Shiver (7 page)

I thought about the same thing once too. I imagined what my life would be like if Alexa died. I couldn't actually focus on the idea of it because of the instant panic that set in. I'd go on for the kids. I'd make sure they healed and grew into the people she wants them to be, but I'd be dead inside. I'd be empty without her.

"He's a strong man," I offer. "He's dealt with way too much shit in his life."

He drinks more beer, gulps it actually. "I thought he hated me for years. I know he couldn't look at me without thinking about mom's death."

I'm not going to sugar coat it to shield him from the truth. We've talked this out with our dad, Ron. The three of us sat in a bar one night and let loose. "He was heartbroken. We all were after she died."

"I talked to the doctor who was taking care of her a couple of months ago." His eyes close briefly. "I was here at a conference. He was there too. He actually remembered her case."

Medical jargon is a foreign language to me. I went in to see Ben at the hospital when I had a sore throat last fall and he tossed out some term that sounded like an Italian dish. It was an infection, cured within days with a round of antibiotics. "Tell me in English what he said."

He smiles. "They told her before she left the hospital that she had weeks left to live. I fucked up when I messed up her oxygen that day but her time was limited. We would have lost her before the end of that summer."

I knew it. I might not have recognized it when I was eighteen and mourning the loss of every single minute I could have had with her. "She had a virus? Dad said that's what it was."

He studies my face carefully. "I was going to talk to dad about this first. I wanted to tell him that I know, before I told you, but he shuts me down whenever I try and bring it up."

"Dad's not here." I wave my arm over the table. "Tell me. I have a right to know."

"She had late stage breast cancer. It had spread...everywhere. She avoided doctors for years and when she finally went in because she couldn't stop vomiting they told her she had a stomach virus and that she had terminal cancer."

"Cancer," I repeat the word back. "Why didn't dad tell us that?"

"She probably told him not to. We were graduating, Noah." He picks up the bottle of beer but doesn't bring it to his mouth. "You know mom. She protected us from everything. That's who she was."

"She did protect us." I heave a sigh knowing that keeping those pictures of her private so they can remain treasures to our family is the right thing to do. I need to protect her memory. "She was a fighter, Ben. She was the definition of a fighter."

"Here's to mom." He holds his beer in the air between us. "Happy Birthday, Mom."

I raise my bottle and clink it against his. "Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you."

***

"W
here's Opal?" I ask one of the residents of the shelter that I photographed a few months ago. "I don't see her."

He looks around, his eyes stopping on the small, gathered groups of people. "She was here this morning. I haven't seen her since."

"What does that mean?" I pat him on the shoulder to stall him as he starts to walk away. "It's snowing outside. The temperature is freezing. She has to be here."

"Nope." He points to her knapsack sitting on the edge of a cot. "That's her bag there but she's not here. She told me to watch it when she went for a walk."

I look at Ben but his eyes are glued to his phone. After we left the restaurant, I suggested we stop at the shelter so I could introduce him to Opal. My plan is to offer her an actual full-time job caretaking at my penthouse.

I'm going to sell eventually but for now, I'll keep the place and work on my photography project when I'm in town. Opal can help me organize. She'll earn a paycheck from me and I'll have the help I need. It's a win-win. It's fucking brilliant and best of all it will get her out of the shelter and give her a chance to get back on her feet. It's a small step but she's been good to me and I want to repay that.

As for our dad, Ben already offered his empty condo here if he needs a place to stay when he's in town. He's a nomad now so who knows where he'll be a week from now.

"What's wrong?" Ben taps my shoulder. "Is she not around?"

"That's her stuff." I walk over to pick up the knapsack. "This is everything she owns, Ben. She wouldn't just walk away and leave it here."

"It's brutal outside, Noah." He points to the window. The steady stream of snow falling makes it impossible to see beyond a foot or two. "She's probably at another facility. We can check on some of the close ones."

I wouldn't know how to do that. I shouldn't be this worried about her. She can take care of herself.  I know that but she's become a friend. She's important to me now. I can't explain it, but I feel a connection to her. I always have.

"Are you two boys looking for Opal?" A female voice pulls both of our attention to the left as her hand reaches out to touch Ben's chest. "I've seen you here before, but you're new."

Ben's eyebrows pop up as the older woman gropes him through his coat. "My brother is friends with Opal. We'd like to talk to her."

"She went down to that park she likes this morning."

"This morning? She hasn't come back since?"

"I'm not her babysitter." She leans in close to Ben. "I'd babysit you though. I'd even do it for free."

"We're leaving." I pull on his arm. "We're going to find Opal."

"Y
ou're sure this is the park she would go to?" Ben calls from across the vacant park towards me. I can't see him. I can't see shit because it's snowing so fucking hard right now.

"This is it," I yell back. "I walked her here one day. She used to come here with her husband."

The lamp posts that dot the landscape aren't throwing enough light for me to see anything. There's no way in hell she's here. She would have sought shelter somewhere. That makes the most sense. What makes no sense at all is that the shelter she lives in is less than two blocks away.

"I called every hospital, Noah." Ben is right in front of me now, snow peppering his dark hair and his coat. "She hasn’t been admitted. There are no Jane Does either. She has to be safe somewhere."

"Where?" I bark the question back at him as I scrub my hand over my forehead. "I'm sorry. I'm worried, Ben. She wouldn’t leave this shit behind."

His eyes fall to the knapsack I'm still clinging to. "You said that her and her late husband had friends. She might have met up with one of them and decided to spend the night."

It makes sense. It's definitely plausible.

"I wish to fuck she would have taken me up on my offer to get her a phone," I say it aloud. "I wouldn't have to worry so much if I could call her."

"Let's head back to the shelter." He pulls the collar of his coat closer to his neck. "The temperature is dropping fast. We're too exposed. We need to get inside too."

I know he's right. We should try and find a taxi and head back to the shelter so I can leave her things there for when she shows back up. If we do that, we can be back at the penthouse, having a brandy with our dad, within the hour.

My brother taps his hand on my chest before he points to the street in the distance. I can barely make out the passing traffic. "Let's head back up that way. I'll lead the way."

I nod as I watch him take a step forward and that's when I see it. It's the faintest movement in the distance. It's the only flash of darkness against the white snow but since it's directly under a lamp post, it's unmistakable.

"She's there." I grab Ben's shoulder as I run past him. "Opal's on that bench."

***

I
kneel in the snow next to her. Her eyes are closed, her breathing slow. It's so fucking slow that my brother, the doctor, is straining to hear it.

"Call an ambulance now, Noah," he repeats. "Now."

"She's going to die," I say as I fish in my pocket for my phone. "You're not going to let her die, Ben. You tell me that right now."

He ignores me completely as he pushes his coat from his shoulders, draping it over her. "Take your coat off. Put it on her now. We have to warm her up."

I yell into the phone, trying to get the 911 operator to understand the address of the park. I say it over and over again, stressing how important it is that they get their fucking asses here now.

Ben tugs the phone away from me. He speaks into it quickly, talking about her heart, her core temperature, breathing, not breathing, he tells them to hurry.

He yanks the zipper of my jacket down, pulling the coat off of me in one quick movement. He places it over her.

"Don't touch her." He pushes my hands away as I reach to grab hers. She's wearing those shitty thin gloves that she always is. Her hands must be freezing. They have to be cold as ice.

"You can't just touch her, Noah. She may go into shock. We have to get her inside. We have to get her to the hospital."

The sound of the sirens approaching turns him around. "You go get them. Tell them where we are."

I don't hesitate. I race through the park, running as fast as my legs will take me. I fall twice in the snow as I lose my balance but I get up, my stride barely breaking as I wave my bare arms in the air towards the ambulance as it pulls up next to the curb.

––––––––

"T
hirty minutes more and she wouldn't have survived." Ben speaks softly into his phone. "They're not sure yet. She hasn't woken up. Her vitals are stabilizing but it's too soon to know how long she was exposed."

I turn away from where he's sitting. I finished my call with Alexa too quickly. I had to say goodbye when I started to cry. I didn't want her to hear my voice breaking. It kills her when I'm upset. She wants to comfort me. I need that too and that can't happen when she's in New York with our kids and I'm here.

"Give Emerson a kiss for me. I'll be on the first available flight out tomorrow," he pauses. "I'll tell him. I love you too, Kayla."

He ends the call before he walks over to the nurse's desk. I hear the murmur of his voice mixed with that of a woman.

"You can go in and see her, Noah." He gestures towards a long corridor. "I'll go with you if you want."

I reach up to his outstretched hand. I grab hold of it, allowing him to pull me back up to my feet from the chair I fell into when we arrived at the ER. "What did the nurse say?"

"Nothing." He rests both his hands on my shoulders. "Kayla wanted me to tell you that she's praying for Opal though. How did you know she was on that bench? I didn't see her when I walked past it."

"She moved her arm, or her leg." I shrug. "Something caught my eye. I knew it had to be her."

"Once she's awake they'll be able to determine if something else is wrong."

"Something else?" I take a step back. "She almost froze to death, Ben. That's what's wrong with her."

His expression softens. I don't see this side of my brother very often. I don't want to see it. It's the doctor side that's about to deliver bad news. "There has to be a reason why she was on that bench, Noah. If she was fine, she would have gotten up and walked back to the shelter before the storm hit."

Of course he's fucking right. I know that.

"One step at a time." His hand darts to my back. "Let's go see her and we'll go from there."

***

"W
hat the fuck is wrong with people?"

I'm asking that question, but it's strictly rhetorical.

"I'm not sure what I can tell you about that." The nurse perks up. "When you work in a hospital there's a lot wrong with people."

Ben's brow pops up as he nods towards the nurse. "She knows what she's talking about, Noah."

"You must be Ben."

We turn in unison at the sound of Opal's voice as her eyes flutter open.

"You look exactly like your brother," she says quietly. "He told me you two weren't identical twins."

"We're not." I take a step closer to the bed. "We're fraternal twins."

"I'd know he was your brother in an instant." She pats the bed next to her. "I'm not in the hospital, am I?"

I stand above her looking down at her face. The color is starting to come back in her cheeks. The prognosis the doctor shared with Ben twenty minutes ago is good.

"Did you fall Opal? You fell at the park, didn't you?"

Her right hand darts to her forehead. "I remember crashing down on a patch of ice near a bench. I think I cracked my head."

"You broke your hip." I gesture towards her legs. "You must have been in so much pain."

"I remember that now." She stares at my face. "I sat on the bench to rest. It hurt to walk. I asked a young woman to help but she didn't hear me."

"How do people just walk past that?" I ask Ben as much as I ask myself. "When did we stop caring? I don't understand."

"This is a private room, isn't it?" Opal tries to lean forward but the discomfort pushes her back into place. The pained expression on her face is evidence of that. "I can't afford this. I don't know what coverage I have but it's not going to cover this."

"Everything is covered." Ben walks to the other side of the bed. "You'll be well taken care of here, Opal."

"You're as nice as Noah said you were." She reaches for my hand. "He told me his brother was a doctor."

"That I am." His eyes fall to her hands for just a moment. "Noah told me you've been a good friend to him. He didn't tell me you were beautiful too."

That brings a blush to her cheeks. "If I would have known that breaking my hip would bring two handsome men to my bedside, I might have tried that trick years ago."

––––––––

T
he door of Opal's hospital room opens slightly before my dad's face pops into view.

"Noah? Ben? Which one of you is hurt?"

Opal's brow furrows at the intrusion but she doesn't say a thing.

"Dad." I move across the room quickly, not sure if I should stop him from walking into the room or not. Opal is decent. She's covered in layers of blankets and a hospital gown but she's just been through a hellish experience. I doubt she wants a room full of strangers watching her as she's trying to rest.