Secondhand Heart (23 page)

T
hey took Ev into surgery immediately. She had a head injury, a couple broken bones, a few things ruptured, and more, I think. My brain stopped processing about halfway through the list when the paramedic came out to talk to me and Bree in the hospital waiting room. I signed the paperwork necessary to save her life. My hand trembled so badly I dropped the pen twice.

Now, we wait.

Bree huddled against my mom, who hadn’t stopped crying long enough to ask any questions. That saint of a police offer went to my parents’ house and brought them here. I would never say a bad word about anyone in law enforcement again. He insisted he was just doing his job when we tried to tell him what a wonderful human being he was. No. What he did went above and beyond.

I rested my head on my dad’s shoulder. He was still in his T uniform, and hadn’t said a word since he got there. He just stared straight ahead. I rubbed the smooth steel of Jordan’s dog tags, trying to channel him. I needed him to put a word in with God. We’d been brought into a smaller waiting room in the emergency department. I never knew it existed, and believe me, you’re better off not knowing about it. It was big enough for just us and a few other people who looked like they’d had their beating hearts ripped from their chests that afternoon.

I stared up at the little TV in the corner of the room. The news was on, live from the parking lot of The Lonely Heart Saloon.

According to the reporter, Ashley had been behind the wheel of the car that hit Ev.

They kept flashing that vapid bitch’s promo photo on the screen, in a skimpy bikini, immediately followed by a photo of her and Cam, holding hands and smiling. I swallowed hard, I was somewhere between falling to the floor in a broken heap of disbelief and wanting to throw the TV across the room. The closed captioning referred to Ashley as his wife. Not his ex.

My sister was clinging to life somewhere in this building. The only reason she should be in the hospital was to give birth to a happy, healthy baby. Not because some psycho bitch ran her down in a parking lot. Someone who was still married to the man I handed my broken and bruised heart over to, because he seemed to think he could make it just like new. I trusted him, and now he was nowhere to be found when I needed him the most.

The screen changed to an eyewitness.
I wasn’t even sure she was going to stop
. The bottom of the screen read.
The woman was screaming for the car to stop before it hit her.

I swooned, I was going to be sick. My dad pulled me closer to him, and I sobbed against his chest. The bitch did it on purpose. It just kept getting worse.

Dad’s body stiffened, and I pulled away to see what upset him. The room had fallen even more silent, if that was possible. I turned to see Cam standing in the middle of the room, pale, unblinking, and scared.

“Where the fuck have you been?” I clung to Dad for moment longer before I got up to confront him.

“At the police station.” Cam’s voice wasn’t much more than a dry whisper. “How’s Evey?”

“Like you really give a fuck about my sister.” I shoved him, hard. He stumbled, but he didn’t fight me. “Why don’t you go back to your
wife
?”

“Daisy, don’t.” My mom stopped me before I pushed him again. She told me I couldn’t trust him and she’d been right.

“Why?” I asked no one in particular. “I don’t want him here.”

Cam shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked down. “If you mean it, I’ll go.” He looked back up at me, maybe just as fucking broken as I was. God. “But I really don’t want to.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” Bree insisted, using the same voice that she did to make the kids stop fighting. “Daisy, tell him he can stay.”

“Fine.” I flopped down next to my dad again. Cam hesitated, and then sat on the edge of the chair next to me. I wouldn’t look at him, I but I did steal looks out of the corner of my eye. He caught me every time, the naked fear so plain on his face. I wanted to hate him, to have someone to blame for all of this, and just give in to the chorus of voices that had been telling me that everything about him was a lie. But deep down, I knew Cam, and I knew I was slicing him with a rusty butter knife right now.

“Is there any word on Evey?” he asked again.

“She’s in surgery.” Bree was the only one who had a shred of her sanity left. My mom still hysterical and Dad was in that place he went to when he couldn’t fix things. “It’s not good, Cam.”

He fell back against the plastic chair, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry.” Then he rested his arms on his knees, and collapsed against his fists, his body racked with silent sobs.

I put my hands on his arm, gingerly. I wasn’t sure I was ready. Cam felt differently, swallowing me in an embrace, and rocking back and forth slightly as he continued to cry. Slowly, as I realized this was the first time anyone had comforted him during this entire rotten ordeal, I melted against him. And it felt right.

Once he regained control of his emotions, he sat up straight and took a deep shallow breath, the kind you struggle with after a tantrum when you’re still clogged with all that unwanted emotion. “They arrested Ashley,” he said once he’d calmed a little more, but he sounded hollow. “Driving under the influence, two counts of attempted vehicular manslaughter.”

The baby. The police didn’t forget.

“Did you bail her out?” Bree asked.

His brows furrowed. “Hell, no. She’s finally where she fucking belongs.” He looked at my parents. “Sorry, but it’s true. But she
will
get bailed out. Her people just aren’t here yet.”

“Ugh.” That’s all I had left.

“Can I talk to you? Alone?” he asked, one side of his mouth turning up in something other than a smile.

“Why can’t you talk to me here?” My guard snapped back to attention. The time for secrets had passed sometime this afternoon. Before Ashley got in that car.

“It’s okay, Daisy, go,” Mom said. “We’ll be here.”

We started to go out through the regular waiting room exit, but one look at the news trucks outside and we turned around, headed back to where we came. Cam stopped in the hallway and leaned against the wall.

“I know you haven’t seen the best side of Ashley, but at one time, I loved her enough to marry her.” I thought his words would make my heart stop beating. I turned away from him, wide-eyed, to run back to my parents. He caught my arm, pulling me closer to him. Even though we were just inches apart, the divide couldn’t be measured. “And even though she’s been completely fucking insane lately, a part of me is always going to love her. I don’t expect you to understand that.”

My whole body shook. “What are you saying to me?”

“I just wanted to make you understand why I went to her at the accident scene, why I didn’t come to you when I knew you needed me. I don’t think she understands what she’s done yet. But she’s here alone, until her family comes. I couldn’t let her go through this by herself.”

“Is she always going to come first for you?” I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“No.” Cam didn’t hesitate. “I did it because I needed to stop her from hurting you more. I can’t lose you right now, Daisy.”

We stayed there, his hand clutching my forearm, frozen in time. A nurse stopped dead in her tracks when she walked by. “Oh my God, are you Cam Hunter?” she asked, a little too giddy. Did celebrities regularly make social calls in the ER? Didn’t she realize that no matter who he was, if he was here something was very wrong? Jesus.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Oh my God, I love you,” she squealed.

“Thanks.” Cam seemed as uncomfortable with her reaction as I was.

“Can I have your autograph?”

Cam looked at me, startled, probably to make sure he heard her right. I couldn’t believe this. “Are you fucking—“

“Of course. What’s your name?” Cam said before I had a chance to tell this chick about herself.

“Melissa.”

He scribbled his name on a piece of paper and handed it her.

“And a picture?” Melissa looked hopeful.

“No,” I finally was able to say something. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Melissa scurried away. Cam raised an eyebrow at me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I shook my head and started to head back to my family.

“That’s my life. It doesn’t go away. Ever.”

I
can’t remember if I'd ever seen my mom and dad show any affection toward each other, before tonight. We’d been in the waiting room for so long now, time seemed to be concept that math didn’t support. Everyone else had moved on, we were the only ones left. My mom had fallen asleep with her head in my dad’s lap, and he played with her hair while he watched the soundless Sox game. How he got baseball on in the waiting room, I don’t know, but it was the little piece of normal we needed right now. Cam tried to watch the game, but he kept squirming in his seat. Finally he gave up and moved to the floor. I joined him when I came back from getting sodas for everyone who was awake, and a water for my mom when she woke up.

Bree had to go home, there was only so long her mom could handle the boys, even when Bree really needed her, like tonight. Roger took her place. It took us a little while to get in touch with him, since in the event we ever needed to talk to him, we’d call Ev. He’d kept his head buried in his phone for most of the night after getting the limited information we had to offer him. Every so often he’d look up, moustache drooping and eyes wide and lost, like he wanted to say something but just didn’t have any words.

“Is this the O’Brien family?” A doctor came into the room and approached our group. Dad nudged Mom to wake her up. Cam and Roger stood to greet our visitor and shake his hand, but the doctor urged them to sit. I climbed up to the chair between Cam and Roger, butterflies jumping up and down in my belly. This was it.

“As you know, Evelyn came to us in grave condition. She had suffered a serious brain injury, a fractured spinal cord, and a ruptured spleen.” Jesus. “We had a team of our finest surgeons working to repair the intracerebral brain hemorrhage and alleviate the swelling, but—“

No. No buts right now.

“Our efforts, unfortunately, weren’t enough to overcome the injuries. Evelyn suffered a heart attack during the surgery, and we weren’t able to revive her.”

My mother screamed, collapsing against my father, beating her arm against his shoulder. He murmured something that sounded like it was meant to be reassuring. I couldn’t tell. I had locked myself in that moment, frozen, numb, not thinking, mentally I was running as far and fast as I could away from that room, that doctor, that hospital.

To the same place I went when those Air Force Sergeants stood in my living room in Tucson, and told me that Jordan was never coming back to me. A claustrophobic place that I can only describe as my own personal hell on earth.

The doctor’s face fell as he watched my family’s life shatter in front of him. He didn’t leave right away, I guess he thought we might have questions for him. Like he could answer the only one we had.

Why.

He cleared his throat, and I tried to snap out of my freefall just long enough to hear what he had to say. I looked my mom, dad, and Cam on one side, and Roger on the other, and everyone wiped under their eyes and tried to sit up a little straighter to see if maybe, somehow he was going to take it back.

“However, we were able to save her baby. As you know, he’s twenty-three and a half weeks along, but Evelyn had taken care of herself extremely well, and I think he’s got a fighting chance.” The doctor smiled sadly at our group after delivering the second bombshell of the night. “He’ll have to stay here for a while until his lungs and organs finish developing. But so far, the little guy is looking good.”

We all looked at each other, stunned. Little guy?

A boy.

She hadn’t even told us yet.

Ev had been so scared something was going to happen to the baby, God, we never in our wildest dreams ever thought something was going to happen to
her
.

“Are there any questions I can answer for you?” the doctor asked, but no one seemed to be able to form words.

The doctor left the room, there was nothing he could do to repair our broken hearts. The silence was eerie, only broken by the occasional sniffle or sob.

“We don’t even know what she wanted to name him,” Mom said, more to herself than anyone else.

“Jordan,” I answered her. “Jordan Edward.”

All eyes in the room fell on me. I pictured Ev sitting on the floor in my bedroom, not even two months ago, wrapped in blankets, telling me and Bree her names. “She said she wanted to name him after the two bravest men she ever met.”

I realized Roger hadn’t said a word, and I was afraid to look at him. This was his son, hooked up to machines, struggling for breath, alone in some far flung wing of the hospital. His first night without his mother.

“We were going to call him JR. Kind of like Jordan Junior, but we liked that better than JJ.” Roger’s voice wavered. “Ev joked that it was stood for Jordan Remixed.”

“JR,” Dad said quietly, just a few minutes after learning the baby was named in part after him. “I like it.”

“JR, he’s going to be all right,” Cam said. “Because none of you are going to settle for less than that.”