, I also missed my little boy. No matter how bad things were in the hospital, a smile from Jack always made me feel better.

“Knock, knock.”

I turned toward the door, expecting to find one of Johnny’s friends from the shop. When I saw Jake holding my son, I nearly burst into tears. Somehow Jake had known exactly what I needed.

“Hey there,” I said, instantly smiling as Jack held out his arms to me. To Jake, I asked, “How did you know I needed to see my boy?”

“Because I’m a parent,” he said, handing him over. “I thought maybe John would like to see him, too.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that Johnny couldn’t see anything right now. His injuries were slowly healing, but he hadn’t opened his eyes. While I kissed and cuddled Jack, he giggled and looked around the room.

“Da da,” he said, looking right at Johnny’s prone body.

They had removed the white bandage from his head, exposing a shaved scalp covered in staples. The dark bruises on his face were fading to yellow and he had been dressed in a white hospital gown. As bad as he still looked, he was starting to look like Johnny again. So much so that our son, barely a year old, was able to recognize him.

“Yes, Jack. That’s daddy.” I carried him over to the bed. “He’s sick.”

Jack reached out a chubby hand pat Johnny’s arm. “Da da.”

Because of the tears in my eyes, I thought I might be seeing things when it looked like Johnny’s eyelids fluttered.

“Did you-” I turned to ask Jake if he had noticed anything, but he was already leaning over the bed.

“John? Can you hear me?” he said.

I grabbed Johnny’s hand and squeezed hard. “Johnny, can you hear us?”

“Da da,” Jack said, happily patting his father.

“There!” I saw it clearly this time. His eyes were fluttering wildly. “Open your eyes, love. Please, open your eyes.”

Johnny’s hand had been limp inside of mine all week, but now he returned my squeeze ever so gently. His lips moved faintly, forming silent words. At last, his eyes opened into thin slits. The icy blue beneath the lids was foggy from the pain medication.

“Glor.”

I stood and set Jack in my chair so that I could lean over the bed and look right into his eyes. Running my hand over his cheek, I said, “I’m right here, Johnny.”

“I’ll get the doctor.” Jake smiled at me before hurrying from the room.

“Glory.” Johnny’s lips move upward in a stiff smile.

“You came back to me.” I kissed him softly on the lips.

His eyes opened wider and he said, “Always.”