The First Gardener (15 page)

“Do you know what happened?”

Fletcher’s broken voice came from the front seat. “Eyewitnesses say there was a traffic jam, road construction. Mackenzie apparently swerved to avoid being rear-ended, but an 18-wheeler was swerving at the same time.”

Gray’s head turned sharply. “An 18-wheeler hit her?”

Fletcher’s gaze shifted down, then up. “It sent her car spinning. The truck hit her on the driver’s side.” He stopped abruptly.

“What are you not saying?”

Kurt instinctively reached a hand toward his friend and put it on his knee. It felt heavy and hot. “Maddie was thrown from the car.”

Gray let the words settle. They never found a place to land. They went straight through his ears, pierced his gut, and then escaped somewhere, though he had no idea where words like that could escape to. “Her seat belt,” Gray whispered.

He turned his gaze back toward the window. Pain was searing him from the inside out. Tears rushed down his face, and he was unable to stop them. By the time the car arrived at Vanderbilt Medical Center, Gray was halfway out the door. Two doctors in scrubs met him and ushered him to the surgical ward. The squeaking of their tennis shoes on the floors of the hospital corridor irritated him. The sound of their pants legs brushing together made him want to scream.

“I’m Dr. Hank Rosenberg, Governor, and this is Dr. Allen.” The doctor was old and wiry and kept talking as he walked. “We took your wife straight into surgery when she got here. There was extensive bleeding, and X-rays showed that she had a pneumothorax. Do you know what that is?”

Gray shook his head.

“It’s a collapsed lung due to changes in pressure within the chest. What happens is that, when she breathes in, her rib cage basically moves in reverse—it sinks instead of expands. This doesn’t occur unless there is a great deal of blunt force trauma, usually when a rib either tears the lung or punctures the chest wall. Your wife had ribs broken in both the front and the back. When she arrived here, her breathing was very labored, and she was having severe chest pain. She was also expelling some blood as she coughed. It’s amazing that she even got out of the car, but adrenaline can make even the severest pain seem nonexistent.”

She got out of the car.
Gray let the visual settle over him.

“She also has two broken bones in her right arm, with a complete break at the wrist, and, uh, several lacerations on her face. A few were pretty deep. She received a total of forty-five stitches, twenty-five to a cut on the left side, where the major impact was for her. But our biggest concern right now is her lung.”

Gray could hear Fletcher and Kurt behind him. The doctor’s words registered, but all he could think was that someone had made a catastrophic mix-up and they were talking about two people he had never met, not the two people who meant the most to him in the world.

Gray stopped in the center of the hall. The doctors were five steps ahead before they realized he wasn’t beside them. “My baby girl. You haven’t mentioned Maddie.”

The younger doctor stopped and turned. His light-brown hair was brushed neatly to the side. “I’m sorry, sir. We thought you had been told.”

He felt the lump heavy in the base of his throat. “I wasn’t told anything I wanted to hear.”

He felt Fletcher and Kurt move beside him. They were close. Really close. The doctors stepped forward. The one with the glasses and bony nose spoke first—Dr. Rosenberg, he thought. “It was instant, Governor.”

Fletcher’s hand came up under his left arm, and Kurt’s hand held the other. Kurt turned Gray toward him. “She was thrown from the car. But she didn’t suffer.”

Gray turned when the other doctor, the younger one with the clear blue eyes, began to speak. “There was no pain. The blunt force trauma to the head was so severe that she died on impact.”

He wanted to hit this man, to throw him against the wall and beat him. He wanted to hit anything. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He wanted to fall on the floor in a pile and weep.

“Would you like to see her? Your wife will be in surgery a couple more hours.”

See her? See the lifeless body of his daughter? No, he didn’t want to see her. He wanted to kill whoever was responsible for this. He wanted to go back to this morning and grab his baby and his wife and hold them close and not let them go anywhere. He wanted what had been. He wanted what had just been an hour earlier.

“Take me to her,” he said.

Fletcher tugged at his arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“It’s my baby, Fletcher. What would you do if it was your baby?”

Fletcher released his grip and nodded, his tears no longer hidden. “I’m so sorry, Gray. Do you want us to go with you?”

Gray shook his head. The weight of it all was almost so great he couldn’t move. “I’ll do this. Alone.”

Kurt released his grip on his other arm, and Gray wasn’t sure if he could stand without the support of his friend. But he did. He steadied his feet and spoke to the older doctor. “Take me to her, please.”

The doctor nodded and led the way up the hall. When he pressed a square metal button on the wall, the swinging doors to the ER slowly opened in front of them. They moved into a large open room, and Gray could feel the eyes turn his way as he walked toward a glassed-in room where the shades were drawn.

“It was instant, Governor.”

He stopped behind the doctors. The younger one held the door handle. “Would you like us to go in with you, sir?”

Gray shook his head. There were no words left. The doctor bowed his head and pulled the door open far enough for Gray to step through. But he couldn’t move. There was something inside him that knew stepping through that door would make this nightmare real. It would take him to a reality that would change his life forever. And he didn’t want any of this to be real. He wanted it all to be a lie, a mistake, someone else’s story.

The older doctor came around and took his arm. “You don’t have to do this.”

He stepped inside the room, turned, and took the door from the doctor’s hand. “Yes, I do.” And with those words, he closed it behind him.

He turned slowly, noticing the sun that streamed through the open window. How could the sun be shining if this was true? Then he forced his eyes to make their way to the gurney in the center of the room.

There in front of him was his Maddie lady. She was perfect. He moved to the side of the gurney and let his eyes take her in. Only then did he see bruising on the side of her face and caked blood nestled in the small crevice of her ear. This side of her hair was still damp from where they must have washed more blood out. He ran his fingers through her baby-soft black hair, which lay with such life against the white sheet. Her olive skin was paler but still held that hue he loved. And her face—her face was the same one he had memorized last night.

Last night. Last night he had known, hadn’t he? He had known something. He had felt something. But he’d had no idea it would be this.

He leaned his head down and rested it against Maddie’s cheek. It was cold. So cold. He instinctively drew the sheet up under her chin, and as he pulled, he saw Lola resting next to Maddie’s arm. The side of her face was dirty. He took the lifeless doll and snuggled her under Maddie’s chin, then tucked the sheet around them both.

“Keep her warm, Lola.” Slightly frantic, he looked around the room. He needed a blanket. But the room was empty. No machines. No instruments. Nothing that would show they had done anything to save the life of his little girl.

He laid his head down against her again and let his tears fall across her cold forehead. He wrapped his arms around her, desperate to warm her, to bring her back to life. He nestled his nose in her hair and smelled the familiar scent of her favorite shampoo. A surge of nausea engulfed him. And the governor of Tennessee barely made it to the trash can in time for the pain on the inside to be expelled.

Gray felt a cold rag come down on his head. A strong arm fell across his back and wrapped itself against his side. Fletcher’s voice fell on his ear. “Sit down, Gray.”

He opened his eyes and saw the feet of both of his friends beneath him.

They never listened to him. He was the governor and they still never listened. Right now he was so glad.

He let himself cave into the arms of his friends, and they helped him fall into a chair at the edge of the room. He looked up to see his child’s body in front of him.

The baby girl who would never call him Daddy again.

That reality penetrated the room with such weight that he gave way beneath it. His friends could apparently see the torrent before it exploded all over them because they both fell to their knees beside him and encased him in their arms.

Then they wept.

The three most powerful men in the state of Tennessee wept.

Together.

Gray walked into the ICU, and his eyes took in an entirely different scene. Mack lay there with tubes running everywhere—one from her chest, apparently draining fluid, another from her mouth where they’d had to intubate her for surgery. A large bandage covered the left side of her face, and smaller bandages crossed her forehead and chin. A cast encased her right arm all the way to the top of her bicep. And monitors beeped constantly.

He moved to her side, grateful she was unaware of their new reality. He wished for a moment that she would never have to know. As glad as he was that she was there—still alive, still his—as thankful as the selfish piece of him was that they could walk through this pain together, the selfless part of him almost wanted her dead as well. Because when she woke up and had to deal with what had happened . . . well, he just wished he could spare her that.

“It’s amazing that she even got out of the car, but adrenaline can make even the severest pain seem nonexistent.”

Mack had gotten out of the car.
Oh, God, no. She saw everything.
He could only pray she’d seen the same Maddie lady he had. That she was able to know how beautiful and peaceful their baby girl was and that she’d experienced no pain.

He pulled a chair up to the left side of Mack’s bed and laid his head down on her good arm. He realized then and there that the world wouldn’t stop to let him collapse. In a few minutes he would have to console his mother-in-law and their best friends. And then he’d have to make arrangements to put his little girl in the ground.

The heaviness of it all caused him to sink a little deeper. But for now—for right now—he just closed his eyes and begged God to stop the world.

Five days later

There be the deepest sadness ’round here. It so deep and thick, you just know it gon’ swallow you whole. I seen so many people tryin’ to pull Miz Mackenzie outta it but can’t pull somebody outta that kind a grief. They gots to decide themselves when they ready. And when does a body ever get the strength to do that?

The gov’nor, he be so strong through all this, even talk at his own baby’s funeral. He say no one knowed her like him and Miz Mackenzie. And when he say that, I seen him break down for that one li’l moment, then gather himself up like a gentleman and talk some more ’bout his baby. I thought I was gon’ go and lose it right in that there church.