CHAPTER 29 DELILAH
DELILAH
“This feels like the opposite of those tornado chasers,” I murmur, my forehead pressed against the glass of the window. “The highest speed we hit was twenty-five, and that’s only because we were going down a hill.”
Jackson is white-knuckling the steering wheel of the news van, his jaw tight. “I’ll take twenty-five over eighty and a ditch.”
I snort a laugh I don’t really feel.
It makes me nauseous to stare out the windshield when the conditions are so awful, so I close my eyes instead. Except when I close my eyes, all I see is my grandpa alone and bleeding. My grandpa, calling for help and no one coming. A lot of blood, the nurse on the phone had said.
“Any updates?” Jackson asks.
I shake my head. “Just that they’ve taken him to the University of Maryland Medical Center and that he’s awake and responsive.” But I don’t know if he’s confused. If he’s scared. If he’s asking for me. “Do you think you could drop me off there?”
Jackson sneaks a quick look at me, his blue eyes impossibly kind. “Yeah, Delilah. Whatever you need.”
Whatever I need. That’s more or less been his motto since I dropped that plate in the lobby of the lodge. He’s rearranged our work schedules, packed our bags, somehow bribed a snowplow to clear our way out of Western Maryland while I’ve been . . . utterly useless.
More tears press behind my eyes. “I’m—I’m sorry about all of this. I should be—”
“Delilah,” he cuts me off. Somehow gentle and firm, all at once. Exactly what I need. “Let me take care of you. Okay?”
I nod. Whisper okay. Wipe a few more pathetic tears off my cheeks.
I spend the rest of the drive in a fog. I keep my legs tucked under me, my forehead against the window, my heart in my throat as we creep closer to Baltimore.
By the time Jackson pulls up to the emergency room entrance at the University of Maryland Medical Center, my face feels itchy and swollen, my stomach hollow.
I unbuckle my seat belt. Outside of the covered walkway that leads to the hospital, snow is falling in earnest. We must have moved with the storm as it swept across the state.
Or barely beat it into the city, I don’t know.
The specifics of the drive are lost on me and for once, I don’t care about the weather.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say to Jackson, distracted. I fight with the strap of my bag to get it over my shoulder. “I can pay you back for the gas, or—”
A big hand untangles the strap and eases it over my arm. Jackson’s face is patient.
“I didn’t pay for the gas, Delilah. It’s the work van, and we had to drive back anyway. We just sped up the timeline a little bit.”
What he means is he moved heaven and earth to get me here, just like he promised. He gives me a small, tired smile.
“Thank you for driving me through a snowstorm,” I whisper.
The lines by Jackson’s eyes deepen. A secret there, somewhere. “There’s very little I wouldn’t do for you, Delilah.”
A single explosive firework twinges somewhere in the middle of me, but there are bigger things shadowing my head and my heart. My anxiety and my sorrow make everything else feel muted, like I’m swimming through Jell-O. Up with the clouds and the snowflakes.
I compartmentalize and tell myself I’ll give this the attention it deserves later. When it’s fair to the both of us.
A surly-looking security guard with a snowflake blanket wrapped over her uniform makes an impatient gesture at us through the windshield of the van. “You two need to move,” she yells. “This is an emergency lane.”
Jackson glances pointedly at the empty driveway. The ambulance is parked in the bay, its lights off. There’s a guy leaning against the bumper, eating a sub from Wawa.
Her eyes narrow. “This is not a dance hall!” she barks.
“Dance hall,” Jackson repeats. He squeezes my arm and leans over my middle, wrenching open the squeaky door of the van. I want to press my face into his neck. I want to run inside. He brushes a kiss across my cheek.
“Go make sure everything is okay,” he says. “I’ve got this.”
I nod, then float out of the van and into the lobby. I press the elevator button and watch the glowing numbers change. A collection of people in different color scrubs streams out, more file in, and I’m swept up in the wave.
The last thing I see before the doors close is Jackson pointedly ignoring the security guard, refusing to move until he’s sure I got in safely.
“Breaking news,” my grandpa says as soon as I wrench back the curtain around his bed. “Old man slips in his favorite slippers. Knocks himself out on a nightstand.”
I’m so relieved to see him lucid, I could cry. In fact, I do. Aggressively so. Right into his shoulder. I cry ugly, heart-wrenching sobs that hurt coming out. I snot all over his hospital-issued gown.
He smells like the lemon drops I know he keeps in his pocket and the laundry detergent he used to wash my pajamas in, and he laughs while he pats the top of my head.
“Delilah, my sunshine girl,” he mutters. “I’ve really put you through the wringer, haven’t I?”
His eyes crinkle when I finally lift my face from his chest. When I was little, it was my favorite place in the world.
The place I was safest. The place I was wanted most. He’d wrap me in his arms and sing me some cobbled-together nursery rhyme that never made any sense and we’d stare out my tiny bedroom window at the satellite towers.
The ones right outside the news station that stretch all the way up to the clouds, alternating red and white lights.
Wishes on a string, he used to tell me. That’s where the stars live when they come down here for a bit.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were covering that big snowstorm,” he says. “The one out in the mountains.”
“Yes, well.” I sniffle and settle back, running a hand under my nose. It’s a relief that he remembers where I went this time. After the last two phone calls we had, I wasn’t sure what state I’d find him in. “I was covering that snowstorm in the mountains. Then Anita called and said you fell.”
“I didn’t fall. I tripped.” He gestures at his forehead. “I barely scratched myself. A whole lot of hullabaloo for nothing.”
I stare pointedly at the ugly bandage across his forehead and the gauze that circles his entire head. “She said, and I quote, There is a lot of blood.”
His eyes crawl back to mine, chagrined. “You know Anita is prone to hysterics.”
“Grandpa,” I whisper. “Please.”
These moments with him are so rare. I don’t want to waste them arguing.
He blows out a heavy breath. “Yeah, I know.”
My shoulders slump. Now that I know he’s okay, I am thoroughly and completely exhausted. I feel like I haven’t taken a breath since this morning, in the lobby of a lodge hundreds of miles away from here.
“I was worried about you,” I manage, my voice trembling again. Two fat tears spill down my cheeks and I angrily wipe them away.
He reaches for my hand and grips it tight. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” When I look at him, he raises two gray brows over sad, tired eyes. “Worrying you.”
I nod. His episodes have slowly been getting worse over the past year. The spells of confusion and the loss of time. The horrible anger, and then the meltdowns. The doctors say it will keep progressing until eventually he won’t remember much at all.
He heaves a sigh and looks out the window, his thumb rubbing back and forth over my knuckles.
“I don’t want it to be like this for you.
Rushing away from work. Crying.” He sniffs, dragging his free hand across his jaw.
“Hate it when you cry. Always have. Remember when you were five years old and you’d cry every day at kindergarten drop-off?
Tore me to pieces. The guys at the docks used to make fun of me for it. ”
I snort a watery laugh. “Yeah, I remember. You used to draw me stick figure pictures in my lunch box. You said I could—” I suck in a trembling breath. Let it out slowly. “You said I could hold you in my heart while I was at school. So I wouldn’t have to miss you too much.”
He gives me a long, searching look, mouth flat at the corners. “You know that’s where I stay, right?” He lifts his hand and taps, right in the middle of my chest. “Haven’t left. Good luck getting me out of there.”
I nod, gripping his hand with both of mine.
“I don’t want you running over here for every little bump and scrape.”
“Then maybe don’t run headfirst into nightstands.” A gruff chuckle slips out of him and I lean forward again, resting my head against his shoulder. “Let’s save the argument for another day. I’m just glad you’re okay. And I’m glad you’re here.”
He understands what I’m saying. A tired sigh whispers out of him. “Me too, sunshine.”
His hand eases over my hair and I close my eyes. I listen to the sounds of the hospital around us. Reassure myself with the steady pound of his heart. It could have been so much worse. I’m glad it wasn’t.
“You really aren’t gonna tell me?” he asks, an indeterminate amount of time later.
“What?” I am caught in the hazy in-between of relief and exhaustion. My head is spinning.
“You forget, Delilah. I watch every one of your broadcasts,” he says, sounding smug as hell. “Want to explain what you’re doing kissing that weather boy?” He stares pointedly at my clothing choices. “And why you’re presumably wearing his sweater?”